Cassettes: why?

[phoney]

Okay - so my new 1200XL came with a 'free' 1010 tape player, and I've been playing around with it. For context, I've always used disks; my original 800 in 1982 came with an 810 and I never looked back. So ... I am new to this experience and how bad it is. And it is SO BAD. Why? Why does the 1010 exist? Everything about these devices is appalling compared to a disk drive. They're slow, unreliable, low capacity, bizarre to use if you are trying to store more than one program per tape side, absolutely wracked with 143 errors ... it's appalling.

 

I can understand maybe the existence of the 410 because in the late '70s disk drives were super expensive. But why does the 1010 exist? By 1983 I feel like everybody was using either disks or cartridges. This device is handsome, for sure (love the 1010/1020/1200 design language) but it is truly of the devil.

[reifsnyderb]

Price.

[phoney]

I guess. Your reply caused me to get out the 1984 issue of ANALOG that also came with this purchase (truly, it was a wondrous buy) and in the ads there, the 1010 costs $70-80, while disk drives cost around $300-400. But man, it's a bad experience. 

[Rybags]

Outside the US, prices were a ripoff until the Tramiel era.  A large reason that Atari computers didn't have the success they deserved.

 

I got my first 1050 in 1984 and it was $450.  The year before the 1010 recorder was $160 here.

[Beeblebrox]

Cassettes were the more ubiquitous commercial game format in the 80s and even into the 90s for a lot of 8-bit computer games. I remember going into shops with loads of Atari, C64, Amstrad, and Speccy cassette games on display. The 1010 and XC12 decks were obviously far cheaper than the 1050 drives, etc. Even the big retailers such as Dixons here in the UK released the Atari 65XE bundled with the XC12.

 

Obviously for most they would go for a disk drive over cassette, but BITD it was mostly for the aforementioned reasons cassettes/decks were still around, even when drives were available.

 

These days I only ever use Multicarts now, (Side3 and A8pico)

 

I have many painful memories of waiting 10-15 mins for cassette games to load, (Gauntlet, Kickstart, and Spy vs Spy). I got a 1050 drive in the early 90's when I could afford one. At the time it was amazing.

.

Edited November 8 by Beeblebrox

[gilsaluki]

Still load up a cassette every now and then.  Why?  Why not?  DBM.  

[tuf]

1 hour ago, phoney said:

I can understand maybe the existence of the 410 because in the late '70s disk drives were super expensive. But why does the 1010 exist? By 1983 I feel like everybody was using either disks or cartridges. This device is handsome, for sure (love the 1010/1020/1200 design language) but it is truly of the devil.

 

Atari had a substantial catalog of software on cassettes - and lots of the APX stuff was as well.

 

If you don't "get" cassette players you probably also don't understand just how cool it was to own a disk drive at that time.  It was a Big Deal when you got one - and your friends were totally jealous.

 

I still have to take a minute when I see an Indus GT or Rana 1000...

 

Edited November 9 by tuf

[+DrVenkman]

25 minutes ago, tuf said:

It was a Big Deal when you got one - and your friends were totally jealous.

THIS.

 

My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 in 1981. Within a year or so, I outgrew it and managed to save, borrow, and cajole enough birthday, Christmas and lawn mowing money - along with my step-brother - to upgrade to an Atari 400 and 410 Program Recorder. A year or so later and we sold our 400 and went round and round again and got an 800. This was the late summer of 1983. It wasn't until Christmas 1984 or so that we got a 1050 Disk Drive finally. By then we'd been using cassette storage to save our BASIC type-in programs and load in commercial titles like Blue Max, Zaxxon, B-1 Nuclear Bomber, SCRAM and I don't remember how many others for a few years. Finally getting a floppy drive was an almost magical upgrade experience at the time.

 

So even though cassette storage objectively sucks in every conceivable way, so much of my own personal early computing experiences are inexorably tied to the format that I still periodically select a .CAS file and spend the 5 - 10 minutes to load it in off my FujiNet just to bathe in the nostalgia of those periodic low-bitrate BRAAAAAAWWWW tones before Zaxxon or SCRAM displays on the screen of my Atari 800.

[adam242]

It's mostly about price. My family could barely afford the 600XL I got in '84, and a 1050 was quite out of reach.

 

Speaking of the 600XL, having only 16K of memory meant I couldn't have used a disc drive anyway. Cassette was the only option for people with unexpanded 600XLs and 400s.

[+bent_pin]

1 hour ago, tuf said:

still have to take a minute when I see an Indus GT or Rana 1000...

 

[tuf]

10 minutes ago, bent_pin said:

 

 

I would have hung out at your house all the time!

 

[+bent_pin]

Bring PB&Js, I got Capri Suns

[Chri O.]

24 minutes ago, tuf said:

 

I would have hung out at your house all the time!

 

Hey I'm moving in 😷

[Chri O.]

Cassettes: why?

Here's my 1010 cassette player bit modified but hey I can load stuff from PC. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

[bfollowell]

Many of us simply couldn't afford a disk drive. I bought my original Atari 800 with a 410 recorder. I hated it, but it was better than nothing. I used it for a year until I purchased my Rana 1000 disk drive and never looked back. Once I ported my little bit of personal data over to disk, I don't think I ever used the 410 again. It's been over 40 years, but $379 is the price I have in my head that I paid for my Rana.

 

 

Edited November 9 by bfollowell

[+RSA Hues]

In some countries, the affordability problem persisted for quite a while. In fact, Atari released as part of the XE line an XE-styled cassette tape drive, the XC12 (I've heard of an XC11 as well). That's the one I got in Chile with my first Atari in 1986. They were quite common there. I believe this cassette drive model was not known in the US because by then disk drives had become affordable enough. I could only buy a disk drive by 88 or 89 (a used XF551).

 

Some local hackers created advanced cassette recording methods that shortened the load times quite a bit. Each block was shorter and higher pitched. There might have been also a feature to roll back the tape a bit to retry if there was a failure. I think the method was called STAC, and there was a hardware mod called Injektor as well. It was so cool when all of this came out.

 

As others have said, cassettes are horrible on their own, but an integral part of our memories growing up with Atari. That's why I bought a couple of broken XC12's recently from a South American seller that I hope to revive soon (the tape drives, not the seller :).

[Osgeld]

we had an apple II, and upgraded to disk drives as soon as dad could afford it as he was running his business from it. But keep in mind for the cost of a disk drive one could get a reasonable (old, maybe not perfect, and cheaper end base model) used car in the early 80's depending on where you lived 

 

it really wasn't until the PC clone market started completely saturating the market before compact cas drives vanished, I mean even the OG 5150 released in 81 had a tape option on the motherboard 

Edited November 9 by Osgeld

[reifsnyderb]

It could have been worse.  I hope you all realize that cassettes were better than punched tape or punched cards.    

 

 

[Havok69]

You're all missing a very important reason that only a cassette based application could deliver on: educational titles with real human voices recorded. Conversational Spanish, French, Italian, German. Invitation to Programming. Physics, Psychology, Sociology, Algebra, Electricity, Principles of Economics, Great Classic Literature and more! Try that with a floppy from back in day. No speech for you!

 

I had a 1010 back in the day and I never had the problems that so many people say they had. Not sure why. Even today, once I repaired my 1010 and put new belts in it, the thing is as rock solid as the one I had in the 80's.  I had four floppy drives also, but the 1010 got use as well back then.

 

I now find that the only physical media stuff I use is dual channel audio applications. Everything else is run off my AVG cart. I still have way more floppy drives than I need, but I rarely use them.

[w1k]

what about modern players - xc/xl12?

[deffroe]

I found a workaround to help speed up the loading from cassette, come home from school start a game loading, wait a few seconds so that I was happy with loading tone so I was confident it was not going to error out and then go get dinner😁.

From memory, the longest loading cassette game I had was Americana Strip Poker which was the best part of 30 minutes.

[Overange]

9 hours ago, phoney said:

Okay - so my new 1200XL came with a 'free' 1010 tape player, and I've been playing around with it. For context, I've always used disks; my original 800 in 1982 came with an 810 and I never looked back. So ... I am new to this experience and how bad it is. And it is SO BAD. Why? Why does the 1010 exist? Everything about these devices is appalling compared to a disk drive. They're slow, unreliable, low capacity, bizarre to use if you are trying to store more than one program per tape side, absolutely wracked with 143 errors ... it's appalling.

 

I can understand maybe the existence of the 410 because in the late '70s disk drives were super expensive. But why does the 1010 exist? By 1983 I feel like everybody was using either disks or cartridges. This device is handsome, for sure (love the 1010/1020/1200 design language) but it is truly of the devil.

Welcome to the dark arts of Atari tape drives. You’ve crossed over into the realm of the 1010, where every program load feels like a seance and success depends on mysterious powers (and probably the alignment of the planets). You thought you were getting a “free” tape player, but really, you were given a test of patience worthy of an ancient monk.

[TGB1718]

Purely cost, I bought my 800 with a 410 and used that for probably a year and a half as the cost of an 810

was prohibitive, even to 1050 was too expensive to consider when they first appeared, however I saw a deal

in Dixons for a 1050, I think it was around £150, boy oh boy what a change, never looked back, I still

have no idea how I survived so long using a cassette, you're right about how bad they were, anything I

was writing at the time I used to save at least twice on different cassettes (just in case)

[+kheller2]

11 hours ago, phoney said:

I guess. Your reply caused me to get out the 1984 issue of ANALOG that also came with this purchase (truly, it was a wondrous buy) and in the ads there, the 1010 costs $70-80, while disk drives cost around $300-400. But man, it's a bad experience. 

no guessing about it.   I was barely able to get a 800XL and a 1010 and that was with discounts.  It took at least another year to obtain a 1050.   Tapes are cheap both to make/master and purchase.  As has been mentioned, it also depends on your region.  Parts of the world were heavily into tapes for Atari.   

 

Having said that, you shouldn't be having that many errors with a 1010.  I sure did have errors loading programs and games, but nothing that put me off that much.  if you want a painful experience, try using the 410!  That just hurts.  The 1010, besides broken button stems, was a dream.

[+Larry]

10 hours ago, Chri O. said:

Cassettes: why?

Here's my 1010 cassette player bit modified but hey I can load stuff from PC. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Could you explain your system a bit more?  Are you just using a capture device or is there more there?  (I still use an All In Wonder video display in a dedicated XP system for my Atari.)  And I still keep an XC12 handy.  Compared to my earlier 410 and 1010, it is super reliable.  And I should note that although my 410 was really error-ridden, the 1010 wasn't too bad.