how did they do it?

[futuramaooy]

Being 13, i have no idea how they made games on tapes. could someone explain it? thanks.

[Nukey Shay]

Easy. Just stick a cassette into the 410 and type "CSAVE". Now you're a wizard too j/k

 

 

Seriously...what "tapes" are you referring to? Cassettes? Cartridges?

[futuramaooy]

i mean Cassettes. and i'm asking how a game can play on a Cassette.

[TMR]

i mean  Cassettes. and i'm asking how a game can play on a Cassette.

 

Same as it plays from any media, the data is stored on the tape and the computer reloads it into the RAM and runs it from there.

[JB]

More detail...

I assume you know that computers use binary data, 1 + 0, on + off, etc.

 

Software on audio cassette just uses tones to represent the bits. The 0s are one tone, the 1s are another.

[Nukey Shay]

The breakdown of the cassette format can be seen here:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n8/tapetopics.html

 

A header is attached to the program data that tells the computer where the program is to be loaded, etc. IIRC, a machine-language editor cart like Assember/Editor has the ability to create these headers automatically when you write the file to the cassette device. For programs written in Basic, you'd just use CSAVE or LIST"C:" (the latter is slower, but more reliable). To load them back from cassette, you'd use CLOAD or ENTER"C:" (depending on which command was used to write it to the cassette).