What is this thing called for the Commodore 64?

[Coleco Kong]

I've had this for many years for my original Commodore 64...I wish I could get rid of it, but I don't know it's value.

 

It has a cassette tape with it.

 

 

[Nukey Shay]

A Datasette recorder. A storage device for programs. Practically worthless if you have a disk drive. A few bucks TOPS.

[Adrian M]

And to make matters worse, they're so slooooooooooooow.....

[Coleco Kong]

Wow that sucks...oh well...it would probably cost more to ship it then selling it

[Susuwatari]

Even if you handed them out for free, pretty much no one will take it. It's about as common as disk drive but not many program in USA are on tape so it's unpopular except to the most die hard collector.

[CSIXTY4]

It's about as common as disk drive but not many program in USA are on tape so it's unpopular except to the most die hard collector.

 

And they probably have 6 or 7 already collecting dust somewhere.

[Trooper]

I sold one of mine (I have about ten more ) and got about $10 for it. That was of course in Europe though.

 

/Troop

[thx1138]

they sell in the U.K for £5 on a good day.

[Gregory DG]

Are there any games/apps on tape not available on disk?

[Nukey Shay]

I don't know of any...tho there might have been a few in the really early days. AFAIK, this would be more common with Vic20 programs (which was already aimed at a lower-cost market). Disk Drives were a pretty spendy luxury, and I think that you'd have a time finding commercial programs released on a DISK for that computer.

[CSIXTY4]

Are there any games/apps on tape not available on disk?

 

Tapes were really popular in Europe as an inexpensive way to distribute software, so I'm sure there's quite a few games that never made it to disk format...at least legitimately.

[2600Lives]

I bought a working tape drive at a thrift store for 30 cents. Lol. I've got a few programs for it, but only a few of them actually work (and O....M....G...is it SLOOOOOOOOOW.). I think the magnetic tape has degraded on most of the tapes.

[Rekrul]

I used a Datassette for the first year I owned a C64 and I hated it SO much! Everything took forever to load. I only ever bought one commercial game on tape; Zaxxon. It used to take literally 15-20 minutes to load and half the time it would fail before it finished!

 

Are there any games/apps on tape not available on disk?

 

If there were, they've almost certainly been transferred to disk by now.

 

Tapes were really popular in Europe as an inexpensive way to distribute software

 

A fact which I cursed often back when the C64 was still popular. While some amazing games did come out of the UK and Europe, how many arcade translations were butchered by the the need to fit the entire game into memory at once?

 

(While I'm aware that levels could be loaded individually off tape, it seems that most of the European games I saw were single-load, like Space Harrier)

[Artlover]

I only ever bought one commercial game on tape; Zaxxon. It used to take literally 15-20 minutes to load and half the time it would fail before it finished!

I've got that. Same results too, 20 minutes to load. Always failed 50% of the time. But it was (and still is in my opinion) the best home port of Zaxxon ever produced, so it was worth it.

 

I was happy as hell when I was able to later download the floppy version.

 

Also have Jumpman and PogoJoe on tape! Woo woo. (PogoJoe.... also a wonderful and fun game. Tobad I no longer have any c64's with an older vic chip that doesn't have that god awful sparkles problem.)

[Rekrul]

I've got that. Same results too, 20 minutes to load. Always failed 50% of the time. But it was (and still is in my opinion) the best home port of Zaxxon ever produced, so it was worth it.

 

I was happy as hell when I was able to later download the floppy version.

 

I later downloaded a cracked version, one file, less than 200 blocks and with a fast load cartridge it loaded in just a few seconds.

 

 

Tobad I no longer have any c64's with an older vic chip that doesn't have that god awful sparkles problem.)

 

What sparkles problem?

[Artlover]

What sparkles problem?

 

Basicly that, sparkles (or a glitter effect) on the screen. PogoJoe shows the problem off real bad.

 

Why gets confusing. I tried googling this, but didn't exactly get all I wanted.

 

Some say it's because of voltage issues across the rom chips. But that supposidly only effected the earliest runs of C-64's.

 

Speaking from personal experience, I had an early C64 that never had this problem, then the later C-64's I got did have it. I also seem to remember my C128 in C-64 mode has the same issue. I also recall people with C-64C's complaining about this too.

 

So in looking to other possibles: Early C-64's had different video output schematics and used different revision VIC chips then later models.

 

But oddly, early vic chips were flawed with a missing cycle per raster line.

 

If you never had the problem, lucky you.

[Rekrul]

If you never had the problem, lucky you.

 

No, I never noticed anything like that. My C64 is a fairly old one. When I first got it, stores only had a few games on cartridge (like Pitstop and Pinball Spectacular) and it actually came with a VIC-20 style keyboard (light tan function keys). It even had the bug where if you filled up two lines at the bottom of the screen and then deleted back, it would print the "Press play on tape" message and lockup. Eventually, I replaced that VIC chip and the keyboard (original one got broken).

[Dr. Van Thorp]

You might be able to sell it to a VIC-20 enthusiast. The VIC's memory was small, and you load a VIC-20 game from cassette in a minute or two. Also, the disk drive was not immediatley available for the VIC-20, so a lot of games got released on cassette.

[Famicoman]

I only like it, because I don't have a floppy drive yet. After that addition to the commodore family, the datasette will go back into its origional box, with an unusually stange K-Mart sticker reading 59.99