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Re: Kids react to old computers

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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In article <lpkb9k$h60$1@dont-email.me>, Todd Allcock
<elecconnec@AnoOspamL.com> wrote:

> At 09 Jul 2014 13:40:21 +1200 Your Name wrote:
> > In article <53bc996f$0$50625$c3e8da3$92d0a893@news.astraweb.com>, JF
> > Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> > > Soemone wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> Commodore's cassette drive ran at a horrific 50 baud, and the
> > > >> disk drive was 300. As a comparison, the TRS-80 cassette drive 
> > > >> was 1500 baud, IIRC.
> > > 
> > > But this doesn't take into account how many times you had to try to
> > > load your program, and the time it took for casette to run before it
> > > got to the recorded program. (what we could sonider the "seek time"
> > > measured in many seconds).
> > > 
> > > Both  50 and 1500 baud recordings would likely have a seek time that
> > > was way longer than the actual recording. And if the 50 baud one was
> > > more reliable, then perhaps it would be faster on average.
> > 
> > The Commodore cassette drive was actually 50 *bytes* per second (around
> > 300 baud) and the floppy drive was 300-400 bytes per second. There were
> > "fast loaders" and "turbo loaders" which loaded faster though, and some
> > third-party drives were faster.
> 
> Thanks- I stand corrected.  I never actually had a Commodore "Datasette"
> myself, thankfully, I bought a disk drive with mine; I caught a "package
> deal" with the C64, the disk drive and a Commodore dot-matrix printer for
> $500 US, but a good buddy of mine had the Datasette drive. I remember 15-
> 20 minute load times for some of the commercial games he had.  He used to
> joke you really had to want to a play game pretty badly to load it up via
> cassette.  (He was already frustrated enough by the Datasette's
> performance to upgrade to a disk drive, but he still had a pile of
> cassette-based software he occasionally liked to run, and understandably
> didn't want to re-purchase in disk format!)
> 
> No such thing as "casual gaming" in those days!  ;)

I can't rememebr if they were availabel fr the VIC20, but you didn't
re-purchase it ... you used a "freeze" cartridge to dump the RAM
content to a easily loadable file, usually compressed and therefore
faster to load (although you then had to wait a little for it to
uncompress). They were also useful to get past some of the useless
garbage like loading screens or in some cases alter memmory values to
cheat, like turning off sprite collision detection for example.  :-)

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Re: Kids react to old computers Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> - 2014-07-07 09:06 -0400
  Re: Kids react to old computers Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> - 2014-07-07 14:04 -0700
    Re: Kids react to old computers Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2014-07-08 00:17 +0000
      Re: Kids react to old computers Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AnoOspamL.com> - 2014-07-08 14:36 -0600
        Re: Kids react to old computers Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2014-07-09 01:12 +0000
          Re: Kids react to old computers JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2014-07-08 21:22 -0400
            Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-09 13:40 +1200
              Re: Kids react to old computers Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AnoOspamL.com> - 2014-07-09 15:13 -0600
                Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-10 09:34 +1200
            Re: Kids react to old computers Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AnoOspamL.com> - 2014-07-09 08:03 -0600
              Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-10 09:18 +1200
        Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-09 13:42 +1200
    Re: Kids react to old computers Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> - 2014-07-07 22:43 -0400
  Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-08 09:17 +1200
    Re: Kids react to old computers Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> - 2014-07-07 22:44 -0400
      Re: Kids react to old computers "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2014-07-08 13:59 +1000
      Re: Kids react to old computers Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2014-07-08 16:10 +1200

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