ottaross, 5 months ago

Oh, and remember to label your program tapes properly

#developers #software

alm10965, 5 months ago

@ottaross ah, a datasette

ottaross, 5 months ago

Saw this online pic of #Github in the early days.

shaknais, 5 months ago

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ottaross, 5 months ago

@shaknais I'm sitting on a case of TDK-SAX90s from decades ago that I never opened. Perhaps someday up on eBay if they have some value.

shaknais, 5 months ago

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ottaross, 5 months ago

@shaknais Really! Nice. I haven't checked the going rate for several years.

brettski, 5 months ago

@ottaross It was such a horrible way to save data.

ottaross, 5 months ago

@brettski unreliable and error prone but it got us through a few years there until the floppies came along.

sjb, 5 months ago

@ottaross I used to save BBC BASIC programs on one of these:

ottaross, 5 months ago

@sjb ah the patina of vintage gear.

randytayler, 5 months ago

@ottaross fixing a merge conflict in 1983

steevc, 5 months ago

@ottaross Knock the tabs out after saving to avoid accidental over-writing.

ottaross, 5 months ago

@steevc a good organization requires a stand-up scrum session with a vote before the tabs can be broken out.

thanius, 5 months ago

@ottaross On C64, you can keep the record going, it will stop automatically once there is no data in the buffer.
Meaning: version control, baby! Just hit S + Shift A

ottaross, 5 months ago

@thanius innovation! What will they think of next!?

richard_merren, 5 months ago

@ottaross It's not a problem because I wrote the whole program out longhand in a spiral notebook first.

ND3JR, 5 months ago

@ottaross
I know this is a very tongue-in-cheek post, but if you really wanted to do it there's a piece of software called minimodem that you can use to turn files into AFSK tones that you can record onto cassette/CD/vinyl/reel-to-reel or send over telephone or radio. http://www.whence.com/minimodem/

ottaross, 5 months ago

@ND3JR oh yes I've seen either that one or something similar a few years ago when I was trying to recover some tape-based games I'd written in the eighties. I converted them to mp3 or AIFF and tried to load them into a ZX81 emulator but didn't have much luck. It's great that little tendrils of connection & capability still link us into those times!

zazzoo, 5 months ago

@ottaross

ottaross, 5 months ago

@zazzoo Definitely. And the chromium dioxide one too.

kaybee335, 5 months ago

@ottaross @zazzoo don't forget Dolby for error correction!

I'd still worry about T-120 tape stretching over time and reading a jumble of 0.5 and 1.5 when you need it the most. 😃

zazzoo, 5 months ago

@kaybee335 @ottaross Also that thin tape was more prone to being chewed up by the machine. Still, there's no free lunch and there's the capacity trade-off. That extra 37KB simply cannot be ignored.

kaybee335, 5 months ago

@zazzoo @ottaross very true.

Pretty soon people were forced to buy a TAS (Tape Appended Storage) and run in RAIT-0 to get the necessary capacity.

It made exchanging media with others difficult though.

ottaross, 5 months ago

@kaybee335 @zazzoo I wish I had thought up RAIT. lol