"Andy Leighton" <andyl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:slrnfsvhmj.g2a.andyl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:51:22 GMT, Karl Johanson <karljohanson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>> "Andy Leighton" <andyl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
>>> On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:55:07 -0600,
>>> Richard Todd <rmtodd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> "Karl Johanson" <karljohanson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> How many bits did the early computer cassette tapes hold?
>>>>
>>>> Depends on the machine, and the cassette. TRS-80 Model I cassettes
>>>> were 500 bits/sec, IIRC. I don't think any of the other computers
>>>> of
>>>> that
>>>> era got much over 2kbits/sec on a cassette, so that should give you
>>>> a
>>>> rough
>>>> estimate.
>>>
>>> The ZX Spectrum used 1500 baud although later quick loaders tripled
>>> that at least. At 4500 baud a good 120 minute cassette tape would
>>> hold
>>> approx. 3.9 Mb.
>>
>> Thanks to both. My Coleco Adam used 60 minute cassetes and could hold
>> 256 k, I was wondering if that was high or low compared to others at
>> the
>> time.
>
> The Adam was interesting. It used a special tape drive and special
> tapes which it ran with a much faster throughput that a normal
> cassette
> deck. Googling says that it ran the tape at 20 ips (inches per
> second) for reading and writing and 80 ips for rewinding.
Yeah, pretty fast for the time. I got a pair of 5 1/4 inch floppy drives
for it eventually.
> Certainly on my Speccy I could get loads of games on a C60 tape.
A problem with the Adam tapes was that the space used by a file wasn't
freed up when you deleted the file. You'd need to reformat the tape for
that. Same problem with the floppy drives.
Karl Johanson
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