Just an idea

[Stig Rune]

One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?
Is it possible?
And what do turbo tape really do? How does it work?
Any toughts?

[SilverSpider]

Greetings Stig,

Post by Stig Rune
One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?
Is it possible?
And what do turbo tape really do? How does it work?
Any toughts?

What do these C64 turbo tapes do for you?

[SilverSpider]

Greetings Stig,
No, I had not heard of this before ... not exactly anyway.
Then again, the C64 tape system was 300 baud, whereas on the Oric you had a
choice.
Taken from Steve's site:

"Cassette Interface Connect via DIN socket. Uses Tangerine format which has
been field proven over
4 years and thousands of systems. Operates at super reliable 300 baud or
reliable super fast 2400 baud. A tone leader allows tape recorders'
automatic level control to stabilise before first recording filename and
then dumping program/data with parity. At the end of recording several check
sums are recorded which will be checked on loading to verify correct
operation."

As far as I remember most cassettes came with the same program recorded slow
on one side, and fast on the other.

Peter 'SilverSpider' Paterson
A Scotsman in Kentucky
SecondLife, MySpace & Bebo: 'Spider Spinotti'
Oric Homepage = http://oricspider.home.insightbb.com
Squeaky for USA Pres 2008 - http://www.squeaky4pres.com

-----------------------------------------------

Hi there, silverspider.
Turbo tape is a small program that allows you to save other programs in a

comprimated format I guess, then you need the same turbo tape verson to load
the program again.

For the cbm 64 it is really a big hit, an ordinary game takes forever to

load on the cbm 64, but with turbo tape it takes only seconds.

Haven't you heard of it?
Regards
Stig R

[Stig Rune]

Hi Peter.
Yes the Oric was a fast loader with it's 2400 baud in the beginning.
But the turbo tape system is so much faster and the programs are compressed
to a size where you could have 20 maybe 30 games on one side of a c 60
cassette, I've been told.
So even the Oric with it's 2400 baud seems slow compared to that.
Another ting is that the turbo tape was spread to almost every cbm 64 user
and it came with a copy function too, so copying games and programmes where
made very easy, and helped the cbm 64 to be the most selling computer ever.
Too bad the Oric programmers did'nt make the turbo tape first.
Just so you dont't get me wrong:
The Oric 1 is my alltime favourite computer!
But as I have collected 8-bit computers for some years, I now have more cbms
and other machines than Orics, only because they are far more common and
easy to get.
Regards
Stig R

Post by SilverSpider
Greetings Stig,
No, I had not heard of this before ... not exactly anyway.
Then again, the C64 tape system was 300 baud, whereas on the Oric you had
a choice.
"Cassette Interface Connect via DIN socket. Uses Tangerine format which
has been field proven over
4 years and thousands of systems. Operates at super reliable 300 baud or
reliable super fast 2400 baud. A tone leader allows tape recorders'
automatic level control to stabilise before first recording filename and
then dumping program/data with parity. At the end of recording several
check sums are recorded which will be checked on loading to verify correct
operation."
As far as I remember most cassettes came with the same program recorded
slow on one side, and fast on the other.
Peter 'SilverSpider' Paterson
A Scotsman in Kentucky
SecondLife, MySpace & Bebo: 'Spider Spinotti'
Oric Homepage = http://oricspider.home.insightbb.com
Squeaky for USA Pres 2008 - http://www.squeaky4pres.com
-----------------------------------------------

Hi there, silverspider.
Turbo tape is a small program that allows you to save other programs in a

comprimated format I guess, then you need the same turbo tape verson to
load the program again.

For the cbm 64 it is really a big hit, an ordinary game takes forever to

load on the cbm 64, but with turbo tape it takes only seconds.

Haven't you heard of it?
Regards
Stig R

[Steve Marshall]

Post by Stig Rune
One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?

Because we have disk drives. Faster. Better !

Steve M

[Stig Rune]

Hi Steve.
Working late?
Well the Commodore 64 also have disk drives.
That did'nt stop them.
Regards
Stig R

Post by Steve Marshall

Post by Stig Rune
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?

Because we have disk drives. Faster. Better !
Steve M

[Steve Marshall]

Post by Stig Rune
Working late?

Always!

Post by Stig Rune
Well the Commodore 64 also have disk drives.
That did'nt stop them.

True. But the disk drive systems were expensive and the turbo tape was a
cheaper option. With Orics, the majority have a disk system so how many
would use a turbo tape if it was developed?

I think Fabrice did some work getting the Oric to accept more information
when he was trying to see if it could be connected to the internet. I'm not
sure what happened with that. He also did something with loading from CD
which might be the way to go. There was also some talk about connecting a
hard drive. Tapes are considered obsolete and even floppies have been
discontinued by most manufacturers.

Steve M

[Simon]

Post by Stig Rune
One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?
Is it possible?

Well, we have it.
A turbo tape was published in OUM years ago.
Fabrice Francès made a Turbo Tape routine (for Atmos), that loads 10
times faster than the original fast speed. The problem is that it
requires a perfect audio source, so it has to work from a PC or a CD, a
tape signal is not good enough for such a speed.

I will also struggle some day with "supertape", as someone sent me tape
recorded with this routine which I know nothing about, not even how to load.

Simon

[Andre Majorel]

Post by Stig Rune
One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?

It might in fact have been available then, just not widespread.
I don't remember.

Post by Stig Rune
Is it possible?

Simon answered that one. :-)

Post by Stig Rune
And what do turbo tape really do? How does it work?

I don't know how the various turbo tape schemes work but here
are a few ideas. In FAST mode, when you write the bit sequence
0110 to the tape, this is what the signal looks like :
___ ___ ___ ___
| | | | | | | | |
|_______| |___| |___| |_______| |
0 X 1 X 1 X 0 X

The difference between the 0 and the 1 is that the voltage stays
low twice as long for the 0.

The "X" pulses always have the same length so they convey no
information. You could make tape transfers about 1.5 times as
fast simply by getting rid of them. Here's what 0110 would look
like :
___ _______
| | | | |
|_______| |___| |
0 1 1 0

Since zeros are about 1.6 more frequent than ones in typical
CSAVE data, you could gain further by making 0 short and 1 long.
_______ ___
| | | | |
|___| |_______| |
0 1 1 0

Finally, you could encode more than one bit per edge. For
example, 00 = t, 01 = 1.21t, 10 = 1.47t and 11 = 1.77t :
_____
| | |
|____| |
01 10

Note that those times imply +/-10% tolerance on tape speed
instead of the +/-20% of the ROM routines. For +/-20% tolerance
you would have 11 = 2.98t. I doubt that such a wide tolerance is
really useful, however.

[Stig Rune]

Thank you.
That answered everything I was wondering about.
Regards
Stig R.

Post by Andre Majorel

Post by Stig Rune
One day last week I had some commodore 64 machines up and running.
Struggling to remember comandoes and with to little nowledge of the
different types of turbo tapes I finally had enough.
Then the idea of turbo tape for oric came by.
Why don't we have it?

It might in fact have been available then, just not widespread.
I don't remember.

Post by Stig Rune
Is it possible?

Simon answered that one. :-)

Post by Stig Rune
And what do turbo tape really do? How does it work?

I don't know how the various turbo tape schemes work but here
are a few ideas. In FAST mode, when you write the bit sequence
___ ___ ___ ___
| | | | | | | | |
|_______| |___| |___| |_______| |
0 X 1 X 1 X 0 X
The difference between the 0 and the 1 is that the voltage stays
low twice as long for the 0.
The "X" pulses always have the same length so they convey no
information. You could make tape transfers about 1.5 times as
fast simply by getting rid of them. Here's what 0110 would look
___ _______
| | | | |
|_______| |___| |
0 1 1 0
Since zeros are about 1.6 more frequent than ones in typical
CSAVE data, you could gain further by making 0 short and 1 long.
_______ ___
| | | | |
|___| |_______| |
0 1 1 0
Finally, you could encode more than one bit per edge. For
_____
| | |
|____| |
01 10
Note that those times imply +/-10% tolerance on tape speed
instead of the +/-20% of the ROM routines. For +/-20% tolerance
you would have 11 = 2.98t. I doubt that such a wide tolerance is
really useful, however.
--
André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
"I drink, I smoke, I gamble, I chase girls--but postal chess is
one vice I don't have." -- Mikhail Tal