Commodore Free 26/Commodore_Free_Issue_26_2009_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/tom roger (tapes

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 11KB | 374 lines

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CF. Please introduce yourself to our
readers

Tom Roger Skauen
Hello. My name is Tom Roger Skauen and
I was born in 1979, which makes me 29
at the time of this interview. The
Commodore 64 have always had a special
place in my heart, ever I received my
first unit, sometime in either 1984 or
1985, I don't remember exactly. I
should see if I can find the invoice
at my father's place sometime as it
would be nice to know when this
madness really started. Apart from
Commodore 64-stuff, I do some hobby
based programming on PC, compose some
music every now and then, and..
nothing really in particular. If
anyone really wants to know anything
about me, just contact me. I shouldn't
be hard to find, and friendly letters
are always answered, even if I may be
very late sometimes :)

CF. How did you first become involved
with Commodore machines

TRS. My mother took part in some sort
of computer school back in the
early/mid 80s, so we bought a
Commodore 64, mainly for her to write
programs in BASIC at home, which was
the preferred language at that
particular school. Being a kid that
loved any electronic equipment, I of
course fell in love with the Commodore
64 immediately.

CF. Can you explain why games were
distributed on Tapes

TRS. This seems to be a mainly
European phenomenon. Probably because
it was a cheap way of distributing
games, and cassette players for
Commodore 64 were way cheaper than a
disk drive so virtually every C64 user
owned one. In USA, there were almost
no tape games at all. I'm afraid I
cannot provide any real explanation
for why this trend never hit Europe,
but probably because disk drives were
more expensive in Europe? Hard to say.

CF. Do people still uses tapes on
Commodore machines

TRS. Yes. For different reasons. Some
people (like me) do it because they
still find an odd pleasure in watching
the loading screens and listening to
the music a while before the game play
can begin. Some because they prefer to
play originals (also like me), and
tapes are far easier to duplicate than
disks. There are also people who own a
C64 that they play some games on every
now and then they still don't even own
a disk drive. So yes, we can safely
say that tapes are still being used on
Commodore machines, at least the C64.

CF. What was the websites motivation

TRS. Not sure, really. It started out
like a small project that myself and a
guy from Australia did. Our goal was
to just dump our collections and share
them with everyone, but at some point,
more people got involved and the
archive kinda exploded. At one point
it became too much for me to handle
alone, so I let Peepo do the work for
a while, and never really returned to
it myself, sadly. Even if the site is
rather idle, I've not stopped working
with tapes, so stay tuned...

CF. Is the site still active and
currently maintained

TRS. It is not currently maintained,
but all the content is still there and
there's still lots of downloads. At
some point, something might happen,
but I don't want to say anything about
what and when, because I do not want
to give out promises I don't know I
will be able to keep. But there are
plans, if it's of any comfort.

CF. I still prefer to load games via
the tape format, as the suspense and
loading music and title screen for me
add to the game, sometimes playing the
game is actually an anticlimax would
you like to comment

TRS. I totally agree. There are quite
a few games with rather cool loading
tunes and/or loading gfx, but games
themselves being utter crap. In some
cases, like Rambo, it's working out
very well. The only annoying part with
Rambo is that the game itself is so
short. But the loading tune and
loading picture really builds up
expectations nicely, and the game
itself is very well made and looks
good. Platoon is another game where it
really adds to the game, not to
mention some of the classics like Last
Ninja 1 and 2. Last time I played Last
Ninja 2 was from tape, and I really
enjoyed it all.

CF. So some countries they just had
disk drives and didn't bother with
tapes, do you think they lost out or
gained:-)

TRS. Being the tape lunatic I am, of
course I think they lost out :) But
I'm quite sure that these people think
that WE were the real losers, people
who had to wait for ages to load a
game, and at the time while C64 was
still hot, they were probably right.
Even if I fancied loading the few
original games I owned myself back in
the days, I'm quite sure I'd happily
trade that away for much faster
loading. I got a disk drive in 1989,
and I have to admit that I did not
care much for tapes after that, until
the nostalgia caught up with me in the
end of the 90s.

CF. How can people look after taped
games

TRS. Store them in a room with no
direct exposure to sun, and preferably
in a room where temperature doesn't
vary too much. Sudden changes in
temperature is very bad for tapes. A
cool and dry room is preferred, but
not everyone has such a room
available. In general, keep them away
from as much excessive heat, differing
temperatures and moisture as possible
and they will probably last for quite
some time still. I'm amazed to see
that I have tapes from early 80s that
don't show any signs of wear or ageing
at all.

CF. What is the best method to align
tape heads for perfect copies, and to
ensure the games still load correctly

TRS. By using a tool that displays the
signals, such as Recorder Justage.
Align by using a selection of
different games from different
publishers. When you have an alignment
that reads them all good, there
shouldn't be much problems. In some
cases it may be very difficult to
align the tape head to read both sides
of a tape perfectly. This is probably
not a defect, but something
distributors did to improve the
chances of loading side 2 if your
cassette player was too misaligned to
read side 1. In case of aligning a
deck for dumping, you should probably
check every tape for optimal results
and do small adjustments if you can
gain anything from it.

CF. I presume that motors wear out on
and the bands connecting the motors to
the drive mechanism will wear out,
does this affect performance of the
tapes

TRS. I'm not really sure. The only
problems I've had myself is that heads
are worn out and tapes that gets
"stuck" because they're too moist, and
motor isn't able to pull it. (A so
called sticky tape will be slowed down
by anything that touches it, and the
heads will slow it down the most,
sometimes even stop it completely).

CF. Also with the wear and tear does
this make archiving difficult

TRS. What makes archiving difficult is
mostly a tape that hasn't been cared
for. Apart from that we haven't run
into many problems on wear and tear
issues. Some tapes are more prone to
sucking up moisture though. I've seen
this on many Gremlin Graphics tapes
and some Ocean tapes. In many cases
there are tricks to get the content
dumped anyway, but sometimes I've
sadly had to give up.

CF. how long do you think tapes will
last before they degrade beyond use

TRS. To be honest I have Absolutely no
idea. But if stored properly, there is
a fair chance that tapes may actually
outlive the hardware from what I've
seen today.

CF. I guess archiving is important, is
this the reason for the website

TRS. The reason for the website was
basically because I wanted something
to do and to organize my stuff, and
because I also wanted to share my work
with others.

CF. Is archiving the covers a goal of
the website

TRS. Maybe not so much for the site in
its current form, but scanning covers
is an important part of archiving and
will also be done, yes.

CF. Are all the TAP files on the
website given from users or have you
compiled these yourself

TRS. All .tap-files on the site were
made by a small group of people. They
are all verified and cleaned by either
me or Peepo. Nothing is collected from
other websites.

CF. If our reader has a selection of
Tape files how can he send them to you

TRS. He should make sure he has
preferably two dumps of each tape
side, then contact me at [e-mail].

CF. Do you know about the DC2N project
and do you plan to archive tapes in
this format as well as TAP files

TRS. I am very well aware of the
DC2N-project, having one of the
prototypes in action with excellent
results so far. I have dumped about
90% of my own tape collection with the
DC2N, but even if I keep the
DC2N-files, they will probably not be
spread. There's really no need for
that, they are kept only as a raw
source of the tape in case it should
be necessary one day, and uploaded to
c64tapes.org which is another tape
project, but so far more focused on
archiving than downloads. A site
absolutely worth taking a look at.

CF. How would you align the heads? can
you explain this, and why you would
need to do such a process

TRS. This is already answered to some
extent. The only real way to do this
is by using an alignment tool, and
it's needed whenever your cassette
player starts choking on about any
original you feed it with. Over time,
the head MIGHT drift a little, but if
it has never been tampered with
chances are you won't need to now
either. In case you do, use a proper
alignment tool that displays the
signals graphically. There are really
no other good ways to do this.

CF. Because tapes were slow people
invented "fast loading systems" do you
know how many of these systems exist
and can you explain briefly how they
worked?

TRS. There must be hundreds of
different systems out there, but many
are based on Paul Hughes' Freeload.
When Paul Hughes examined some of
these Freeload-clones, he found that
they were line-by-line-identical with
his own work. For how they work...
There are two reasons why the turbo
loaders are so much faster than the
standard ROM loader. The ROM loader
isn't really as slow as it seems, but
all data is stored twice. In addition
to this, one byte is represented by 20
pulses. One pair for each bit, then
one pair for a parity bit and one pair
to decide if it's done loading, or if
there's more. So technically, all data
is stored 4 times + some extra
overhead. There's no wonder why this
loader is so slow. In addition, turbo
loaders usually has shorter pulses
than the ROM loader (some have longer,
but still load faster). Turbo loaders
mostly also use two pulse lengths (one
length for a 0-bit and the other
length for a 1-bit). The standard ROM
loader uses three different lengths.
Some turbo loaders also uses more than
3 pulse lengths, but this is very very
rare. This is a HUGE topic, so I'm not
going to go into more details here.

CF. Utilities and information are
listed on the website, about creating
tapes, do you think archiving is
important

TRS. Absolutely. This is an important
piece of computer history, and
everyone involved in this in one way
or another is doing a really important
job. We are at least trying to do our
best to create a archive for
enthusiasts who DO appreciate this,
and there are quite a few of them out
there judging from the download
statistics from tapes.c64.no.

CF. Do you have any question you
wished I had asked but didn@t

TRS. Not really, but I'd like an
opportunity to thank all enthusiasts
and people out there who has an
interest in this. In fear of
forgetting someone, I just want to
also thank everyone I'm working with
on various tape projects. I really
appreciate the existence of this
community and I'm very happy to be a
part of it.