[Color Computer] [Coco] CoCo shots in Dutch newspaper video on retro-gaming!

[Charles Richmond]

On Oct 25, 2006, at 2:22 PM, James Diffendaffer wrote:

>> I did a number of tests (and several demos) way back when that showed
>> that the Color Computer cassette interface was faster than the
>> Commodore floppy drives.  This involved other folks' C-64s, as I
>> wouldn't own one of the things on a bet.  (Even now).
>
> The Coco cassette interface was 1500 baud and the 1541 speed was
> supposedly almost 300 bytes/sec or ~2400 baud - the IEEE protocol
> overhead making it around the speed of the coco cassette.
> However, every time I tried that argument with a C64 owner they told
> me they had a fast load cart or replaced the DOS ROM with a product
> called JiffyDOS.  A lot of C64 games even had a fast loader right on
> the disk.  Fast loaders managed around 4K/sec and made the DOS easier
> to use.
>
> I think it's safe to say that fastloaders were pretty standard issue
> for C64 disk owners and it made the CBM drives much faster than the
> Coco cassette interface.  It wasn't as fast as the Coco disk but I
> think it's more of a 'my computer is better than yours' issue than
> reality.  One surprising fact is that the most common FastLOAD cart
> was from Epyx and it didn't support saving at high speed.
>
I used a "fast load" program for the C64 called TurboDisk. It
was provided by one of the magazines. It loaded into the 1541
drive...which had a 6502 processor in it as well as its own
memory. Then everything you loaded into the C64 would benefit
from the "fast load" program.

I was *never* disappointed in the loading speed of the Coco
cassette interface. The only thing more difficult is finding
the file on the tape. I generally recorded a C90 tape (45
minutes on the side) with as many programs as I could get
on it. I kept a paper listing of the tape counter for each
program, so I could wind the tape to that position and load
directly.

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Charles and Francis Richmond     richmond at plano dot net   |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+





Brought to you by the 6809, the 6803 and their cousins! 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ColorComputer/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ColorComputer/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:ColorComputer-digest at yahoogroups.com 
    mailto:ColorComputer-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ColorComputer-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/