13 May
1997
13 May
'97
12:51 a.m.
On Mon, 12 May 1997, Charles P. Hobbs wrote:
I remember Radio Nederlands trying to broadcast
computer tapes over
shortwave radio back in late 1981. They did programs fro TRS 80's,
Commodore Pet's and Atari 400/800. I remember that the experiment was a
mixed success, with several TRS-80 users, a few Commodore users, and
only one Atari 800 user succesfully recording the program off-air, and
loading it into their computer.
Possibly because just about every system except the TRS-80 was extremely
picky about cassette signal levels, and most were impatient about getting
signal within a narrow time frame after the load instruction was given.
Back in the old days, people used to complain about the reliability of
the TRS-80 cassette subsystem. That's because it was so much better than
the Apple or Pet cassette interface that people waited longer before
upgrading to disk, that people had time to build up a string of problems.
Apples were generally upgraded to disk almost immediately because the
cassette interface was so abominable -- but because it'd been used for
such a short period of time, folks forgot how bad it was.
Of course, the TRS-80 Color Computer had the best cassette interface in
history. And it was faster than a Commodore disk interface.
(No, I'm not knocking Apples and Commodores. It's just that I had to
listen to the whining about TRS-80 cassette reliability for too many
years from folks who weren't _quite_ annoyed enough to upgrade.)
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe