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They were quite expensive to begin with, but after a year or so Sinclair dropped the price by about 75%
They were quite reliable if you formatted them several times before you started to use them for data storage - this stretched the tape to the maximum, preventing data corruption between writing and reading
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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That's right the memories come flooding back.
I also remember having to continuously press the cartridge into the slot while it was reading to get it to work properly.
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Quote: Known data capacities/tape length are: 4 kB/5 feet, 16 kB/20 feet, 48 kB/50 feet, and 64 Kk/75 feet. One complete cycle through a 20-foot tape takes 55 to 65 seconds, depending on the number of files on it.
So seek time of a minute, for a total capacity of 16kB ... I'm really, really, glad I never had one! 
Thinking about it, if you stored one 16kB file on it, you'd be looking at a fetch time of between one and two minutes depending on where the "string" was ... that's horrible!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I stumbled over those long forgotten drives while getting together my plans for the 40 year anniversary version of my old computer. I am going to try to build an IDE interface for a hard disk or perhaps an SD card as 'SSD'.
Let's just pretend an 8 bit computer could access the drives as fast as RAM (which it definitely could not), how long would it take to write a sector? We would be spared most of the seeking time, but loading a few kilobytes would still take a noticable amount of time.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Good question. It could take a while. I think back then RAM access times were measured in milliseconds, not nanoseconds.
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God, no! Nobody used ferrite core memories anymore even then. Typical were around 300 to 400 ns for SRAMs, like the Intel 2102 (1 kilobit!)
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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The 2102 was the first memory chip I used. My first homebrew box used 8 of them. 1k of memory and it drew almost 2 amps from the 5 volt supply.
Later upgraded to the low power versions and that allowed me to have 8 kbytes using the same PSU. Whoopee!
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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I still have my first computer. It also uses the 32 of the 2102 for whopping 4k RAM. It is completely CMOS, so power consumption was not much of an isue. The LED displays draw more power than the rest of the computer.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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This is memory mind you, but I recall it taking about 20 minutes to load a C64 program from a cassette tape. And I was happy to wait.
And since it is memory I don't have any more details.
Any more I just get annoyed if I start something and it takes a double digit seconds. I guess we are more a product of our environment than I thought. 
Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than master of one.
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The 1530 for C64 was 4-5 times slower than that!!!
And for time it was all the external storage we had... I remember to record programs from the radio on a normal tape, than load it to the computer... If there was some disturbance in the receiving we got a faulty software...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Probably still faster and more reliable than typing it in from those magazines!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Oh God yes! And typing most of it in in 2 digit hex values. 
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Especially when print magazines used the same character for lower case "L" "l" and number One "1".
C64 had a total melt down if you typed
FOR 1=1to100
... instead of ...
For l=1to100
Yes. They are different lines: One versus L.
This taught me to "Save the program before trying to run it!".
Confession: It took two times of typing in a 6 page program ("Castle Dungeon") and having it freeze (core dump with loss) on execution. After the second occurrence, my sister and I realized that we should save it BEFORE running it. That was our favorite game for a while. Probably, it was because of the sweat equity due to typing it three times.
Historical aside: Many old typewriters did not even have a "1" key because you could use lower case "L".
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Compared to paper tape 16KB was impressive and 1 minute extremely fast. Paper tape readers were manually seek (find label written on tape) and pull it through as fast as you can. If you were rich and had an ASR33 teletype with mechanical paper tape the transfer rate was a breathtaking 10 bytes per second.
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ASR33 was probably the noisiest device used for printing.
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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TRS - 80 ! That's where my coding started. No floppy though, I had to retype my progs every afternoon.
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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There were interfaces for all kinds of 8 bit computers, even for kits like mine.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Yep, same here but it was even more limited: 1K ROM, 1K RAM, 6x7 segment display and a hex keyboard.
Type in the Assembly programs ( 6502 assembly ) over and over again, raw hex code that is, no fancy assembler or anything.
Then again, you learn assembly fast enough and thoroughly that way.
Too bad my "Junior computer" ( for those who remember  ) was zapped by a lightning strike a few years later.
It is still sitting somwehere in the attic and is not visibly damaged but the TTL chips on it did not like the 15 V DC they got when the power supply gave in to the lightning strike.
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CDP1802 wrote: n 1978 a floppy controller plus drive was far beyond my budget.
Me too, but mostly because I was still in diapers. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Not exactly diapers, but my budget was still defined by my weekly allowance.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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I started with C64 and a 1530 (upgraded version), later got an 1451 - that was a big deal!!!
All used the counter (mechanical) to find files faster... Otherwise you had to wait for a full search at an average speed 50 bytes/sec...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Come right over. I have two C64 with 1541 floppies in my shelf, ready to go.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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I always play with the thought to buy one, but afraid I will play with it all day long... Just loved it...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I also have several Atari ST, an Atari 400, two Atari 600XL, an Atari 800XL....
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Never had Atari. I moved to Amiga (500 and 3000) and PC next...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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