4 replies to this topic

[jhd]

The original (1981) IBM PC shipped included support for cassette tape as a storage medium. Indeed, for many years GW BASIC included reserved keywords related to the cassette, even though the hardware was no longer present.

Was there ever any software released on cassette format?

Wikipedia implies that it would have been limited to programs written for the built-in BASIC interpreter as there was no other software support for the cassette. http://en.wikipedia....C#Cassette_tape

[jaybird3rd]

Somewhere in my collection of books, I've got a copy of The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC, and in that book Norton mentions that he never saw a commercial IBM PC title offered for sale on cassette. I can't say that I have, either. Since the cassette port was dropped from the XT and later models, I can only assume that any worthwhile cassette releases there might have been would have been re-released on diskette. I've heard that several people hacked the PC's cassette port into a "poor man's serial port" (since the original PC did not include one), but I don't know how this was done.

[Tempest]

Supposedly the IBM PCjr's built in BASIC was meant to store things on cassette since the disk drive was technically optional (although I've never seen a PCjr without the disk drive). Personally I've never seen any PC program stored on tape, heck even the Apple II pretty much had adbandoned tapes by 81-82.

[JamesD]

Tempest, on Tue Jan 3, 2012 8:38 PM, said:

Supposedly the IBM PCjr's built in BASIC was meant to store things on cassette since the disk drive was technically optional (although I've never seen a PCjr without the disk drive). Personally I've never seen any PC program stored on tape, heck even the Apple II pretty much had adbandoned tapes by 81-82.

I've never seen cassette software for the IBM PC.

The cassette routines were eventually dropped from the Apple II ROMs even though the hardware was still there. I think that happened with the enhanced IIe.
You could always load the original ROMs into the language card... which is built in on the IIe and later models.
Even before that, the Beagle Brothers released a utility that patched the II+ ROM to add features by replacing the cassette routines.
<edit>
The Apple II cassette wasn't the most reliable anyway.

Edited by JamesD, Wed Jan 4, 2012 12:12 AM.

[The Usotsuki]

//c and IIgs, which didn't have the hardware.

Even the Enhanced //e and the Platinum //e have tape ports - which I've used to load games via my hell phone.