Atari tape drive

[Atari]

I went to habitat for humanity on Friday and saw an Atari tape drive. This is the white and silver one and was marked .50

I was going to buy it but I am not sure. There were no cables or anything with it. What type of cable do I need to hook it to my Atari 400? Does it use batterys or a power supply? Do I need special cassettes?

Thanks for your input.

 

[Terry Yager]

For fifty cents, ya better grab it up, and worry about the cabling later. You never know when ya might see another one.

--T

 

[carlsson]

It appears the Atari 410 tape recorder should have a built-in SIO cable to connect to the computer. It also has a built-in power supply.

The latter Atari 1010 tape recorder (intended for the XL series) used a removable SIO cable and had two connectors, so one could daisy chain the peripherals in any order, unlike the 410 which had to be the last device on the chain. The 1010 also used a separate power supply.

It seems SIO is the common interface used to connect tape, disk, printers and modems to the computer. If I recall correctly, it is completely different from all other types of connectors so very hard to make your own cable or restore the cable if it once was cut off the tape recorder. Of course you can buy an original cable from somewhere.

Most likely the tape recorder you found was a 1010 or something similar. Those seem to sell around $10-15 with or without power supply. The SIO cable sells for around $5-10 each.