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Commodore Datasettes, all of them

Beautiful collection! I have a couple of the most common type (centre row, far right), the black one in the middle on the top row, and the left hand 1531 on the bottom row. that's it. Always wanted one of the variants from the middle with the small Commodore logo to use with a VIC20.

One thing that has always intrigued me is (in the UK at least) there were quite a few third party datasettes available which were clearly exactly the same case moulding and just missing the paint with the Commodore branding. Some of them even shipped in virtually identical boxes and came with virtually identical manuals. Does anyone know the deal with these? I can understand third party units of a different design (some of which also existed), but not what looks like exactly the same thing with a different brand on it given how much Commodore liked a closed ecosystem and did file lawsuits over third party disk drives.

Did Commodore outsource the moulding to another company which was able to sell excess stock to third parties? I'd be very interested to see what the inside looks like on these too - it couldn't have been too different from a Commodore board in order to fit the same case.
 
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cwathen said:
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One thing that has always intrigued me is (in the UK at least) there were quite a few third party datasettes available which were clearly exactly the same case moulding and just missing the paint with the Commodore branding. Some of them even shipped in virtually identical boxes and came with virtually identical manuals. Does anyone know the deal with these? I can understand third party units of a different design (some of which also existed), but not what looks like exactly the same thing with a different brand on it given how much Commodore liked a closed ecosystem and did file lawsuits over third party disk drives.

Did Commodore outsource the moulding to another company which was able to sell excess stock to third parties? I'd be very interested to see what the inside looks like on these too - it couldn't have been too different from a Commodore board in order to fit the same case.
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The units were made by an OEM and possibly even mostly designed by the OEM, so apart from the logo, Commodore may not have had any design input except for the PCB.

The original datasette that was built in to the PET 2001 was an off the shelf design that was already being produced as an audio recorder by the OEM for several brand names.
Commodore had the OEM custom brand it for them but the mechanics and plastic housing already existed.
Link: https://youtu.be/U92GSChQJKM
Link: https://blog.hutchins1.net/2020/03/commodore-integrated-cassette.html

Of course the plastic housing changed later since there was no need for the speaker grille and battery compartment, but it wouldn't surprise me if the re-designed plastic was done by the OEM also.
I know the interface electronics were designed by Commodore but the design was so simple, I don't think it could have been patented. So as long as the PCB design was different, it wouldn't violate any copyrights.

Of course this is just speculation based on what I've seen in the progression of the different models.
Copyright and trademark laws vary by country which may explain why those 3rd party drives weren't sold in the U.S.
 
Of course this is just speculation based on what I've seen in the progression of the different models.
Copyright and trademark laws vary by country which may explain why those 3rd party drives weren't sold in the U.S.
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I didn't know the 'landscape' style drives were OEM too. Possibly also might have been a bit of a runout thing as these third party tape decks were mainly around in the early 90's with the UK still being mainly on tapes until the end. Most VIC 20s and C64s (and C16/Plus 4s too) were sold in packages with a genuine Commodore deck included in the price, even in the final days when this wasn't done (such as with the T2 pack) most retailers still had genuine Commodore decks to upsell with the machine which presumably all came in on the same order. Probably just considered it a fight not worth bothering to have if little revenue was being lost.

Still to this day remember in the Commodore Force adverts section Datel marketed a 'Turbo' unit with the implication that it was somehow an upgrade from a standard 1530 (apart from being 'Turbo', it was claimed it would be able to load tapes other datasettes wouldn't) even though it was clearly just another clone deck in the same case...gotta love the 90's where false advertising didn't matter!
 
cwathen said:
Still to this day remember in the Commodore Force adverts section Datel marketed a 'Turbo' unit with the implication that it was somehow an upgrade from a standard 1530 (apart from being 'Turbo', it was claimed it would be able to load tapes other datasettes wouldn't) even though it was clearly just another clone deck in the same case...gotta love the 90's where false advertising didn't matter!
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I have one of those 'turbo' datasettes. I really must dig it out and have a look inside.

One way it could work is that there are two consecutive copies of the program normally recorded on the tape, the two being compared during loading. A mismatch causes a 'read error'. When I originally got my VIC-20 back in the day, I made my own datasette with a standard audio cassette deck. I was able to monitor the data through a speaker, and halfway through there was a very short pause and beep before the data resumed with the second copy. If I pressed 'stop' at that point, I was able to run the program just loaded.

Doing this halved the load time, and prevented 'read errors'....though at the risk of problems if there was an actual error in the first copy of the program I just loaded. I never had this happen though.
 
Had a quick look at the 'turbo' datasette. The label underneath has model number 'Datacorder DM-6403C'. A quick Google reveals there are a few C2N clones with a similar part number.
Opening it reveals the same mechanism as a Commodore C2N. The PCB is very similar, the main difference is that the 'turbo' model uses a single quad op-amp, the Commodore one uses two dual op-amps. There is nothing in the electronics that would make it really a 'turbo' unit.
Here are some pics. Excuse the grotty appearance. These were given to me in that condition many years ago and have languished in a box since then. The Commodore C2N is on the left.
Datasettes.jpg
Datasettes-inside.jpg
 
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