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VIC-20 Tape Commands

alexkerhead

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2006
Messages
839
Location
Montgomery, AL USA
I got a tape unit(c2n) for my vic-20, but I cant seem to access it, it plays, and the motor is running, but nothing happens, I am new to cbm basic, so I would appreciate some advice..lol
 
Can you be more specific? What tape are you trying to access? Unlike disk drives, Commodore systems like the Vic-20 access cassette drives very easily. LOAD"program_name" loads a program from cassette, then RUN runs it. SAVE"program_name" let's you save to tape.

Easiest way to test it is to write a simple two or three line program in BASIC, do a SAVE"program_name" (follow instructions on screen). When finished and you stop the tape, rewind it. Do a LOAD"what_you_saved_it_as". Do a LIST or RUN.
 
Commodore computers access the disk drive very easily too, just add a device number after the LOAD/SAVE command. Some models (not VIC-20 though) came without tape support, and on those the default device to LOAD was disk drive #8.

If a test program is possible to load back, perhaps the other tape really doesn't contain VIC-20 software, it was recorded at a different azimuth angle or the tape has lost its data.
 
Obviously you only add a drive # or drive #,1 to access a file on disk, but doing things like a directory listing Load"$",8 or initializing (formatting) a disk are not intuitive. My point was, the tape drive access is about as straightforward as you can get, versus a disk where you need to know specific parameters for access and other functions. Utilities like the ones on cartridges helped with these too.
 
True, formatting a disk is a bit more complex than just popping in an unused tape. Directory is not really possible with a tape anyway, so you'd have to write down what the tape contains.
 
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