On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
> > > Somebody actually told me
> > > the IBM PC 'cassette port' wouldn't work with a reel-to-reel tape
> > > recorder, but never gave a sensible reason why not (and FWIW, I don't
> > > believe it won't work).
> I believe it will work as well.. As far as I remember one of the reasons
> given why it woulding work is that the plugs on the IBM cassette cable
> wouldn't fit a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Of course that would be no
> problem at all for a hacker with a soldering iron :-)
In the US, IBM NEVER sold a cassette cable. But the pinout was the same
as the TRS-80 1 and 3.
Radio Shack here used to say that THEIR cassette recorder (CTR-80?) was
the best for it, and the only one that would work reliably. Their
explanation was that it wouldn't work right with a higher fidelity, that
it needed the amount of "blur" of the signal that theirs did!
I always found the TRS-80 cassette to be an almost entirely WRITE-ONLY
medium. Success with reading back tapes was as elusive as successful CD
burning with the eatly 2X CDRs.
There was once an outfit that marketed a PC to PC communications package
through the cassette ports. That died immediately on release of the XT.
There had been similar stuff with Coco.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Thu Sep 06 2001 - 20:23:32 BST