I started my career by drawing loading screens for C64 games. Literally my entire career was based on that it'd take multiple minutes to load a game, so a loading screen was needed to show it was working and to give something to look at other than a blank screen!
Quote of the day "... how are people nostalgic for this....", tea spurting moment.... Reminded me of visiting my uncle who didn't know a 3.5mm audio cable was required between the cassette player and his ZX81. Just keep rewinding the tape and replaying it at different volumes in the hope the ZX81 was listening 🤣
My dad took me to Laskys in Tottenham Court Road, London to buy my first computer... a Commodore Vic20. I believe at the same time we bought a Jelly Monsters (Pacman) cartridge and Skramble for the tape deck. We put the tape in, typed LOAD which prompted us to PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. We did that. Nothing happened! On returning the computer to Laskys, we were told we had to wait for tapes to load!!! It wasn't until many years later that I learnt how much faster discs were, on my BBC model B. I prefer those days!
At one point, myself and my two main friends on my street had C64's. We played on them a lot, whoever's house you were in the C64 would be fired up all the time. Together, we killed time by just idly chatting whilst the tape loaded in the background. But when I played on mine alone, for some reason I just never went off and did something else. I'd sit there agonizing over the tape counter and the flashing bars on screen, trying to perform all manner of voodoo to somehow speed up the process. However, I was extremely lucky to own a disk drive as well. Not only that, but an Action Replay cartridge. You could dump the memory out from a loaded tape game onto disk, then load it up any time from the copy. And it was fast. VERY fast. On average, five seconds. But I did do my fair share of suffering tape loads. I had dozens upon dozens of tapes, and not enough blank disks to transfer them all across. Maybe nostalgia has blinded me to the reality of how frustrating it really was to wait for tapes to load, but I look back now and see them as magical times. Though I'm happy to leave tape loading as a thing of the past.
When I had my Vic-20 with the tape drive I thought it was slow. Well, that changed when I picked up the Commodore 64. 🤣 Later got the disk drive for my 14th birthday. Huge difference it made. Yes, disk drives were god awfully expensive in the early 1980s.
Hah - even with the 1541 I remember being annoyed that I had to wait some time just to see the title picture, always wished there was an easy way to skip that after you’d seen it a few times! The blank screen on the C64 stock tape loader was to stop the VIC II chip from stealing cpu cycles which could potentially affect the tape signal timing. Which makes that invadaload game even more remarkable!
This takes me right back to my childhood. At the time, I wanted a Spectrum Sinclair 128k or an Amstrad CPC 464. We didn't have the funds, so I ended up with a second hand C64, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I never used it for programming, I found it very boring and tedious, as I would spend my time playing games. At 47 years old, it's the other way around. I'm fascinated with the idea of creating my own programs on legacy systems. I never really understood the concept of "nostalgia". You would hear grown ups tinkering around with model railways, which was a big part of their childhood. For me, it's the simplicity, character, collection of fond memories of playing with your mates and family, and the quirky limitations that came with it.
It is notable and lovely to see tapes loading into a computer. Home computing did actually start up with that. (except from typing by yourself programs off a magazine key by key and then.. YES - saving it onto a tape to have it ready when needed). There even was a time where professionals have used tapes. The really big ones which were on reels with the very big spindle hole in the middle of it, running in super-expensive reel-to-reel storage machines. Their tape was of the same width like e.g. VHS tape was. But storage tape was significantly thicker than that (because the stress on such tapes was enormous in the storage machines of course). The loading screen of many cassette game shows that is was possible to leave the video controller (VIC) ON while loading data from a tape (but maybe this has a negative effect on loading speed unavoidably). It only - indeed and effectively to maintain storage sounds distortion-free - was necessary to shut the VIC off while SAVING data. At least on a C64 and its relatives. On C128 - when in 80Chars mode, using the VDC video chip - the screen stays on all the time during tape operations. This also was the case on the older like PET or 4032/8032 etc. machines which had display-independent tape I/O. And for ghostbusters.. I still own some really cute "bank account" numbers full of $$$ allowing for all the most expensive equipment right from start. Where the game really starts to become interesting.
ACE “Air Combat Emulator” took 30 minutes to load on my Plus/4. Not an exaggeration. I used to start it up, have my dinner, then go and play it after. Thank god it never failed to load.
Just taken delivery of a wedge commodore64c...never used before as i am a former speccy user...thank you for shining light into the darkness of how to load the games...i do have 2 amiga500s but i fancied a retro change.
I started watching this video but then half way through it just went blank, and had to try again. Maybe I've not got the volume level right? Can we have a Turbo Load version, that takes half the time to watch? (great video, guys! 🙂)
My all time fave is Rambo loader. Lots of the Ocean loaders were great as well. Even the Last Ninja series had lots of great music even own songs for loading as well.
That Kikstart 2 cassette is a turbo load. See if you have Kevin Toms Football manager and Wheelin' Wallie. Then you know the real pain of loading. FN must have been 20 minutes plus.
I'm not sure that loading phone apps is a good analogy. The modern equivalent to the C64 would be more like your PlayStation or XBOX consoles. You try downloading and installing the latest AAA titles and all of a sudden the C64 loading times start to look quite respectable!
Some facts and figures - A typical tape loader on an 8 bit machine loaded at anything between 1500-3000 baud - that is "bits per second".... compare that to dial-up internet speeds which were typically more like ~48000 baud (if you had a good phone line!) 5 minutes to load 64 kilobytes of data was very typical :)
This is a good video. Despite loading from standard tape machines the Speccy did have a good loading experience, the loading screens and messages. C64 games had none of this as standard, just a blank screen. In fact, I got my C64 after I had seen a speccy and thought the loading wasn't working as the screen was blank. Later on of course C64 loaders were created which provided a much nicer experience than the speccy with games and music playing.
I’m also in my late 20’s and I never touched a tape loading computer but I’m also American and we switched to floppy disks pretty quickly so I probably wouldn’t have used one even if I were in my late 30’s. However, I used cassette tapes on my personal cassette player (I didn’t have a Sony Walkman as such) before my parents splurged and got me a Discman in the early 2000’s. The skip protection was pretty garbage in those days too
Watching someone play Knightmare isn't really an incentive for signing up, unless you like playing a game that has *NO* connection with the original concept and like throwing rocks at people locked in prison cells XD
"Some games would be so big there was no room for sound". You list oine game. Some amiga ones had the choice of music or sound effects. In Kikstart it wants you to ride slower over fence and anything thing. It's really not that hard after a few goes. It's great 2 player game. Please get in people who know what they are talking about in future.
My dear, sweet child. The Amiga didn't load from tape, had loads more RAM and and glorious sound capabilities. I meant music, rather than sound I should add, and there were lots of games where the music was omitted due to memory constraints.
@@danwilkin758 because I was giving an example of a computer where a fair few of the games you had the choice of either music or effects. I brought this up as your "no sound as ran out of memory" is utter bs so brought this up to help you out.
I started my career by drawing loading screens for C64 games. Literally my entire career was based on that it'd take multiple minutes to load a game, so a loading screen was needed to show it was working and to give something to look at other than a blank screen!
Quote of the day "... how are people nostalgic for this....", tea spurting moment.... Reminded me of visiting my uncle who didn't know a 3.5mm audio cable was required between the cassette player and his ZX81. Just keep rewinding the tape and replaying it at different volumes in the hope the ZX81 was listening 🤣
My dad took me to Laskys in Tottenham Court Road, London to buy my first computer... a Commodore Vic20. I believe at the same time we bought a Jelly Monsters (Pacman) cartridge and Skramble for the tape deck. We put the tape in, typed LOAD which prompted us to PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. We did that. Nothing happened! On returning the computer to Laskys, we were told we had to wait for tapes to load!!! It wasn't until many years later that I learnt how much faster discs were, on my BBC model B. I prefer those days!
God, I’d forgotten that the Vic-20 version of Pac-Man was called ‘Jelly Monsters’! Hilarious!
At one point, myself and my two main friends on my street had C64's. We played on them a lot, whoever's house you were in the C64 would be fired up all the time. Together, we killed time by just idly chatting whilst the tape loaded in the background. But when I played on mine alone, for some reason I just never went off and did something else. I'd sit there agonizing over the tape counter and the flashing bars on screen, trying to perform all manner of voodoo to somehow speed up the process. However, I was extremely lucky to own a disk drive as well. Not only that, but an Action Replay cartridge. You could dump the memory out from a loaded tape game onto disk, then load it up any time from the copy. And it was fast. VERY fast. On average, five seconds. But I did do my fair share of suffering tape loads. I had dozens upon dozens of tapes, and not enough blank disks to transfer them all across. Maybe nostalgia has blinded me to the reality of how frustrating it really was to wait for tapes to load, but I look back now and see them as magical times. Though I'm happy to leave tape loading as a thing of the past.
When I had my Vic-20 with the tape drive I thought it was slow. Well, that changed when I picked up the Commodore 64. 🤣 Later got the disk drive for my 14th birthday. Huge difference it made. Yes, disk drives were god awfully expensive in the early 1980s.
Hah - even with the 1541 I remember being annoyed that I had to wait some time just to see the title picture, always wished there was an easy way to skip that after you’d seen it a few times!
The blank screen on the C64 stock tape loader was to stop the VIC II chip from stealing cpu cycles which could potentially affect the tape signal timing.
Which makes that invadaload game even more remarkable!
This takes me right back to my childhood. At the time, I wanted a Spectrum Sinclair 128k or an Amstrad CPC 464. We didn't have the funds, so I ended up with a second hand C64, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I never used it for programming, I found it very boring and tedious, as I would spend my time playing games. At 47 years old, it's the other way around. I'm fascinated with the idea of creating my own programs on legacy systems. I never really understood the concept of "nostalgia". You would hear grown ups tinkering around with model railways, which was a big part of their childhood. For me, it's the simplicity, character, collection of fond memories of playing with your mates and family, and the quirky limitations that came with it.
It is notable and lovely to see tapes loading into a computer. Home computing did actually start up with that. (except from typing by yourself programs off a magazine key by key and then.. YES - saving it onto a tape to have it ready when needed). There even was a time where professionals have used tapes. The really big ones which were on reels with the very big spindle hole in the middle of it, running in super-expensive reel-to-reel storage machines. Their tape was of the same width like e.g. VHS tape was. But storage tape was significantly thicker than that (because the stress on such tapes was enormous in the storage machines of course). The loading screen of many cassette game shows that is was possible to leave the video controller (VIC) ON while loading data from a tape (but maybe this has a negative effect on loading speed unavoidably). It only - indeed and effectively to maintain storage sounds distortion-free - was necessary to shut the VIC off while SAVING data. At least on a C64 and its relatives. On C128 - when in 80Chars mode, using the VDC video chip - the screen stays on all the time during tape operations. This also was the case on the older like PET or 4032/8032 etc. machines which had display-independent tape I/O. And for ghostbusters.. I still own some really cute "bank account" numbers full of $$$ allowing for all the most expensive equipment right from start. Where the game really starts to become interesting.
ACE “Air Combat Emulator” took 30 minutes to load on my Plus/4. Not an exaggeration. I used to start it up, have my dinner, then go and play it after. Thank god it never failed to load.
That is nuts! Something we'll have to try here.
Just taken delivery of a wedge commodore64c...never used before as i am a former speccy user...thank you for shining light into the darkness of how to load the games...i do have 2 amiga500s but i fancied a retro change.
I had the C64 cassette version of Pirates! from Microprose. It took 25 minutes to load as the game was on both sides. These were the days!
I started watching this video but then half way through it just went blank, and had to try again. Maybe I've not got the volume level right? Can we have a Turbo Load version, that takes half the time to watch? (great video, guys! 🙂)
Not going to lie, the first half of that sent me into a panic.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for watching!
How many hours have I lost in my youth waiting for my cassette games to load? Fortunately in some of them the music was brilliant.
My all time fave is Rambo loader. Lots of the Ocean loaders were great as well. Even the Last Ninja series had lots of great music even own songs for loading as well.
@@roygalaasen Most of the ocean games had loading music! and plenty of other games had some cracking sound by the likes of rob hubbard and matt gray
It's truly nuts to think about now. Just sitting there watching the loading bars flitter about for ages.
@@jaycee1980 I know! That is why I loved Ocean in particular.
That Kikstart 2 cassette is a turbo load. See if you have Kevin Toms Football manager and Wheelin' Wallie. Then you know the real pain of loading. FN must have been 20 minutes plus.
I'm not sure that loading phone apps is a good analogy. The modern equivalent to the C64 would be more like your PlayStation or XBOX consoles. You try downloading and installing the latest AAA titles and all of a sudden the C64 loading times start to look quite respectable!
Good call. Broadband ruined everything!
Some facts and figures - A typical tape loader on an 8 bit machine loaded at anything between 1500-3000 baud - that is "bits per second".... compare that to dial-up internet speeds which were typically more like ~48000 baud (if you had a good phone line!)
5 minutes to load 64 kilobytes of data was very typical :)
hehe, we just had to put up with it, and all those load errors, especially zx81 and even more so zx80, they were very picky,😉
I didn’t have any C64 games that had no sound? Must have been a Spectrum thing? That said it’s no great loss on the Spectrum! lol.
My bad. I was talking about music, rather than sound effects.
Question, on Atari 800 was hear sound from tape during loading. The commodore tape has no sound during loading?
This is a good video. Despite loading from standard tape machines the Speccy did have a good loading experience, the loading screens and messages. C64 games had none of this as standard, just a blank screen. In fact, I got my C64 after I had seen a speccy and thought the loading wasn't working as the screen was blank. Later on of course C64 loaders were created which provided a much nicer experience than the speccy with games and music playing.
As much as we joked, staring at a blank screen expecting things to load is something from a nightmare.
@@TheCentreforComputingHistory The ZX81 was really unreliable compared to the Spectrum. Not sure why.
@Robert Woolley The ZX Spectrum tape routine prepended a constant frequency header that stabilized the input volume. A correct volume was key.
Funny thing you referred to me as "children", I'm a late 20s millennial and I've never touched a computer that has a cassette drive.
I’m also in my late 20’s and I never touched a tape loading computer but I’m also American and we switched to floppy disks pretty quickly so I probably wouldn’t have used one even if I were in my late 30’s.
However, I used cassette tapes on my personal cassette player (I didn’t have a Sony Walkman as such) before my parents splurged and got me a Discman in the early 2000’s. The skip protection was pretty garbage in those days too
We weren't referring to you! I had it in my notes that Zz.zZ is a very decent sort.
Watching someone play Knightmare isn't really an incentive for signing up, unless you like playing a game that has *NO* connection with the original concept and like throwing rocks at people locked in prison cells XD
R Tape Loading Error
More often than not, nothing would happen on load error. 😂 me sitting there like a dummy waiting and waiting and nothing happening…
Always a treat
Shouldve done a speccy tape, but you probably wouldve got the audio muted for being offensive ! :)
my step kids and their friends used to moan about the time the Playstation took to read the disc!!
Plan A was to use a glorious CPC, but C64 was closer to hand at the time :D
"Some games would be so big there was no room for sound". You list oine game. Some amiga ones had the choice of music or sound effects.
In Kikstart it wants you to ride slower over fence and anything thing. It's really not that hard after a few goes. It's great 2 player game.
Please get in people who know what they are talking about in future.
My dear, sweet child. The Amiga didn't load from tape, had loads more RAM and and glorious sound capabilities.
I meant music, rather than sound I should add, and there were lots of games where the music was omitted due to memory constraints.
Where did i say the Amiga loaded from tape?
@@hazy33Where did we mention Amigas in the video? The video is about tape loading and you bring up an Amiga.
@@danwilkin758 because I was giving an example of a computer where a fair few of the games you had the choice of either music or effects. I brought this up as your "no sound as ran out of memory" is utter bs so brought this up to help you out.
Could have been worse, could have been paper tape...
Next time! Our Elliott 903 loads from tape.
That's nowhere near the fun my brother and I got at typing thousands of hex figures for a machine code game. ZX81 fans, remember those 2A0C40 ?