NOS clone datassettes!

New old stock, still in shipping boxes!

327 devices!

327 devices!

I found this eBay auction, and couldn’t believe what they had unearthed!  Boxes and boxes of these clone datassette!

New old stock

New old stock

Obviously the perfect thing for any retro Commodore user!  And as you may know in Europe most people used tapes, while us North Americans all used disk drives, namely the mighty 1541.

As of me writing this there is only ONE left!  It’s not my auction, and I have nothing to do with them, but this is your big chance to get one if you want one!

***EDIT

Well it turns out the last unit has just been sold.  Too late to post it seems.

12 thoughts on “NOS clone datassettes!

  1. In Europe, disk drives (1540, 1541, etc) were sold exactly in the same way it was done in the U.S. – in the first year, many used the tape first, but also because of the price of the disk drive. Then, after the price dropped into affordable regions, all buyed and used the 1541, not the tape drive.
    Not sure why many thinks, Europe sleeps while the U.S. is in front of all development. Remember, almost all important inventions and discoveries where done from Europeans, you know….

    • I guess you’d be one of the rare ones with a disk drive, everyone else I met used tapes… just as I found out about American Gold, and one of their big things was disk to tape conversions.

      I was under the impression that as north America shifted out of the 8 bit era and into the PC clone world Europe either were ST early adopters(France) or of course, the Amiga.. it wasn’t until DooM and the utter inability of brain dead Commodore to produce a machine that could compare to a VGA, 486 + sound blaster. And then there was the death of the 68040, and Intel’s second wave with the Pentium + PCI.

      • I remember in Germany, that most of us started with a tape but got a disk-drive very quickly ;-). But true, regarding the shift PC vs Amiga in Germany. I remember friends calling me crazy when i bought a PC instead of an Amiga back in the days …

        Btw.: seems the Tapes are back in stock at the auction(?).

  2. Thanks for the heads up on the ebay auction.

    I just checked (20:58 11-11-2016 )and “More than 10 available / 327 sold ” So they ar e not sold out (yet).
    In the Netherlands, later on in c64 life span. You could get package deals with a c64 and a 1541. I did not know anybody with just a datassette.
    The spectrum and MSX crowd where more cassette storage based.

  3. I have still my opinion about that, regardless of a Youtube video from someone which was not in the same area I live. Disk drives (1541 etc) were NOT rarely used, tons of copied games were “traded” on schoolyards, and NOT tapes.

    • Did they do cover disks back then? What were the major labels? Who were the big companies? As I mentioned I didn’t get a tape drive until much later, and the only things I got on tape were UK imports. And they were crazy expensive. Although cheaper than a normal disk based game which could be anywhere from $15 to $40 CDN.

      Nintendo and Genesis carts were far more expensive than going to America

      • You’re asking 30 years too late. C64 tapes can’t be copied fast, honestly I never copied a C64 tape. But floppy disks more than I could count. It wasn’t important what was copied, in fact, it was like hunters and gatherers. The majority of the copied games here in germany were made by english publisher.
        E.g. Giana Sisters was very popular, regardless of the fact it wasn’t sold long enough to be buyed regularly.

    • I wondered when I got a tape drive, as my 1541 was so crazy slow, could the tape be any better?

      No, no it was not… Buy it did hold more data.

      It’s a shame CBM & hard disks never mixed.

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