On Wed, 15 Oct 2014, Josh Roybal wrote to All:

 JR> I was wondering if anyone had some lore about using the original 
 JR> TRS-80 with the cassette recorder, I remember seeing it in action, 
 JR> but not much more. Say you were in a BASIC interpreter, did one 
 JR> open a data channel to the recorder, press the record or play 
 JR> button  depending on the I/O one wished to perform or what? 

the only IO i remember with tape was BSAVE and BLOAD to save and load your
programs... but i do have a neuron trying to get my attention about some
sort of early calendar or address book thing that stored the data on
tape... i don't recall ever getting either to work properly, though...

there was no "data channel" as i recall... if you wanted to save
data, you had to have the tape already set for recording and the machine
would start and stop the drive as needed... when you needed to read data,
you set the tape for play and the machine would start and stop the drive as
needed... there was no automatic rewind, either... the computer simply used
the "remote mic switch" to start and stop the tape the same way
you would when you were talking into the mic during (eg) dictation...

you needed good stable power also... the slightest fluctuation would farkle
your data reading and writing on tape... i still have, around here
somewhere, a star trek game from a mainframe system... it is a basic source
code printout on greenbar paper... i typed that game in many times way back
when... i never was able to get a good save to or load from tape... i
suspect due to the fridge or AC switching on or off... i tried many many
times and just never was successful... i've kept that printout in the hopes
of getting it entered and saved some time... i did play the game a few
times but never really got anywhere in it...

i hope to find the print out and do something with it but who knows if
that'll ever happen... i can only hope that the dot matrix print is still
legible... the folded stack of output was about an inch thick...

)\/(ark