1530
Being born in the UK in 1981, my articles about home computers are biased towards that time and place. This is due to both my own personal experience, and also a conscious attempt to provide an alternative UK bias to the predominant US bias amongst English-speaking people my age reminiscing about home computers.
1530 tech specs
1530 (Photo: Evan Amos)
- Company: Commodore
- Type: Cassette tape drive
- Media: Cassette tapes
The 1530 was a cassette tape drive made by Commodore. It's compatible with the PET, VIC 20, and C64,[1] although its cream colour scheme suggests it was designed with the VIC 20 in mind.
The C64 was one of the most popular home computers in the UK, and was usually bundled with the 1530. As a 1541 disk drive cost about as much as the computer itself, most Brits were content to load their software (chiefly games) from tape.
The 1530 drive was reliable but notoriously slow. This wasn't a massive problem, as computer game publishers used increasingly elaborate loaders to bypass the slow default loading routine in favour of faster custom ones.
Compared to Spectrum users having to bring their own tape deck, the C64 with its 1530 drive offered an embarrassment of riches. For one thing, the C64 didn't force you to listen to the digital screaming of raw data while it loaded. Combined with its SID chip, this eventually allowed publishers such as Ocean to get the machine to play a tune for you while you waited. Mastertronic even let you play a simple Space Invaders clone while the main game loaded.
Just to really rub it in, when finding a file to load and displaying its name onscreen, the computer could even automatically pause and resume the motor's movement. Luxury!
References
- "1530 manual" Commodore, 1983, p. 2
Downloads
Documentation
- "1530 manual" Commodore, 1983
Commodore 64: 1530 | 1541 | Pro-16
