Re: Apple II cassette drive.

[Pim Blokland <nipp@plane.nl>]

Ernest wrote:
> 
> I am interested in finding a cassette drive for my apple IIe. 

As Mike says, any mono cassette recorder will do. Don't try one with
any kind of noise reduction or quality enhancement circuitry though;
it should be as simple a machine as possible.
High fidility tape decks are useless; those mangle the sound in such
a way that the Apple can't make heads or tails of it.
I believe this is what caused the "unreliability" stories, because
from what I've seen of it, it works rather well. I even downloaded a
couple of programs from the radio, back in the early eighties, and
they all loaded without problems. You just have to take care that the
tapes aren't flawed in any way. Saving a program onto a wrinkled
taped does not result in an I/O error, so you may not notice until
too late! 

Mind you, the speed is horrible, even when compared to 5.25" floppies.

> Did Apple make their own cassette drive?

I don't think so. I don't remember ever having seen an Apple tape
drive, not even in the photos in Apple's own books that showed
typical computer setups.

-- 
Groetjes, Pim

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Which reminds me, I'd better get on with... IT!