[Coco] High speed tape mod...?

[Arthur Flexser]

I've never heard of this hybrid hardware/software system.

CoCo Basic CAN be modified with software only using 3 pokes to the
cassette parameters to make them function in the double-speed mode, so
that operation would be at 3600 baud if I'm correctly recalling that
1800 is the normal cassette speed.  (Maybe it is 1500, as would be
implied by the listing's claim that it does cassette i/o at 6000, or
4x faster than normal.)  To do this properly also requires inserting
some extra delay in the cassette routines after the tape starts up for
it to get up to full speed unless you're willing to start the tape
manually such as with a MOTOR ON command.

The listed item seems hardly worth the bother (except as an
interesting collector's item), since it would still be vastly inferior
to the random access and speed provided by a disk drive, not to
mention more recent I/O methods using a memory card.  (Sounds like it
would have been great to have in my early days with the CoCo when I
was limited to cassette.)

Art

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 11:07 PM,  <haywire666 at aol.com> wrote:
> Saw this on ebay. Has anyone tried this and is it worth installing?
>
>
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hi-Speed-Tape-TRS-80-Color-Computer-6000-baud-4x-faster-than-standard-/330689351423?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cfe9f0eff#ht_747wt_1344
>
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