Just for curiosity - What is the maximum capacity of an MSX tape?

Expert (106)

15-05-2014, 10:54

I was just wondering, what is the capacity in kB of a cassette tape for MSX? (let's say a 60 min tape).
Put it the other way, how many kB can a 60 min. cassette store in MSX?.

I've taken a look at http://msxcas.webcindario.com/ and I can see that many commercial games are around 50kB, and I can remember storing maybe 10 games on a tape, so that could mean about 500kB per tape?

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Por Metalion

Paragon (1628)

15-05-2014, 14:01

At 1200 bauds (standard speed / 1200 bits per second or 150 bytes per second), your 60 minutes tape will hold up to 540.000 bytes (527 Kb).

At 2400 bauds (higher speed / 2400 bits per second or 300 bytes per second), your 60 minutes tape will hold up to 1.080.000 bytes (1,03 Mb).

Of course you'd have to substract some capacity for headers and syncho signals, but that's about the size of it.

Por Manuel

Ascended (19676)

15-05-2014, 14:12

It's more like 120 bytes per second due to the extra control bits.

Por konamiman

Paragon (1210)

15-05-2014, 15:35

So, loading a game like Metal Gear 2 from tape would take about one full hour... and one full pray for tape errors not appearing

Por snout

Ascended (15187)

15-05-2014, 15:39

A dedicated loader with big boss telling you to shut down the MSX near the end of the hour would add to the experience

on a more serious note: tools like WAVer significantly reduce loading times, right? If you intend to cram more data on that tape...

Por Grauw

Ascended (10818)

15-05-2014, 15:56

I copied a 1 MB file from one SD card to another yesterday… I think it took about 10 seconds .