Exactly. On the long run, we settled down on what we called a common calibration, a setting that allowed all of us locals to exchange tapes without constant tweaking.
The tape drive has a hole on the top for adjusting the azimuth, but one of my friends basically just removed the top cover entirely for easier access to the screw. I did that too for some particularly tricky tapes.
Another of my friends had basically an unearthly knack of adjusting this stuff. Dude would just walk up to the tape drive, masterfully tweak the screw for a second, and it’d work. Which makes no sense.
This was all a kind of mysterious part of the Commodore 64 culture to me. Because I had a floppy drive and that’s what I obviously preferred to use.
![[crumbles into dust]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/034f3400-6813-4e8c-b28a-18c23de1ee7d.jpeg){kind=link}
The screwdriver is not for the tape. It’s for adjusting the audio head so it can pick up the data on the tape.
When someone gave you a tape with some nice games on it there was a near 100% chance you needed to adjust your datasette to read them.
Exactly. On the long run, we settled down on what we called a common calibration, a setting that allowed all of us locals to exchange tapes without constant tweaking.
For real? My tweaking days ended when floppy came out for the C64.
Maybe the C64 datasette never got the upgrade?
The tape drive has a hole on the top for adjusting the azimuth, but one of my friends basically just removed the top cover entirely for easier access to the screw. I did that too for some particularly tricky tapes.
Another of my friends had basically an unearthly knack of adjusting this stuff. Dude would just walk up to the tape drive, masterfully tweak the screw for a second, and it’d work. Which makes no sense.
This was all a kind of mysterious part of the Commodore 64 culture to me. Because I had a floppy drive and that’s what I obviously preferred to use.
Me too! For some reason I was the only guy in school who could do that. Fun times. 😊
In the beginning these were not available. Also I remember them costing the same as the C64 itself. As soon as I could afford one I got one obviously.
I just another item that could a generational riddle: the hole-punch that made your one-sided floppy two-sided.
Don’t you use a flathead for that?
A flathead is still a screwdriver, is it not?
It was a Philips screw IIRC. You can also use a flathead screwdriver on the but you shouldn’t IMHO.