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Audio Cassette Hosting

antiquekid3

antiquekid3

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2009
Messages
594
Location
Alabama
I personally think it'd be great if someone took some time and made a website to host a bunch of random programs for various machines with tape drives. I would be happy to supply my couple of programs to get the website started. Being that the Kansas City standard is perfectly reproducible on a computer with a decent sound card, it would be a good way to share programs. Much more efficient than hand typing the source code in! (trust me!!) ;)

Just a thought...!

Kyle
 
Aww, but you'd miss all the fun and feel of typing in a couple hundred lines of code from the latest gaming magazine or book and then debugging your typos. Hours of fun for the whole family ;-) Actually I'm sure there are some archives out there but yes anything that preserves that information would be beneficial.
 
I may be interested in the hosting on Armchair Arcade. It depends what you have in mind and what you already have available. After all, even a simple archive is not much without a decent selection.
 
Well, I don't have too many programs right now. But I can make more audio files very easily (with more programs). It would definitely be a work in progress for some time. However, I'm sure with enough people with a will to do record programs, the archive will grow in no time. I guess there's only one way to find out!

By the way, I have "Tic-Tac-Toe" for the SWTPC 6800, as well as Altair BASIC for the SWTPC. Eventually, I will be able to put some C64 programs on cassette once I get my disk drive(s) working.

Kyle
 
Which is the purpose - to preserve the software or to have a library of different formats for developers of tape decoding software? Most of the 1980's home computers already have their own software libraries around the Internet, so trying to archive it all would mostly be reinventing wheels. I see some of the older and less common computers may lack such archives though.

However a library of audio samples from various computers might be a good thing, in particular if combined with hosting or linking to various programs to decode each format. I believe many of those programs have a lot in common, despite different baud rates, frequencies and other factors.
 
What *I* assumed the purpose was was to have hosted audio files that could be easily transferred to tape or - if the system supports it - direct hook up to a PC's sound card in order to run software directly on the original platform. I could have misunderstood as above.
 
Bill_Loguidice said:
What *I* assumed the purpose was was to have hosted audio files that could be easily transferred to tape or - if the system supports it - direct hook up to a PC's sound card in order to run software directly on the original platform. I could have misunderstood as above.
Click to expand...
That's what I assume as well. Not a bad idea, actually, since it doesn't require any special interface cables, adapters etc., just a cassette recorder. BTW, the 'digital' Commodore tape drives still use ordinary audio on the tape itself so no problem copying tapes to/from another tape or a PC sound card. I don't think decoding the data is really the issue here.

The downsides aside from the long load/save times are that cassettes aren't the most reliable format, and it can be pretty tricky setting the volume and equalization just right; if using two drives, speed and azimuth compatibity can also be problems.

Still, a lot of work and time if you're going to have more than a handful of programs...
 
A certainly useful archive would be some test programs or demos to maybe test your systems functionality. Of course this may need to be written if there isn't a good candidate. Just having a "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and a few sounds might be intuitive. Of course that may not mean anything to non-english systems. It doesn't cover everything but seems like an easy test demo to have as an archive for many systems to see if the character rom is good.
 
Yes, my intent was hosting audio files so that someone could connect their new computer to a cassette tape player and record the audio to that. Then he/she would remove the cassette, stick it in the computer's drive, and have at it. Or, if you are able to do so (like on my SWTPC), connect the new computer's output directly to the old computer's input. That has worked well for me.

To be honest, I don't think equalization, azimuth positioning, compatibility, and volume are that major. Especially the first few on my list. Sure, you might have to play with the volume some. Just start low until it begins to work.

I think this is a good idea because it is an easy way to get people started using their computer.

Kyle
 
In order to limit the quite overwhelming task, you could start with hosting bootstrap programs and alike. E.g. a machine which has some sort of serial or null modem capacity but needs a program to use it, it would be great if your site hosts such programs for respective computer. Of course you can add as many different tapes as you wish, but for some of the more common formats most work has already been done.
 
I'm not sure how overwhelming it'd be. If you have different sections for different machines, you can add them to the website as you receive them. One of these days I'd like to do it, but I'm about to go off to college within the next 9 months, so I definitely won't have time now.

That Apple II website is just what I'm talking about! Now if only they'd add some files for other computers! :)

Kyle
 
antiquekid3 said:
That Apple II website is just what I'm talking about! Now if only they'd add some files for other computers! :)

Kyle
Click to expand...

I think you'll find quite a few tape images for many of the common 8-bit machines on the web in various places, on sites which support those machines. These usually can't be used in their raw state to write real cassette files but you can often find a utility to convert a tape image (which exist for emulators) into a wav or mp3 file. It takes some searching but the goods are there...just not in one place, and usually conversion is needed.

Tez
 
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