I have some time, now that I'm fully retired ...
By cleaning up my mans-cave, I found one of my first purchased software's in 1978.
Yes, on an audio cassette, an Apple II game, called [breakout] ...
For me, (and many more I think) this was the best time of my life.
Greetings
marco
Attachments
- every professional was once an amateur - greetings from Pajottenland - Belgium -
PS: sorry for my english I speak flemish ...
Ah, nostalgia! It should still be fine too, although there's the challenge now of whether you have anything to play it on. The problem with old cassette machines is that the belts and other rubber parts rot. There are replacements available on the web, if you can figure out the right sizes. I have links but I'll have to dig them up for you after I'm home from work.
Ah, nostalgia! It should still be fine too, although there's the challenge now of whether you have anything to play it on. The problem with old cassette machines is that the belts and other rubber parts rot. There are replacements available on the web, if you can figure out the right sizes. I have links but I'll have to dig them up for you after I'm home from work.
A couple of the links I had have gone dead, but this one has belt kits for apparently thousands of different tape recorder models: https://www.pointe-de-lecture.com/courroie/
(It's in French, and you might need to wander around the site a bit to find what you need.)
If you have rubber idlers, well, good luck. You might be able to re-condition the rubber if it's not cracked, or jury-rig something, but I don't remember seeing any for sale.
As a hint: before you try playing your code tape, find a cassette with something you don't care about to test with!
If nothing happens when you press play, most likely the belt(s) are broken.
If things move, but you have slow speeds, then either a belt or an idler wheel is slipping.
If you get things playing at the right(ish) speed, but the sound has a regular fast glitch, the capstan roller has a dent in it (from standing against the capstan drive).
In all tape players, the speed at which the tape passes the head is controlled by the capstan and its idler wheel; the tape passes between those two and the capstan motor controls the speed. In most cheap players, a single motor provides power to the capstan and via belts and idlers to the supply and take-up spool drives. When playing, the supply side free runs and the take-up runs as fast as it can, constrained by friction at the capstan not to pull too quickly. A more sophisticated (expensive!) player would have separate motors for each spool and the capstan and possibly some feedback to maintain the correct tensions.
Also, clean the head. Isopropyl alcohol is excellent for that. A head coated with oxide significantly reduces the high frequency response.
To be honest, it may be more productive to seek out a handful of cassette players in the hope of finding one that works rather than trying to fix the first that doesn't... might be cheaper, too! But when you do get something working, your first play should be to record it as _uncompressed_ audio on a computer. Audio compression algorithms tend to care about the frequencies of a sample group (a few milliseconds) and not the timing of the edges. This can completely mess up a recorded signal, even though it sounds like the original...
I would expect recovery of data should be possible, and perhaps an interesting adventure.
I use Audacity to record and to fiddle with audio. It can save in WAV format, which is lossless.
Sometimes the left or the right channel will be better, so capture both, even if it's a mono tape.
Looks like Apple II used 1kHz and 2kHz tones. There are software packages to help decode these things although you might have to modify any which are set up for Kansas City standard tones (1200 and 2400Hz). Maybe search stardot for quadbike. A slight difficulty is that Apple II uses one cycle per bit, so the bit time isn't constant. https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.co ... ette-tapes
I have some time, now that I'm fully retired ...
By cleaning up my mans-cave, I found one of my first purchased software's in 1978.
Yes, on an audio cassette, an Apple II game, called [breakout] ...
For me, (and many more I think) this was the best time of my life.
Greetings
marco
Apple II breakout. It was originally written by Woz in Apple Integer Basic. (There is an Applesoft version called Little Brick Out)
It's on various Apple II 'master' disks and I'm sure you can find a text listing of it online if you try hard enough. Actually, I've a feeling it was a type-in in the original "Red Book" too.
(you may have to load the Boot13 disk first as that's an older 13-sector image)
If it was me? I think I'd just blow the dust off and keep it - maybe on display if you get an Apple II (many for sale these days - all will need the PSU fixing!)
But maybe if you o get an Apple II system up and running you might want to try loading it.... Who knows.
do you think that the cassette will still have data on it, after 47 years ?
It should be fine. I have a tape of Frank Sinatra singing from about 1960 that still sounds outstanding. If there's any problem, I expect it would be from the tape itself, not its magnetic coating losing any information.
do you think that the cassette will still have data on it, after 47 years ?
It should be fine. I have a tape of Frank Sinatra singing from about 1960 that still sounds outstanding. If there's any problem, I expect it would be from the tape itself, not its magnetic coating losing any information.
Compact Cassettes (originated in 1963) often suffer from print-through and you can sometimes hear this as a very feint echo. It was thought that doing 1 or 3 end to end cycles every few months was good for them if storing for a long time.
Other factors are the usual things like mould or even the magnetic film detaching itself from the underlying plastic tape. If I had a player, I'd end to end it a few times before trying to actually play it, making sure the heads, the pinch roller, etc. are all clean.
Since there's no dynamic range to digital data encoded as audio, I don't think print-thru would be any problem. I have digital microcassettes (truly digital, not merely digital data encoded in audio) from the 1980's that are still totally fine except in a case where the pressure pad rotted away and I had to construct a new one. That was not a matter of the tape itself, although I have heard of the magnetic film detaching itself from the mylar backing.
