🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4etnnl$4fj@news.microsoft.com> doriang@microsoft.com (Dorian Garson) writes:
>{Forgive me if this has already been addressed in a FAQ somewhere...}
>
>So we've got dozens of old relics that have nothing to save/load data 
>to/from but a cassette tape recorder.
>
>Now, note that a PC clone with a cheap sound card can generate and capture 
>audio signals.
>
>Proposal: Is it possible to write an app that could capture programs & 
>data from an old computer's cassette interface via a sound card?  If so, 
>could it be architected to accomodate all popular data formats and so that 
>people could add new formats as they're discovered?
>
>The benefits are obvious: greater reliabilty, limitless, random access, 
>and greater ease in trading/distributing/archiving legacy code for old 
>hobbyist platforms.  Also, those old cassette tapes are losing their bits 
>with every passing year!
>
>Would anyone want to take this on with me?
>
>  -Dorian
>
Hmmm...  Someplace I think that I have the schematics for the
Kansas City Standard Casette interface.  I think that that was
the interface that most micros of the late 70s used.  The
actual format in which the programs were stored varied from
machine to machine.  Some machines stored the actual keystrokes
so that loading a tape was just like typing it in at 300 characters
per second.  Others stored interpreter codes (assuming you're
loading a BASIC program).  Some, like the TRS-80 I think, could
also directly load hex from tape.