🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4f5cej$ql2@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>,
Phil Hoff  <phoff@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
>doriang@microsoft.com (Dorian Garson) wrote:

>> Proposal: Is it possible to write an app that could capture programs & 
>> data from an old computer's cassette interface via a sound card?  

>I remember reading in an old Pirate's Handbook that duplicating 
>Commodore tapes by Audio means was very unreliable. To get a reliable
>copy, you had to load the program and save it back out, and that only
>worked for unprotected software. I can't help but wonder if an audio
>readout from tape to a sound card would not suffer from the same
>problem.

I think they were probably referring to a tape to tape copy:  play tape
in one recorder and record on another recorder.  Commodores used a special
tape recorder optimized for their computers.  Run of the mill tape
recorders (used for the tape to tape copy) probably didn't give you a good 
enough SNR to reliably copy.  The Spectrum, on the other hand, has an
excellent tape interface designed for common tape recorders; it can
tolerate quite a bit of noise, so a tape to tape copy was fairly reliable.

The sound card recording is as good as a CD recording (16 bit sound cards
anyway) and much better than a tape recording.  If the original tape loads
fine, the sampled one will also work fine.  Loading via sound card is 
already implemented in a number of Spectrum emulators.

Alvin