Retrocomputing Stack Exchange
Retrocomputing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [cassette-tape]

For questions regarding data storage on magnetic tape in a cassette tape format.

Primarily used for the Compact Cassette form factor that was patented by Philips for audio recording. These cassettes were used by several microcomputer manufacturers for digital storage.

The tag can also be used for other cassette formats. For example, the Microcassette form factor created by Olympus and used on Microcomputers from Epson and others.

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Cassette tape storage formats

I just came across this excellent article on cassette tape storage formats. One thing confuses me though... in the "all digital" examples, like Figure 1C, what exactly ends up on the tape? That is, if I were to simply play the tape, what would I…
Maury Markowitz
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Were cassette tapes designed to be adjusted by pencils?

Back in my ZX Spectrum days, it was normal to do manual fine adjustment of a cassette tape position using a hexagonal pencil or a cheap Biro pen. It's almost like the hub is designed to be twiddled that way. Shown here:…
SusanW
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Daisy-chained cassette drive?

Early microcomputers sometimes supported several peripherals in a 'daisy chained' arrangement, i.e. instead of the computer having several ports, one per peripheral, it had a single port, which each peripheral would pass through to the next one. For…
rwallace
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Teddy Ruxpin Animation Coding "Language"?

I've recently become interested in the original Teddy Ruxpin that operated by playing 8-track cassette tapes. The 8 channels on the tape were used in a creative way to ensure that Teddy's animation would line up correctly with the audio. This link…
ribs2spare
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Cassette formats using ECC?

The Commodore systems famously wrote everything to the Datasette twice as a form of error correction. Most other formats I've looked at - Atari, CUTS and CoCo - lack any form of correction. Is anyone aware of a format that used ECC on cassette…
Maury Markowitz
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What home computers offered an adjustable tape baud rate

By the title I mean a built in option rather than a software or hardware add on and saving / loading to regular domestic audio cassette tape. We should exclude all third party type loaders from this aka "hyperload" or such as it is only aimed at…
AndyF
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When and why did tape recorders acquire a "remote" input?

This entirely-typical-of-the-era (other than mysteriously missing its EAR socket) tape recorder from 1984 was the "standard" type of tape deck for home computer data storage in the UK. They could be battery powered, had a large mono speaker and…
hexwab
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Use of PSK for storage of data on audio tape

Most home computers of the 70s and early 80s were able to save and load data on audio cassettes. Typically, in order to do this they encoded the data using frequency shift keying (FSK), i.e. for a '1' bit they might write a certain number of cycles…
Jules
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Memac Obj files for running and making Tape Format

We are using MEMAC system and this device is using 30 years old Tape Casettes. The company non-exist anymore but they sent me 8" floppy disks so I can have chance to retrieve the files inside and make the tapes. I extracted files from the floppy and…
M.Melih Sönmez
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