Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to introduce the group's Apple II
cassettes to you on http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/
With a list of around ninety cassettes from different publishers, we
firstly offer scans of the cassettes and their decks. We will then add
audio extracts of each cassette before we create an exhaustive list of
Apple II cassettes around the world. Finding a dedicated space for
such information is another part of the project.
You are welcome to participate in that project by providing us with
your cassette scans and audio extracts.
We wish you a happy near year to you and yours,
Antoine Vignau
Brutal Deluxe Software
What a great archival project! I have a Starcraft tape to contribute
when it arrives at my present location.
All the best for 2010.
Cheers,
Nick.
Hardly! Turley was accused of offering software still being
sold for free. Even I get that and I don't know the whole
story. :-)))
Bill Garber
"Toinet" <antoine...@laposte.net> wrote in message
news:27f4d081-267d-4865...@s31g2000yqs.googlegroups.com...
On 1/1/10 1:56 PM, in article
27f4d081-267d-4865...@s31g2000yqs.googlegroups.com, "Toinet"
<antoine...@laposte.net> wrote:
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---
Right - but nobody can actually prove any of it - it's just a pile of
rumors
and misinformation.
That's right Garber "Hardly " just don't cut it. People need
conclusive
proof without any doubt of what I was accused of - not just sloppy
third
hand gossip. Clearly we both have different concepts on piracy of A2
software. I've done a ton of good things for the needs of the A2
community
--- a lot more good than harm.
Collect your thoughts then carefully reveiw the full contents of;
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
I think that link gives the fully
opened and honest me, what I did then and now.
Check out these carefully also and then make your personal judgements
about me and what all I did for the A2 world of a positive and
productive
way.
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/USA2WUG/
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/Mirrors/umich/8bit/
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/
There is nobody on Earth that can give proof without a reasonable
doubt
that I did any of the bad, bad things that labeled me as the 'Grand
Old A2
Pirate'. Most of you have done some of the very things behind your
little
closed basement doors on your Apple II computers that I've done but, I
don't
see to much of the many efforts to bring old and important Apple II
software
with their src. codes into the public domain or make them available to
others
as abandonware online. In the purely semantic definition of it - sure
I pirated
lots of abandon Apple II software NONE OF IT commercially still sold
and
made it freely open and available thru others who see fit to
distribute it for A2
users to download, have access to and enjoy it -I did that simply to
hoping keep the
Apple II platform alive and self generating with both software and
hardware
projects for the Apple II user to have access to (and it seems to have
worked too).
So hey - call me what you like and then after you review everything I
did and
show opened claim to having done - check the scales to see if it shows
more
good and beneficial actions for the A2 users - than any bad things I
got trashed
over when I sincerely never actually did that stuff that I was branded
and labeled
as having done.
I hope all of you have an enjoyable and rewarding 2010 with the Apple
II platform,
be it in a real Apple II machine or one of the many A2 emulators for
the Mac and PC.
Apple II Forever!
Tom
An update to the project:
- the scans are of poor-quality but done
- all cassettes but Apple (ones and several others*) have been
converted to a computerized-form (thanks to Audacity and Ciderpress)
Find the first files here: http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/cassette.po
I am really surprised and pleased to see that the cassettes are in
general good state and can be read easily. Nevertheless, some of them
fail to be recognized by ciderpress after being "audacitized" in mono
at 22 kHz- I use a double-deck cassette player linked to my Hi-Fi
system with a jack ribbon from the jack sound output of the cassette
player to the line input of my MacBook. When ciderpress does not
recognize the WAV file, I use the Dolby noise reductions (B and C) of
the cassette player but that still fails.
Any ideas on other techniques to get them with Audacity and
Ciderpress?
Regards,
"Toinet" <antoine...@laposte.net> wrote in message
news:228a1f80-077e-479d...@c3g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
I thought you were going to have WAV or MP3 files of each cassette.
Bill
You definitely don't want to encode with MP3 - it'll clip out the zero
crossings, which the Apple specifically needs...
The most likely cause of failure is that the cassettes were recorded
with alignment not matching that of your playback deck.
If you just listen to the cassettes that don't work, do they sound
deficient in high frequencies relative to those that do? If so, then
adjusting your deck's alignment (head gap azimuth relative to tape
motion vector) will probably allow them to be read correctly.
After you are done, you will want to realign the deck with a good
alignment tape, or perhaps with one of the cassette tapes that worked
without adjustment, for an approximate alignment.
The production of cassettes was often a "cottage industry", and
surprisingly often the alignment of the recorder was misadjusted.
Of course, the person recording them never knew, because they
verified them on the same deck!
-michael
NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
Embarrassing moment ahead!
In summer band class, 9th grade, we were asked to bring in a song we liked.
I brought "What a Fool Believes", by The Doobie Brothers... (note: no, that
is not the embarrassing part. Well, maybe it is...)
My teacher loaded the cassette in his deck, started it - and out came an
episode of "Kung Fu" that had been recorded years before!
Turns out the azimuth screw had fallen out and the head was all the way up
as far as it could go on one side...
I keep each cassette as an audacity project file and generate a WAV
file of it (22 kHz, 16-bit mono) which I can upload but I find the
audio file to be too big to upload to brutal-deluxe.fr, zipping the
audio file does not help.
Ciderpress recommends the use of a WAV file of 22 kHz 8-bit mono and
if I find a way to convert to that kind of file, I will upload the WAV
files to brutal-deluxe.fr
Antoine
Thank you Michael and Jayson for your comments. I have a //e with an
external cassette player which I will use one day but I think the
cassette is probably misaligned or the data corrupt as I hear audio
dropouts. As told by Michael, I will try to align the tape.
Reading it normally or with Dolby B or C fails each time. But if it
fails for 5% of the cassettes and if someone else has them, then it is
no big deal.
antoine
Did you try the different analysis modes? Some of them work
better for some types of distortion than others.
(I had a decent set of digitized cassette images, gathered with a
20-year-old "boom box" wired to the sound card's analog input, but they
were part of what I lost when my hard drive ate itself 18 months ago.)
--
Send mail to fad...@fadden.com (Andy McFadden) - http://www.fadden.com/
Fight Internet Spam - http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ & http://spamcop.net/
Danged cannibalistic hard drives. 8>O
Bill
Dropouts can be caused by two things: bad tape (we hope this isn't it)
and bad head-to-tape contact (this is easily fixed).
Cassettes contain a small spring-loaded pressure pad which presses
on the back of the tape to ensure good contact with the head. If this
spring strip is bent or fatigued, there may be imperfect contact--
especially if the tape tension at the head is a bit high.
A good cleaning of the capstan and capstan roller, and the supply reel
clutch (harder) may be necessary. It may be easier to simply substitute
another cassette drive.
The fact is that cassette drives have much lower chances of surviving
in good shape than the cassettes themselves. The O-ring capstan drive
band is a very common problem, since years of unuse cause it to take
a persistent "set", and as it goes around, the capstan speed "wows",
making reading of a data cassette very difficult.
These problems can be aggravated by the supply side tape winding
rubbing against the lubricating sleeves, exerting too much tension
on the tape as it is read. A good practice for old casettes is to
fast forward them fully, then rewind them fully, before attempting
to read them. This loosens the packing of the tape and (usually)
improves the "wind" of the tape on the bobbin.
> Reading it normally or with Dolby B or C fails each time. But if it
> fails for 5% of the cassettes and if someone else has them, then it is
> no big deal.
If the cassettes have been stored in moderate conditions, I'd be
surprised if they cannot be read correctly, given proper conditioning
and deck adjustments.
Audacity will happily save a file as 8-bit mono, if you delve into
the menus. ;-)
Actually, I don't think you can (I'd love to be proven wrong!). Audacity
seems to only support 16, 24, and 32 bit waves. In fact, when you open
an 8 bit wave file it automatically converts it into a 16 bit wave file.
I'm sure there are many other wave editors out there that will export to
8 bit however. I know for example that the Nero wave editor does support
exporting 8 bit waves. I have not tried this freeware one, but it also
claims to support 8 bit wave files:
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Mike
Guess I should have done a Google before posting. Apparently you can
export 8 bit waves by following this rather convoluted procedure:
http://n2.nabble.com/Audacity-help-creating-8-bit-WAV-files-td277530.html
Why the audacity developers decided to make this feature so obscure is
beyond me, but at least it is possible.
Sorry for the misinformation. But it is good news for me too, as I have
been wanting Audacity to be able to do this too.
Cheers,
Mike
The problem is that the menus of the PC version are not the same on
the Mac, have a look at the main buttons, there are not in the same
order! So, I'll have to dig into the menus :-)
> Cassettes contain a small spring-loaded pressure pad which presses
> on the back of the tape to ensure good contact with the head. If this
> spring strip is bent or fatigued, there may be imperfect contact--
> especially if the tape tension at the head is a bit high.
He he, that may be the problem. I'll glu those that do not hold well.
antoine
Happy new year Andy,
Yes, I try all the modes whenever the tape is not recognized. The
cassette help entry is worth reading, thank you for ciderpress, it is
a high-quality software,
antoine
Got it on the Mac version:
- menu File > Export
- select "other uncompressed format"
- click the "options" button
- select WAV / 8-bit unsigned
- That's done
On the PC version:
- Edit > Preferences
- Export > WAV, 8-bit unsigned
- That's it
The PC version is easier to you...
antoine
Whenever the spring went missing (or the pad fell off I'd remove the
spring), I'd just fold over a piece of paper to act as a spring and place it
under the tape - good enough for you to use to copy it or load the data off
of it...
Maybe easy, but not very intuitive. The Mac version sounds more
intuitive - at least it lists the option within the export dialog.
Having to go into application preferences to determine the export format
seems a little dumb to me (maybe its just me though :-) ).
An update to the project: the audio files have been uploaded into ZIP
archive. The original format is WAV, 8-bit mono, 22 kHz. Find the
files here:http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
Regards,
antoine
Audacity 1.2.6 will do it nicely.
Edit/Preferences/Uncompressed Export Format-->WAV (Microsoft 8-bit PCM)
Different strokes...
GoldWave puts the option in the Save dialog, but since most users will
want to always save in the same format, making it a Preference is quite
reasonable.
Reading the documentation is always good. ;-)
Yes, I remember wadding up a small piece of tissue and sticking it
behind the spring when one was weak...it should work well even if the
spring and pad are missing.
Not There!!!!!!! :-)))
Bill
Never mind. They are there along with each individual cassette image.
Sorry about that. :-)
Bill
Did you get my email(s)?
--
Peter Watson
-- Write to MS-DOS disks on the Apple IIgs?
-- Impossible! ;-)
"Toinet" <antoine...@laposte.net> wrote in message
news:8479cdde-9738-4a6f...@p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
I need to create a table entry for the following publishers (huuugge
number of tapes):
- Apple Computer, Inc.
- Creative Computing Software
- Microcomputer Games
- Programma International, Inc.
- Softape
...though their pictures and audio archives have been already uploaded
I have been able to acquire several other tapes thanks to your advice,
thank you. Cleaning the cassette head is not mandatory but useful,
just like a Disk II drive :-)
Do you know whether there is an Apple IIgs application to convert INT,
BAS or BIN files to the Apple II audio tape format. Ciderpress easily
converts a WAV to an Apple II program; the Apple II 8-bit firmware
converts them both ways but the IIgs does nothing at all. I'd like to
write one if that is possible, is that possible?
Feel free to send me your files,
antoine
"Toinet" <antoine...@laposte.net> wrote in message
news:f2415130-fc98-4528...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
The Audio engine for ADTPro does that, after a fashion... it takes
arbitrary data and sends it out as an Apple audio stream. I never
bothered saving it as a WAV file, since they are huge - it's more
efficient to store the raw data plus the engine to decode it. :-)
Another update related to the Apple II cassettes project: more than
180 cassettes from more than 35 publishers have been identified, you
can already download half of them online at http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
Antoine Vignau
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/
On Brutal Deluxe, under the Apple cassette section there is one called,
Alignment Test Tone, 600-2024-00, for those who want to make sure that
their cassette deck they are using is properly aligned. :-)))))
Bill
Hehe, what you probably (don't) know if that the alignment test tone
cassette was used in conjunction with the board shown there:
http://www.hackzapple.com/ORG1/M3/TAPES.HTM
antoine
Cool.
But, of course, an alignment cassette is only useful to align a
*deck*, and it is done by ear. It has no data function. ;-)
(And like an alignment diskette, it cannot be made from an image,
but must be recorded on a well-aligned cassette deck.)
> Hehe, what you probably (don't) know if that the alignment test tone
> cassette was used in conjunction with the board shown there:
> http://www.hackzapple.com/ORG1/M3/TAPES.HTM
My tape player alignment came back as "Chaotic Evil"... should I be concerned?
Sean Fahey
www.a2central.com
bbs.a2central.com
Only if you have tapes that are "Lawful" or "Good". ;-)
Regards,
Anthony.
thanks for this great project!
In the Apple newsletter "Best of Contact '78" there is a directory of
Apple software published until the end of 1978 (!) (pp. 24-30), which
consists of more tham 200 titles most of which were published on
cassette! The software is catagorized in the categories education,
financial calculations, data handling, scientific, utility and
entertainment (83 entries alone).
I suppose there are still many discoveries to be made, e.g. I
recenetly asked here for King by Programma and was kindly sent an
interesting adaptation of the original to Applesoft and now with
Antoine's help I discovered that the Programma version is different
from this one!
Furthermore I have a question regarding Bob Bishops "Star War" by
POWERSOFT in Antoines archive. I tried to get this version running,
because for a while now I'm putting together a disk with the various
programs by Bob but I couldn't figure out what to do with the two
resulting machine language programs. Could anybody help me putting
together an appropriate loader?
Dirk
On Jan 14, 7:01 pm, Toinet <antoine.vig...@laposte.net> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Another update related to the Apple II cassettes project: more than
> 180 cassettes from more than 35 publishers have been identified, you
> can already download half of them online athttp://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
Seconded!
> [...]
> Furthermore I have a question regarding Bob Bishops "Star War" by
> POWERSOFT in Antoines archive. I tried to get this version running,
> because for a while now I'm putting together a disk with the various
> programs by Bob but I couldn't figure out what to do with the two
> resulting machine language programs. Could anybody help me putting
> together an appropriate loader?
I was poking at that as well. The first two pieces to it are easy, as
explained cryptically on the cassette label:
4A.FFR (Read in the first chunk of data to zero page)
800.1FFFR (Read in what must be the main program)
I used CiderPress to pull out those hunks of data, and put them on a
disk image. Since DOS is likely fooling around with the zero page
(and Bob liked to make liberal use of ZP as well), I tried loading the
first hunk in to $204a-$20ff, then loaded up the $800 hunk, then moved
the $204a hunk back down to $4f. The $800 entry point just returns
quickly, so I'm not sure if there's a different entry point expected,
or if there's some other behaviors it's depending on. I haven't
bothered reading the code yet. ;-)
If you haven't seen it:
http://fadden.com/techmisc/cassette-protect.htm
That was a pretty informative...
Thanks for the reminder, Andy - I have of course read it before, and
promptly forgot about it. :-)
Ok, what's going on with this tape is manipulation of (integer) BASIC
pointers, using memory at the traditional beginning of BASIC space
($800) and that's about it. With an integer machine (or with an
Applesoft machine booted with the 3.3 System Master disk) you can run
the program by:
1) save off the zero page stuff from the .wav
2) save off the $800 stuff from the .wav
3) boot the DOS System Master (or boot your Integer machine)
4) get into Integer BASIC
5) bload the zero page stuff
6) bload the $800 stuff
7) RUN
Thank you Andy,
I have read it a long time ago, forgot the address and put it on
brutal-deluxe.fr in the cassettes section if you don't mind.
antoine
Links are always welcome.
I have some decoded cassettes on http://faddensoftware.com/, but don't
have the WAVs anymore. I used DOS Master on the 800K floppies so that
the Integer BASIC stuff would run without having to dance around ProDOS.
Feel free to visit http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
We are approaching the number of 200 identified cassettes (not
counting Apple's catalog) and my personal collection is slowly but
surely arriving to 100. In order to finance further purchases, I think
I will sell my 8-bit disks and remaining cards (I know, I know, no US
people will buy them, too expensive :-)
Beep, beep, beeeeeepppppp
> Dear All,
>
> Another update related to the Apple II cassettes project: more than
> 180 cassettes from more than 35 publishers have been identified, you
I found an orginal cassette of Temple of Apshai / Donjounquest -- do you have
that one? IIRC, someone told me it's (really) rare and valuable.
Sean Fahey
www.a2central.com
bbs.a2central.com
The third on the list?
http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/automatedsimulations/index.html
antoine
I believe the difference was that the Nakamichi consistently produced
1-volt peak-to-peak output.
The inconsistencies with other tape loaders had more to do with low
output matching into the Apple than any tape-to-head contact (which
certainly does occur, I know). The symptoms of lost bits due to poor
shell construction and too-low voltage can appear identical. It's only
when a crappy cassette is played in a highly reliable machine that the
one masking as the other becomes obvious.
In other words, sometimes it's not an unreadable tape, it's that the
low-voltage tape information coupled with low output voltage _combine_
to fall below a readable threshold.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---
And, of course, the Apple II cassette input is designed to be driven
by a *speaker* output--so turning up the volume allows you to adjust
the levels the Apple II sees.