SIO2PC for cassettes / storing cassettes on a PC
Ernest R. Schreurs
For those of you that like ALL classic Atari software, there is now a
way to store all software that has been recorded on cassette tapes on
the hard disk of your PC. I have written a program that is similar to
the SIO2PC utility written by Nick Kennedy. But this one is intended
for use with cassette software. You will need the following items:
Any PC equipped with a sound card and about 50 to 100 Megs of free
disk space to work with. The sound card should be able to sample sound
at a sample rate of 44.100 Hz mono. The sample must be recorded into
a .wav file.
You need the wav2cas program to convert the .wav file to a .cas file.
The .cas file is a digital cassette image file that only contains the
data that is on the cassette tape. Once you have that, you can throw
away the .wav file. The .cas files are typically 16 to 64K, so they
are relatively small.
To load cassette files into your Atari (i.e. boot a digital cassette
image) you do not need a sound card. You do need a SIO2PC cable or
similar device. You also need the cas2sio program.
The wav2cas and cas2sio programs should be available from the archives
of Umich by now. They have been put together in one zip file
wav2cas.zip, along with the documentation and the 'C' source code.
You can download it through the web interface at the URL
http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/8bit/Emulators/Peripherals/wav2cas.zip
Note the capital in Emulators and in Peripherals.
Thanks to William Kendrick for helping me get it uploaded there!
You can also try the gopher stuff:
gopher://gopher.archive.umich.edu:7055/11/atari/8bit/Emulators/Peripherals/
Steven Tucker, the author of APE, has added support for this file
format as of version 1.15 of APE. It looks real neat, so try that out
too! Thanks to Steven for adding a nice user interface for these
cassette images. He did a nice job. I am hoping other using are
willing to write some programs to get more enjoyment out of this
underrated storage medium.
My stuff is available totally free for personal use, so I hope you
enjoy it. Read the docs about the conditions.
Keep those XL's/XE's humming.
If you have any questions feel free to E-mail me: ern...@pi.net
ell...@xs4all.nl
Would it be possible to reverse this process so that a file can be converted
to tape and transfered from the PC to the XL. This can have the following
uses.
+ Any PC owner with a soundcard and XL with a casette drve can transfer stuff
between the PC and the XL without having to build/buy extra hardware. This is
a slow transfer method, but for some, it's the only one they can immediately
use.
+ You can create casette software with a PC.
In De-Re-Atari, there's a whole section on how the Atari Casette format works.
Writing casettes should be a lot easier than reading them. It mentioned that
one of the stereo channels is used for data recording, and the other for sound.
It would be cool if you could convert your data to tape format on a PC and mix
a sample that is to be played while the tape-file loads. Due to the nature of
the casette format, you can adjust the interval between data blocks so that
it's the same length as the sample. Perhaps, a more advanced utility could be
made that helps you build one of those multi-media programmes that started and
stopped the tape so you could listen to it. You could also mix someone speaking
the program instructions while the program loads.
AE.
--
Andrei Ellman -- URL: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ellman/ae-a -- a...@york.ac.uk
"All I wanna do is have some fun :-) || ae...@minster.york.ac.uk
I've got the feeling I'm not the only one" || mailto:ell...@xs4all.nl
-- Sheryl Crow :-) || It's what you make of it.
Richard Dell
In article <5nd19t$mg3$1...@news0.xs4all.nl>, <ell...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>Would it be possible to reverse this process so that a file can be converted
>to tape and transfered from the PC to the XL. This can have the following
>uses.
>
Relatively simple ... though I haven't done a software only approach, I do
have an RS-232 to Atari cassette interface circuit from my old 6800 system.
As I recall, all one needs is a simple frequency shift circuit between
1200 Hz and 2400 Hz, at a 600 baud data rate.
Golly, ancient history from when Ataris were expensive .. I also have
an homebreww interface to connect the Atari to a high fi stereo deck,
both record and playback ... from back when I had more time than money,
and was saving the $ and not buying the Atari tape deck. My stereo
deck had solenoid control, so the Atari could start and stop using the
pause function.
--
Richard Dell
Ernest R. Schreurs
On 8 Jun 1997 01:18:53 GMT, ell...@xs4all.nl () wrote:
>Would it be possible to reverse this process so that a file can be converted
>to tape and transfered from the PC to the XL.
Yes of course. I suggested several other utilities that could be
written. If you like cassettes, you should download the wav2cas.zip
file. It has about 80K of documentation and suggestions on this
subject.
>+ You can create casette software with a PC.
This is excactly one of the things I mentioned in the docs. You could
create a stereo .wav file from .cas data and then output that to an
audio cassette recorder. This would allow you to create a multimedia
presentation similar to the stuff Atari created to learn foreign
languages. Tapes can be so much fun, if only they would not be slow.
Thomas Havemeister
In article <Re: SIO2PC for cassettes / storing cassettes on a PC>, ern...@pi.net (Ernest R. Schreurs) wrote:
Howdy Ernest,
> >+ You can create casette software with a PC.
> This is excactly one of the things I mentioned in the docs. You could
> create a stereo .wav file from .cas data and then output that to an
> audio cassette recorder. This would allow you to create a multimedia
> presentation similar to the stuff Atari created to learn foreign
> languages. Tapes can be so much fun, if only they would not be slow.
you got it. As I lived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, ex-East
Germany), Diskdrive were so expensive that (almost) nobody could afford
it. Some clever hardware hackers constructed a system to manage atari's
slow cassette system neraly 15-20 times faster! The programmed wonderfull
programms like COS - Cassette Operating System. I still have this
interface - I have two cassettes full of games, on each nearly 60-70
GAMES!!!
--
6502 RíSC power! ||| ěntel Outsíde! | ,- _ C64 II - alternate
*(MEGA) 8-bít* / | \ 130 XE 256kB | `- ~ * 6510 * 8-bět power !
Alan Christie
On 12 Jun 1997, Thomas Havemeister wrote:
> In article <Re: SIO2PC for cassettes / storing cassettes on a PC>, ern...@pi.net (Ernest R. Schreurs) wrote:
>
> Howdy Ernest,
>
> > >+ You can create casette software with a PC.
> > This is excactly one of the things I mentioned in the docs. You could
> > create a stereo .wav file from .cas data and then output that to an
> > audio cassette recorder. This would allow you to create a multimedia
> > presentation similar to the stuff Atari created to learn foreign
> > languages. Tapes can be so much fun, if only they would not be slow.
>
> you got it. As I lived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, ex-East
> Germany), Diskdrive were so expensive that (almost) nobody could afford
> it. Some clever hardware hackers constructed a system to manage atari's
> slow cassette system neraly 15-20 times faster! The programmed wonderfull
> programms like COS - Cassette Operating System. I still have this
> interface - I have two cassettes full of games, on each nearly 60-70
> GAMES!!!
Out of curiousity how much are 800XLs, 1050 disk drive and Xf551 drives in
countries like Germany, Poland, etc?
(They aren't worth that much in Canada, basically they are worth whatever
you can get for them (which usually not much!)
Alan
University of Toronto, Computer Science for Information Systems
Rene Gambke
Alan Christie wrote:
> Out of curiousity how much are 800XLs, 1050 disk drive and Xf551 drives in
> countries like Germany, Poland, etc?
In Germany some guys want to have up to 250.- DM for ar 800XL with 320kB
RAM or a 1050 with Speedy. Real prices are about 30.- DM for a naked
800XL/XE or 50.- DM for a Floppy.
--
Rene Gambke
e-mail: re...@powerslam.in-berlin.de (home)
re...@uriela.in-berlin.de (more frequently)
fido: 2:2410/1030
maciej grzeszczuk
12 Jun 1997 17:03:00 +0100 Thomas Havemeister napisal byl w comp.sys.atari.8bit:
> slow cassette system neraly 15-20 times faster! The programmed wonderfull
> programms like COS - Cassette Operating System. I still have this
> interface - I have two cassettes full of games, on each nearly 60-70
> GAMES!!!
before i buyed disk drive, i ownet cassette recorder for about 5 years. the
last 2 years i used modification named turbo 2000 kso
(kso = kasetowy system operacyjny = casette operating system), which boosted
up the speed ten times. the operating system was simple, located on a
cartridge. cassette recorder was modified, additional cable was connected to
port of second joystick. this turbo system used modified D: device driver.
loading procedure was pretty simple: the system looked for a header, and when
he found it asked if i wish to load this program (something c=64 style).
overall, the system was useful. and cheap - and that was the most important
these times...
844
--
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