Re: Apple II cassette drive.

[greg@apple2.com]

In article <38b37abe@news1.svn.net>,
"Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net> wrote:
>Scott Alfter <salfter@chakotay.ncc74656.org> wrote

>> How about this idea: hook the tape-out jack on your II (or other old 
>> computer) to the mic-in jack on your other computer's sound card, 
>> save the program squawks in a WAV file, and then burn that onto an 
>> audio CD?  (Come to think of it, that'd be good for archiving the 
>> CoCo programs I have on tape already...wish I had thought of this 
>> sooner.  It'd also provide faster access than tape...just skip to 
>> the track you want and begin loading.)

> That's a good idea too. You could just play any tapes you might have, run
> them into the line-in jack, record and label the programs.

Except you'd want to minimize the number of generations and A/D 
conversions it goes through.  By loading it into the real computer 
first, you'll be certain that you have the data correct, whereas if you 
pull it by tape you could end up sampling a bad tape.

Best would be construction of the audio file directly from the program 
data digitally, say with an emulator.  But then you have to get the data 
from the tape to the emulator.  So an emulator that can use the line 
input as the cassette in port of the computer and then save to an audio 
file the cassette out data (at proper sampling for use in burning CDs) 
would work best.

I remember editing at least one game so that the sound went out via the 
cassette out port rather than to the internal speaker, thereby allowing 
me to play the game with monaural headphones.  The Apple IIgs though 
repurposed that softswitch.

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