Re: Many questions about cassette tapes

[dog_cow@macgui.com (D Finnigan)]

Egan Ford wrote:
> Gents (and Ladies?),
> 
> My first Apple was a II+ with floppies.  I never got to experience the
> joy or frustration of cassette tape as a volatile storage medium, so I
> thought I'd give it a go and was able to backup and restore a BASIC
> program.  However...
> 
> I've been trying to load up a few games from the excellent
> http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html archives on
> my IIe (physical and virtual) and I get ERR.  Most likely because most
> of them are INT BASIC.  So I booted a 3.3 master and typed INT and
> then LOAD and now I get ERR*** MEM FULL ERR.

You likely need to adjust the tone or volume control of the cassette
playback machine.

Pages 4 through 9 of the Red Manual
(online PDF here: http://macgui.com/kb/article/352 )
offer notes on how to load a tape, and also what to do if there are errors.

> 
> Questions:
> 
> 1.  Can I remove FP and replace with INT BASIC on the IIe without a
> soldering iron, chip extractor, or PROM burner?  Will that solve my
> MEM FULL ERR?
> 

No. The DOS 3.3 System Master loads Int Basic (and also the Programmer's Aid
#1 and old Monitor) into the Language Card of the IIe, and that is good
enough.

> 
> 3.  Can I boot from tape on a IIe?  Actually I know I can based on the
> ADTPro instructions.  But how would I create a boot tape?

Not sure what you're asking here. The Apple either loads data into RAM from
a tape, or dumps a range of its memory back to tape.

So, you could load any sort of operating system or other program that you
wanted from tape. ADTPro is loading the ADT client program, which will allow
a disk image with DOS to be transferred and written out to a physical disk.

> 
> 4.  Is there any advanced tape usage/programming information floating
> around?  "Beneath Apple Tape?"  All I have been able to find was the
> II and II+ tape guides that do little more than cover SAVE and LOAD.
> I did find the audio format on Apple's site (it may be of interest
> later on).

Not really; Apple users of the day gave up tapes pretty quickly as soon as
the disk system was released in 1978.

> 
> 5.  Any cool hacks, like IIe to IIe networking with audio?  Or a token
> passing network with 3 or more IIs?

Check out Michael J. Mahon's NadaNet:
http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/NadaNet.html

This is a full networking stack: physical transport over cassette ports and
a software protocol.

There are also some ways to digitize sound using the cassette ports and some
additional hardware. Try the 1979 compendium, Peeking At Call-Apple for an
article on this.

> 
> 6.  Any great tape stories?
> 
> 

Pass.

-- 
]DF$
Mac GUI Vault - A source for retro Apple II and
Macintosh computing.
http://macgui.com/vault/