Re: Many questions about cassette tapes

[mwillegal <mike@willegal.net>]

This is one of my favorite topics.  See my comments inline.

On Thursday, August 11, 2011 7:17:25 PM UTC-4, 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...

The Joy was having a computer, there no particular frustration with tape, since the
tape was all there was that was available and it worked pretty well on the A2.
The release of Disk ][ completely transformed  operation of the machine, so once
that came out, the tape was pretty much put aside.

> 
> 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.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 2.  If I can do #1, how would I tape load INT BASIC?  Can I make a
> tape of INT BASIC?  I want to see how far I can take this tape thing.
> E.g. Boot, reset, LOAD INT BASIC, INT, kill FP, LOAD INT game,
> play, ...

I don't know of any tape version of Int Basic.   Applesoft was first released
on tape and loaded into memory just above text page 0 of video ram (if I remember
right).  You might find a copy of that, and start with that before trying to find a way to
load int basic into a language card from tape. 
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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).

Somewhere there must be some information on saving data on tape from
Basic programs.  The Red Book, the Contact newsletter or Apple II reference manual may
have something on those topics.
> 
> 5.  Any cool hacks, like IIe to IIe networking with audio?  Or a token
> passing network with 3 or more IIs?
> 
These days you can use an iPod in place of a cassette recorder.  See this page.
http://www.apple1notes.com/Home/Notes.html
Also I have created an "C" language program that will convert a text file in Apple monitor format into an AIF file that can be played back with an iPod into an Apple 2.  This A1 oriented program doesn't add the checksum byte expected by the A2, but I have still been able to read these AIF files on an A2.  You just need to manually break the A2 at the end of the playback and check the last bytes of the load to make sure there hasn't been a bit picked or dropped.
http://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1-software.htm


> 6.  Any great tape stories?
I still have my tapes and a notebook from the pre-floppy days.  The notebook contains the location on the tape recorder's counter where I could find a given program on each tape.  rewind to beginning of tape, reset tape counter, then fast forward to where the note says the program begins.  I also hacked my tape recorder, so I could hear out of the speaker at the same time I was playing back to the computer through the monitor output.  Reliability is/was pretty decent.  In fact I've been able to play back an original 70's era tape recording of Dragon Maze (see the Red Book) into my Mac and successfully read the recording into the Virtual II emulator.

> 
> Thanks.

Regards,
Mike W.