Date : Thu, 15 Feb 2001 06:41:10 -0800 (PST)
From : Thomas Harte <t.harte@...>
Subject: Re: BeebEm 1.3 Buggettes and a cursor?
> b) For that real "BBC" feel, it would be lovely if at one stage we could
> have the UEF tape format implemented, so we could enjoy tapes loading in
> block by block if we felt that masochistic!
>
> As for Tape reading (yes you are masochistic ;) ), I'll look into it. I
have
> a book that details the operation of the RS423/6850/SERPROC/Tape
interface,
> and if I can get the information on the tape file format, It *might* be a
> possibility.
For information, look at http://electrem.emuunlim.com/ -> UEF Files -> file
format specs (the last is a link on the UEF Files page, not on the left bar
- I would give you the straight URL of the specs, but am not allowed to
under the arangement by which I get the web space). If you want some good
C++ library code for reading UEFs - the library code offered on my ElectrEm
page is very simple and quite a bit out of date, as well as near useless for
most UEF write operations - then I'll hurry up with the LGPL I keep meaning
to do of the set currently used in ElectrEm (my Electron emulator - for
which the file format was originally invented). Its actually a little better
than the code in the source release of the last beta which has the nasty
habit of loading chunk contents into temporary buffers when all you are
really doing is browsing the chunk headers, but feel free to assume that is
LGPL if you want.
The format looks a bit daunting, but actually you should be able to offer
tape access to nearly all of the tapes currently available by offering basic
support for two or three chunks, and all tapes that ever will be available
with five. If you want I could contribute a few simple functions of the
style 'OpenUEF', 'GetNextByte', 'CloseUEF', etc so that all you need worry
about for adding support is however the BBC gets bytes from a cassette. Is
that helpful at all?
-Thomas
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