Date   : Sat, 16 Jul 2005 14:14:33 +0200
From   : John Kortink <kortink@...>
Subject: Re: floppy discs

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 12:13:18 +0100 (BST), Pete Turnbull wrote:

>Technically best?  No.  Most interchangeable?  Probably.
>Think VHS/Betamax.  Lots of people use MP3s, they use one
>set of tools

'One set of tools' ? There are ludicrously many, some of
them quite buggy. There are quite enough stable and free
tools to process WAV as well, and they are less likely to
be buggy since they don't have to deal with compression.

>-- which admittedly typically requires an extra step to
>create after capturing the digitised sound -- they're
>compact, you can carry them around on an MP3 player, etc.

Well, I'd say the compression in MP3 has considerable
potential to kill the data in a BBC tape signal (a
single 'drowned' bit will do nicely to make all of
it useless), but perhaps someone can actually try it ?

>> I don't know if there is a similar format for Beeb tapes?
>
>Not that I know of.

There is, it's called UEF. It's a bit of a wild format
trying to do too much as far as I'm concerned, but it's
there and it's being used.

>But aren't those just used by emulators?  You
>can't use them directly with a real Spectrum.

Not yet probably. However, for the BBC : I'm tinkering
with the idea of supporting playback of UEF files via
GoMMC. Although this may need a few slight adjustments
to the OS ROM, loading a 'tape' via GoMMC may eventually
be indistinguishable from the real, cumbersome thing
with cassette tapes (GoMMC itself basically has no
memory footprint, so it has the potential to 'feed'
data to/via the actual *TAPE filing system).


John Kortink

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