Date   : Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:13:03 +0000 (GMT)
From   : debounce@... (Greg Cook)
Subject: Acorn Atom Casette format

On Thursday, 22 January, 2009, 6:09 PM, Phill Harvey-Smith <afra@...>
wrote:

> Does anyone know if the BBC and Atom use the same cassette
> data format, 
> only it would help getting thr tape interface right on my
> Atom clone, if 
> I couls save from it and test the written tapes by loading
> them back 
> onto a BBC.

Signal-wise the format is the same, only with 1.5 stop bits on the Atom against
1 on the BBC.  At the byte level there are two kinds of stream, named and
unnamed, detailed at:

http://beebwiki.jonripley.com/Acorn_cassette_format

Unfortunately files saved on the Atom cannot be loaded into the BBC and vice
versa, although it would be possible to read the byte stream directly on
either machine and interpret the contents.

HTH.

Greg Cook
debounce@...
http://homepages.tesco.net/rainstorm/