Date   : Mon, 08 Apr 2019 17:16:13 +0100 (WET-DST)
From   : bbcmicro@... (Peter Coghlan)
Subject: Preservation of Tapes

>
> Hi,
> how does the people here preserve the Old tapes? I still own
> an Acorn Electron and a large box of tapes i'd like to preserve.
> 

Where possible, I've tried to load my old BBC Micro tapes into an
actual BBC Micro and then save the files to floppy disks and/or use
KERMIT to transfer them to another machine for archiving.

This worked for most of my tapes but there were difficulties with
copy protected tapes etc.  Sometimes these can be worked around with
a little programming on the beeb but other times it is more difficult.

>
> My first thought was to digitize the tapes with the tape via a USB
> Sound Card into my linux box. As far as i understand the BBC machines
> stored data as FSK with 1200/2400hz Audio. From my idea GNURadio
> contains FSK De-/Modulators so it should be "easy" to decode the
> raw bits. And possibly one could also use a Linux machine to do
> play back to Real Hardware.
> 

I think it would at least be necessary to verify the CRCs in order to
be reasonably sure that the audio has been captured successfully.  Even
then, I would prefer to make sure the file actually works by trying it
on the original machine.  I am thinking of the number of times I used to
get messages similar to:

Header?
Rewind tape
Data?
Rewind tape

while trying to load a poorly made copy of a tape on my beeb.

> Flo
> -- 
> Florian Lohoff                                                 f@...
>         UTF-8 Test: The =F0=9F=90=88 ran after a =F0=9F=90=81, but the =F0
> =9F=90=81 ran away
>

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.