Date   : Mon, 08 Apr 2019 17:21:40 +0100
From   : djameson@... (Daniel Jameson)
Subject: Preservation of Tapes

Colin on stardot is pretty much the expert. hqUEF is the format of choice
iirc. He's managed to rescue a number of rare atom tapes etc... There are a
fair few threads given over to such topics too.



On Mon, 8 Apr 2019, 17:18 Peter Coghlan, <bbcmicro@...> wrote:

> >
> > 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.
>
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