Unreadable tapes ...

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pser1
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Unreadable tapes ...

Post by pser1 »

Hello,
I received together with two Farmfax cartridges a TAPE that seems to contain
DATA but I have not been able to load it into XRoar.
I have dumped it from tape right to Audacity and I am uploading here two files
one for each side of the tape, for maybe someone could 'clean' them up or tell
me the way you'd prefer those files to be recorded on Audacity ...
cheers
pere
FarmFax TAPE.ZIP
(919.47 KiB) Downloaded 177 times
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robcfg
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by robcfg »

I’ll take a look during the day and tell you my findings.
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robcfg
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by robcfg »

Hi Pere,

I'm afraid your dumps are unrecoverable, they are utterly broken. It's like the tape wheels don turn well and frequencies go wildly up and down.

I would try to rewind and fast forward the tape a couple of times and dump it again.

Otherwise, we may need to transplant the tape to a new case or try another tape recorder.

You can always send me the tape to try to dump it for you.
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Roberto Carlos,
I think I did that, rewind the tape twice (both directions)
It seems to have DC added to the signal, I mean before the beginning of every header,
you see the signal at a low value and then it rises to the top, besides it has a lot of noise.
Will try with a Tandy tape recorder, maybe this one will read it better than the tape I used.
If it fails again, I will send it to you past these Holydays, will contact you.
Anyway, I think that the info it contains has no meaning for us.
Might be a data dump from one of the Farmfax programs, but I am sure that it it not software
that could be recovered.
Thanks for trying it
cheers
pere
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robcfg
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by robcfg »

Hi Pere,

Please dump the tape with 44100hz sample rate, it really makes it easier to process.

Cheers,
Rob
pser1
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Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Roberto Carlos,
I did it on the Tandy tape that much to my surprise produces a better output compared to the one
generated by the tape from a Hi-Fi unit. Anyway, the sound is still awful, sorry
These two recordings are accepted by XRoar detecting these two names:
FARMD1 and FARMD2, both seem to be data files.
When loading them with CLOAD the name appears and then a
?DS ERROR occurs
Probably these tapes should be loaded by one of the ROMs from FARMFAX
Anyway, hopefully you could clean them up enough as to avoid read errors.
When I have the time, I will try to start XRoar with a farmFax ROM (the ones we have on the archive)
and see if one of them has a 'LOAD/SAVE' option and then use these tapes ...
cheers
pere

PS attached the two recordings
TAPEFF-SIDE1.zip
(461.89 KiB) Downloaded 177 times
TAPEFF-SIDE2.zip
(361.08 KiB) Downloaded 173 times
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robcfg
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by robcfg »

Hi Pere!

They are actually waaaaaaaaay better, can you do a 44100hz version of the wav files, please?
pser1
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi,
just a question.
I changed manually the project freq. in Audacity to 44100Hz, I did on first page (error)
Because on Edit/Preferences/Quality I have the old value 11.025, sorry, dummy me :-(
I will repeat the recordings ...

I have tried on the real Dragon with the Tandy tape and the TRAINER cartridge that seems
to allow users to save/load data files but did not succeed.
No way to test on XRoar, the program asks you to start the tape!
How could we do that on XRoar?

cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by pser1 »

These are the two recordings made at 44100Hz,
hope it helps a bit ...
cheers
pere
TAPEFF-SideA.zip
(1.56 MiB) Downloaded 173 times
TAPEFF-SideB.zip
(1.24 MiB) Downloaded 173 times
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robcfg
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Re: Unreadable tapes ...

Post by robcfg »

Hi Pere, good news!

I managed to read side A, and they look like data files indeed. You'll need to read them with the appropriate FarmFax program.

I've attached the cas file of side A.

With a bit of luck, I'll have side 2 tomorrow.

Cheers,
Rob
Attachments
TAPEFF-SideA.cas
(2.39 KiB) Downloaded 170 times
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