robcfg wrote:That's why I would prefer a page in the wiki with precise instructions.
Supported! I'm definitively in favor of doing a small effort to make it easy for as many as possible to contribute tapes without inventing the wheel themselves. A simple howto covering everything from connecting the cassette deck to a PC, recommendations for sampling software and settings and then tools with concrete examples to "fine tune" the recordings would be great. It should fit right next to the section on tape and disk preservation on the wiki.
I have limited experience with tape conversion myself since more or less my entire software collection was converted to floppies sometime back in the 80s...
admin wrote:Do you want an FTP account so you can manage the downloads section?
I'll have to think about that.
As for what testing I have done so far, I have file compared my uploads against those in the downloads section and found no identical cassette image, thus answering my earlier question. When I get the time I will test all of my uploaded files on a real Dragon 32.
geirhovland wrote:Here is one pragmatic suggestion for creating CAS files with the correct byte leaders:
1. Start up xroar
2. Press CTRL+L and select a CAS file with or without the correct byte leaders
3. CLOADM
4. To find start address: PRINT PEEK(487)*256+PEEK(488)
5. To find end address: PRINT PEEK(126)*256+PEEK(127)
6. To find exec address: PRINT PEEK(157)*256+PEEK(158)
7. Press CTRL+W to save to a new cassette image
8. CSAVEM"FILENAME",START,END,EXEC (then press F12 to speed it up)
That's quite a lot of work (and only possible with a subset of software that doesn't autorun or use memory that would be corrupted by loading it that way).
Whenever I've wanted to add or remove leader bytes, I simply opened the CAS file directly in a hex editor and inserted or deleted as many "UUUUUUUU"s as desired!
Just takes a moment, although sometimes the data isn't correctly byte aligned and then it's better/more consistent to use $AA instead of "U" ($55) but fixing the byte alignment might be preferred.
PS. If I recall correctly you also need to subtract 1 at step 5.
Please note that xroar may also modify leader bytes (U) between the data blocks, not only the initial ones.
I have my entire collection on disks, and I use the xroar approach to convert from VDK to CAS files. The autorun and copy protection problems were fixed at the time when I converted from tape to disk back in the 80s. When loading from DragonDos, the corresponding start,end and exec addresses are: (1618-1619), (1620-1621) and (1622-1623).
I think the benefit of using the xroar approach, is that you can be quite certain that the CAS file would work on a real Dragon when converted back to WAV. When editing the CAS file manually in a text editor, the CAS file may work on an emulator, but verification would still be required to check that it would load on a real Dragon.
Simon,
the following that are already in the downloads section all work on a real D32 and just need their file names changed (note the change in some of the years, and I'm assuming that if it loads then it qualifies for the ! flag):