[Coco] [Color Computer] Data Tape Resoration Program

John R. Hogerhuis jhoger at pobox.com
Mon Sep 5 22:16:31 EDT 2005


On Mon, 2005-09-05 at 20:25 -0500, Mannequin* wrote:
> Someone named Powel on the CoCo3.com forums has created a PASCAL program (with
> binaries) that helps get information off of a cassette previously thought
> unreadable by the CoCo:
> 

Cool, but looking at the last page of the example: if this is a ML
program, it ain't likely to run in that condition.

Readable and executable I guess are different things... he has basically
corrected the "form" or "structure" of a cassette file without
completely correcting the content.

Interesting theory though, that it is the tape "stretching" which causes
them to become unreadable. If that's the case, then probably some math
could be used to correct for the distortions. Other copies of the
cassette, checksum and parity bits (if any) might be leveraged as well
by a smart program.

Of course I'd be surprised if someone else in the retro community hasn't
done this already, since cassette storage was so popular for home
computers.

-- John.




More information about the Coco mailing list