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Cassettes that play sound while they load.


FULS

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I don't have one and too much information is missing anyway but...

 

...here is what should be, from what I could gather, the complete list of tapes released by Dorsett. Not too sure about the Language Arts series and, of course, a catalog would help but it's better than nothing...

 

Auto Mechanics

Basic Algebra

Basic Army Skills

Basic Electricity

Basic Psychology

Basic Sociology

Business Communications

Carpentry

Construction

Counseling Procedures

Digital Electronics

Economics

Effective Writing

English as a Second Language - Part 1

English as a Second Language - Part 2

First Aid and Safety

Fractions

General Shop Practices

Geometry

Health Services Career

Industrial Solid-State Electronics

Intermediate Mathematics

Language Arts - 1-2

Language Arts - 3-4

Language Arts - 5-6

Language Arts - 7

Language Arts - 8

Language Arts - 9-10

Mathematics for Electronics

Measurements

Money Problems

Numbers

Office Careers

Percents / Decimals

Philosophy

Phonics - Part 1

Phonics - Part 2

Physics

Principles of Accounting

Reading Comprehension - 2-4

Reading Comprehension - 4-6

Reading Comprehension - 6-8

Reading Development - 1-2

Reading Development - 3-4

Reading Development - 5-6

Reading Development - T

Reading Development - Tt

Spelling

Statistics

Supervisory Practices

U/ES - Spanish-English

US Government

US History

Vm - Selected Mathematics

Vocabulary Development - 8

Vocabulary Development - 9-10

Vocational Vocabulary

World History

 

I believe a demo cassette is also available.

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

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Ok, here's what I have from Dorsett (8 tapes each unless specified otherwise:

 

Reading Comprehension Level 5-6 (I'm assuming these corresponded to some kind of US Public School standards once upon a time)

Spelling (now I'm interested in finding out if that's a duplicate of the original Talk & Teach Spelling they produced)

Mathematics Level 4-8 (same note as above)

Mathematics Level 1-6 (there is a lot of overlap in the Mathematics series)

Mathematics Level 4-6)

Basic Algebra - again, this duplicates a title from the original Atari branded series, so I wonder if it's the same material.

 

Oh one other thing: All of the Dorsett branded sets have "practice materials" (various question and answer sheets) which I don't think any of the Atari branded sets have.

Edited by JohnBuell
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Dimension X from Synapse had music that played while it loaded. Two songs: the first one sounded like it was generated on an Atari, the second one was a recording of an actual piano playing some Scott Joplin ragtime song. The latter was only around a minute in length, so you knew game play was imminent.

 

It was the only game I remember buying that had music. You'd think more companies would've used the audio track to keep you from going into a hypnotic trance from those Atari cassette tones...

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Photo of my 5 sets of Atari cassettes

U.S. History, U.S. Government, Basic Psychology, Basic Sociology and Spelling.

And for the Dorsett branded ones, I've got math and some of their reading sets, in blue cases that are more reminiscent of the foreign language series.

 

The boxes look familiar. :D

 

From the list posted earlier, I know I have the Electronics and Physics... in a box somewhere. I thought it was chemistry, but I'm fairly sure now I was confusing it with the physics tape. I'm not sure what else I have as I boxed all that up at least a couple decades ago.

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Is that Reading Development or Reading Comprehension - 5-6? It doesn't seem to match exactly.

 

Is anything written on the cassette? All programs should have a two or three-letter code followed by a number from 1 to 16 - or 17 to 32 if it's a two-part series.

 

Mathematics - 4-8 is, I believe, Fractions. The serial should be "MF". 1-6 is Numbers and the code is "MN". 4-6 would be Measurements with reference "MM".

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

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Is that Reading Development or Reading Comprehension - 5-6? It doesn't seem to match exactly.

 

Is anything written on the cassette? All programs should have a two or three-letter code followed by a number from 1 to 16 - or 17 to 32 if it's a two-part series.

 

Mathematics - 4-8 is, I believe, Fractions. The serial should be "MF". 1-6 is Numbers and the code is "MN". 4-6 would be Measurements with reference "MM".

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

 

It's whichever series the vocabulary was part of. I'll look up the codes for all of them when I get home.

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Photo of my 5 sets of Atari cassettes

U.S. History, U.S. Government, Basic Psychology, Basic Sociology and Spelling.

And for the Dorsett branded ones, I've got math and some of their reading sets, in blue cases that are more reminiscent of the foreign language series.

 

The boxes look familiar. :D

 

From the list posted earlier, I know I have the Electronics and Physics... in a box somewhere. I thought it was chemistry, but I'm fairly sure now I was confusing it with the physics tape. I'm not sure what else I have as I boxed all that up at least a couple decades ago.

 

Yeah they obviously only made one box and slapped different stickers on them per included program.

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  • 3 years later...

Hi,

I recently dumped my "Sammy the Sea Serpent" cassette tape before it goes bad.

My granddaughters had fun listening to and playing it.

This may be already available somewhere else but if you want to try it out on Altirra, here it is.

These 2 files play the same, but one is 8-bit recording and the other one is 16-bit.

The 8-bit file is much smaller to download.

 

 

Boot -up Altirra with basic installed and type "CLOAD"

Press "ENTER" twice and wait about 3 1/2 minutes.

Type "RUN" and "ENTER"

Use Joystick.

 

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Mclaneinc: Kevin Savetz and I are dumping the known entirety of the Dorsett Talk & Teach cassettes into WAV format. We have 45 boxes in all, and I've processed at least 18 boxes, so far, and they've been placed up on Kevin's alcove on archive.org:

 

https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Dorsett%20Educational%20Systems%22

 

Of course, I worked to disassemble the Educational System Master Cartridge, and decode its tape data format (it is not written by the operating system, not block oriented, it's streamed data, like a MODEM transmission):

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237822-disassembling-the-educational-system-master-cartridge/

 

This of course, lead to writing a new tape encoder for the educational system master cartridge, to test my findings:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/238262-eduencode-a-library-for-encoding-atari-educational-system-tapes/

 

-Thom

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stereo wav so we have data and audio? cool!

 

Having had so many tape and cas file that never have the audio, or require the audio and since there is none... are useless all I can say is... thank you thank you thank you.

 

Sure wished APE would at least play the audio over the pc if it didn't have the capability to send it to the Atari.

 

Many of these fail to load, which is a real pain.... after having had my tea or sandwich only to find it never quite made it...

 

on a way out there note.... with the higher capacity drives and the ability to play digitized sound while doing other things on the Atari some crazy person might resample the audio and move some of the audio required titles to disk now and play it from there... I mean why not?

Edited by _The Doctor__
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@Mclaneinc: Kevin Savetz and I are dumping the known entirety of the Dorsett Talk & Teach cassettes into WAV format. We have 45 boxes in all, and I've processed at least 18 boxes, so far, and they've been placed up on Kevin's alcove on archive.org:

 

https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Dorsett%20Educational%20Systems%22

 

Of course, I worked to disassemble the Educational System Master Cartridge, and decode its tape data format (it is not written by the operating system, not block oriented, it's streamed data, like a MODEM transmission):

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237822-disassembling-the-educational-system-master-cartridge/

 

This of course, lead to writing a new tape encoder for the educational system master cartridge, to test my findings:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/238262-eduencode-a-library-for-encoding-atari-educational-system-tapes/

 

-Thom

 

 

Thank you Thom, just looking now...Appreciated..

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@Mclaneinc: Kevin Savetz and I are dumping the known entirety of the Dorsett Talk & Teach cassettes into WAV format. We have 45 boxes in all, and I've processed at least 18 boxes, so far, and they've been placed up on Kevin's alcove on archive.org:

 

https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Dorsett%20Educational%20Systems%22

 

Of course, I worked to disassemble the Educational System Master Cartridge, and decode its tape data format (it is not written by the operating system, not block oriented, it's streamed data, like a MODEM transmission):

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237822-disassembling-the-educational-system-master-cartridge/

 

This of course, lead to writing a new tape encoder for the educational system master cartridge, to test my findings:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/238262-eduencode-a-library-for-encoding-atari-educational-system-tapes/

 

-Thom

Thank you very much for dumping these!!

I know this is time consuming. The data portion of the tapes are perfect, but is there any way the "hiss/hum" in the audio portion could be reduced while dumping. I've found from personal experience using my battery powered Sony Walkman works better than a pluged-in recorder in reducing noise. Take that with a grain of salt, we will always be in your debt for all the research and time put into this project!!!

 

Thank You,

Doug

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The problem with every single noise reduction trick that I know, is that it involves the inverse convolution of a noise fingerprint, or the subtraction of frequencies using carefully placed filters and noise gates.

 

But every one of these tricks causes some form of harmonic distortion with the resulting signal, resulting in what can sound like phasing, or ringing in the signal.

 

Analog tape, by its own definition, has a certain amount of tape hiss inherent in it, this comes from many factors, way too many to mention, but are well documented elsewhere. The characteristics of this tape hiss, are very close to white noise, that is, there is a random distribution of energy dispersed "somewhat" equally throughout the signal. (I say somewhat, because equalization curves, tape bias frequencies, and tape head characteristics alter the distribution of this noise.)

 

As it happens, there is enough noise in the vocal frequency range, that if I apply a low pass filter to it, to remove it, I risk muffling the vocal output. A high pass filter would be useless. A band pass filter would also be useless as the majority of the perceived noise would need to be passed through to hear the vocal track. A notch filter, while it could effectively remove the bleed-over of the mark/space signals from the vocal track, also sits at the high end of the vocal range, and would cause phase distortion on the sibilant syllables spoken.

 

So that leaves us with doing a noise removal by fingerprint. This is the result:

 

Before: cd3-test-original.wav

 

After: cd3-test-noise-reduce.wav

 

That is, literally, me doing miracle work, and the best I can do, given the source material. You decide.

 

Savetz didn't like the results, but if most are ok with it, I will re-process everything to use it.

 

-Thom

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Couldn't some sort of subtractive method be used where the data track itself is used - though presence of some of the audio track there might cause problems.

 

Or maybe just some sort of head alignment trick... the audio track is the outer one which would make it easier to isolate.

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Reasons like this are why it's preferable to use the master tapes, if available..much larger tape size ensures better signal seperation...failing that, transcriptor grade tape machines like those from Nakamichi (I had a Dragon, for many years) do the best job with what's available.

 

-Thom

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  • 1 month later...

@Mclaneinc: Kevin Savetz and I are dumping the known entirety of the Dorsett Talk & Teach cassettes into WAV format. We have 45 boxes in all, and I've processed at least 18 boxes, so far, and they've been placed up on Kevin's alcove on archive.org:

 

https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Dorsett%20Educational%20Systems%22

 

Of course, I worked to disassemble the Educational System Master Cartridge, and decode its tape data format (it is not written by the operating system, not block oriented, it's streamed data, like a MODEM transmission):

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237822-disassembling-the-educational-system-master-cartridge/

 

This of course, lead to writing a new tape encoder for the educational system master cartridge, to test my findings:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/238262-eduencode-a-library-for-encoding-atari-educational-system-tapes/

 

-Thom

Are all the tapes now uploaded, or are there more to come?

Thank you so much for this treasure!

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Hi,

I recently dumped my "Sammy the Sea Serpent" cassette tape before it goes bad.

My granddaughters had fun listening to and playing it.

This may be already available somewhere else but if you want to try it out on Altirra, here it is.

Boot -up Altirra with basic installed and type "CLOAD"

Press "ENTER" twice and wait about 3 1/2 minutes.

Type "RUN" and "ENTER"

Use Joystick.

Posted again per private request. I'll try to leave this up for a few days.

Sammy The Sea Serpent (16-bit)(Sync Good).wav.torrent.zip

Let me know if this is not working.

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