bbking67 #1 Posted January 4, 2012 (edited) Are there any projects to preserve Atari cassettes? I was poking around various Atari 8-bit archives, and there only seem to be about 50 cassettes everywhere I have looked. Back in the early 80's when most users started out with cassette, there were many commercial products sold on cassette, and sometimes these had interesting loaders (like Shamus II for example). In addition, some program contained audio, etc. have these been archived and preserved? /bbking67 Edited January 4, 2012 by bbking67 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
unholy #2 Posted January 4, 2012 http://cas-archive.pigwa.net/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
www.atarimania.com #3 Posted January 4, 2012 Fifty is about the number we have for games beginning with letter "A" so there are a many more images out there... -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qix_maniac #4 Posted January 4, 2012 (edited) how do you dump a tape to floppy disk? I have some rare tapes whose tape image is not on atarimania that will probably go bad soon Edited January 4, 2012 by qix_maniac Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fox-1 / mnx #5 Posted January 4, 2012 What's the point of dumping them to floppy disk when you want to preserve them? You need to keep them in their original format. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qix_maniac #6 Posted January 4, 2012 What's the point of dumping them to floppy disk when you want to preserve them? You need to keep them in their original format. I have some rare tapes I want to put on disk but if you have a better idea then show me how smart you are :-) and teach me! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qix_maniac #7 Posted January 4, 2012 I have ghost hunter II , roundhouse, pogoman just to name a few that I would like to dump before they go bad... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+CharlieChaplin #8 Posted January 4, 2012 (edited) What's the point of dumping them to floppy disk when you want to preserve them? You need to keep them in their original format. hmm, I guess with "keep them in their original format" you don`t mean to keep them in their original *hardware* format (a cassette), don`t you ?!? Otherwise, you know that magnetic media will lose its content after some years and even hydrogenic-freezing with -200 degrees will not preserve it forever Of course one could keep the tape media for a museum or for our children and their children... that on the other hand will not know (nor be interested) on how to use a tape/cassette in the future... Most A8 tapes load 128 bytes of data per block (with a few exceptions like Novagen-Soft, English-Soft, Synsoft, etc.), one can emulate that from diskette, CD or other media without changing the content of the tape-data (meaning without hacking/cracking and most of all without any hacker/cracker intros, etc., just adding the emulator data which often can be placed in the disk boot-sectors and be executed from there). The tape-data will not only load from another media then, but it will also load much faster... Personally I don`t like and don`t use the (PC-) .CAS files, they only work on the emulator and not on the A8 - one has to copy them back to WAV and then to tape again to make them work on the small Atari. Sooner or later cassettes will not be available anymore, so that copying back to tape will not be an option anymore. Thats why I use some C-Emulators on the A8, like Howfen-DOS (or better: Howfen tape to disk), Multi-Tape to disk and others to copy my A8 tapes to disk and then load/emulate them from diskette. Of course there are many other options, but this is the one I prefer for my A8 tapes... -Andreas Koch. P.S.: Here are two examples of my C-emulator, a Firebird and an Americana tape, running from disk - even the block-counter is still intact... (images created with Howfen tape to disk). VIDEOCLA.zip OLYMPSKI.zip Edited January 4, 2012 by CharlieChaplin 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+Stephen #9 Posted January 5, 2012 No - by keep in original format, he meant use a tool like CAS2WAV. That way you get an exact copy of the casette data. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fox-1 / mnx #10 Posted January 5, 2012 No - by keep in original format, he meant use a tool like CAS2WAV. That way you get an exact copy of the casette data. Exactly. Tape is just audio. No need to store in on a physical cassette tape. You can either use any audio media for that, or store it in a format that is reversible to get a real audio tape again. Converting a cassette to a playable disk version is not what I call "preserving". Many of the games were also released on disk and other are converted to disk afterwards. The disk versions of Ghost Hunter II and Pogoman are common ones and can be found all over the net. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bbking67 #11 Posted January 5, 2012 Does the .CAS format preserve the audio from the other track? Some of the tapes I have (or used to have if I never find them) had audio that played during loading. One of the things I have found is that so many cartridge images are conversions to disk, etc. I think it`s generally best to preserve the original source material as much as possible. In my mind it does not have to be directly playable on a real Atari, but there must be a way to convert back to real media. Once I get a better way to connect my Atari to a PC (all I have is an ST Xformer cable, but I am probably going to buy an SIO2SD), I want to transfer all of my disks and cartridges (and tapes if I locate some) as a backup. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
www.atarimania.com #12 Posted January 5, 2012 PM sent. Ghost Hunter II by Richwood Software is ultra, ultra rare and really needs to be archived, though I believe it's just Ghost Hunter working with the XL-OS and slightly different colors. Qix_maniac, could you confirm this? Thanks, Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KubaCZ #13 Posted January 5, 2012 (edited) If anyone interested, I have those original tapes(with boxes) which I can try to archive using WAV2CAS. (not sorted) Fort apocalypse Up'n'Down Solo FLIGHT Electric starfish Encounter Attack of the mutant camels Super Silver Bounty Bob Strikes Back Cannibals Rescue on Fractalus! Action biker Spellbound Steeplejack - not original tape Baja buggies - not original tape Slinky Diamonds Airstrike Dan strikes back Robin Hood - not original tape O'Riley's mine - not ogirinal tape Dropzone Ghost hunter - not original tape Snokie - not original tape Ihrust Arena 3000 ACE - Atari Cassete Enhancer (not game ) Bruce Lee Zaxxon Master chess One man and his DROID Airstrike 2 Neptune's daughters The last V8 - not sure what's this named, released by MAD GAMES War hawk Despatch rider Ninja Jet boot Jack Cavern commaner Lone rider M.U.L.E The Spy Strikes Back Snowball - level9 computing I don't have them for long time so I didn't try any of them except MULE and Encouter; both worked! Edited January 5, 2012 by KubaCZ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qix_maniac #14 Posted January 5, 2012 Thanks for everyone's help and emails. I'm going to give it a try and see if I can use those tools successfully. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bbking67 #15 Posted January 5, 2012 MULE and Fractalus were available on cassette? Wow!!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fres #16 Posted January 5, 2012 Does the .CAS format preserve the audio from the other track? Some of the tapes I have (or used to have if I never find them) had audio that played during loading. Yeah, I'm really curious about the audio too. Did this get answered? States and Capitals, Conversational Spanish, etc., Intro. to Programming all had audio ... not to mention the Talk and Teach releases that worked with the Educational Master System cart (if memory serves). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KubaCZ #17 Posted January 5, 2012 MULE and Fractalus were available on cassette? Wow!!! Here: All of those cassetes are probably from UK, I'm not first owner so I don't know much about them. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bbking67 #18 Posted January 5, 2012 I guess cassettes were much more common in Europe. I never suspected these to be available, because they both take a fair amount of disk space and probably multi-loads on diskette. These need to be preserved for sure! /bbking67 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+CharlieChaplin #19 Posted January 5, 2012 (edited) Does the .CAS format preserve the audio from the other track? Some of the tapes I have (or used to have if I never find them) had audio that played during loading. Yeah, I'm really curious about the audio too. Did this get answered? States and Capitals, Conversational Spanish, etc., Intro. to Programming all had audio ... not to mention the Talk and Teach releases that worked with the Educational Master System cart (if memory serves). Well, the .CAS does not do that - in other words the audio (music, speech, whatever) gets lost. So, the .CAS does not 100% preserve all A8 tapes. Another reason why I don`t like .CAS files. Maybe someone needs to invent another (emulator compatible) CAS-Format (e.g. stereo, when required) that really preserves the tape fully... -Andreas Koch. Edited January 5, 2012 by CharlieChaplin Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bbking67 #20 Posted January 6, 2012 agreed, cas is not adequate if we really want to preserve these tapes... or maybe .cas is adequate if a .wav of the other channel was provided (needs to be in perfect sync, so creation tools may be needed), then emulators will need to support the dual CAS/WAV if it exists. /bbking67 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fox-1 / mnx #21 Posted January 6, 2012 One doesn't have to use WAV2CAS. It's just an option. You can keep the WAVes and just use these to load on A8 or emulator. You can even encode the WAVes to FLAC to save some HD space and still have a lossless dump of both data- and audio-track. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
31336haxx0r #22 Posted January 6, 2012 I once had the idea to digitalize the analog tapes, then burn them to a CD and hack an old CD drive's audio output to the SIO port. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fox-1 / mnx #23 Posted January 6, 2012 Feeding the SIO port with plain audio won't do. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
31336haxx0r #24 Posted January 6, 2012 That's why I would hack up some circuitry. Probably recycling parts of an XC12 or something. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
F#READY #25 Posted January 6, 2012 One doesn't have to use WAV2CAS. It's just an option. You can keep the WAVes and just use these to load on A8 or emulator. You can even encode the WAVes to FLAC to save some HD space and still have a lossless dump of both data- and audio-track. Agree completely with your remarks about tape preservation Fox-1. To preserve a tape you need some lossless audio format and record as much as you can from the tape in the highest possible quality. The preserved image can then be processed by tools like WAV2CAS or whatever, but the initially recorded image should at least be archived. I know there are 'CAS' archives, but what about 'WAV' archives? (or any other suitable lossless audio format). P.S. I'm trying to revive and re-organize the Atari Preservation Project, so that's why I got interested. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord