CD as a mass storage device -- Success and failure so far.

1 message · 2004-09-17 → 2004-09-17 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org

Participants: hatulzabad

Preserved from the Timex/Sinclair 2068 Yahoo Group (2001–2019), which is no longer online. Text reproduced from the archive.org archive; email addresses masked.

Messages

1. CD as a mass storage device -- Success and failure so far.

hatulzabad · Fri, 17 Sep 2004 20:14

Hello Everyone...

  This may be a repost.  My apologies.

  I have recently acquired a pc with the ability to burn CD-ROMs
and have been experimenting with the idea of saving my library of
Timex/Sinclair 2068 and ZX Spectrum 48 tapes as sound files that
will reload into the original computers as if loading from a
cassette tape.  For my first experiment, I saved the contents of a
cassette tape to a WAV file using Roxio.  Using the Roxio sound
editor, I was able to partition each program so they would save as
separate bands on the CD-ROM.  (I was even able to eliminate the
"kathunk" between programs where the tape had been started and
stopped.)  I then saved my work as a music CD.  Using this CD, I
was able to load the programs I had saved with the aid of a small
pre-amp.  I was also able to skip directly to the program I wanted
from the CD without having to play through the entire CD.  This
looked to be very promising except when I tried to do the same with
another tape, it was a total failure.  The problem was that the
second tape was very dirty and, as yet, I am not enough of a sound
engineer to know which frequencies to boost or suppress to obtain
a cleaner tape.  So the bottom line with this method is that the
chances of being able to burn a CD that will reload into a real
Sinclair computer depends upon the state of the original tape and
the ability to do a clean transfer from tape to CD.

  After stewing a bit over my failure with the second tape, I began
to wonder why I could not convert the TAP files I had created with
Lunter's Z80 Spectrum emulator directly into sound files.  This
would surly eliminate the hiss and rumble found on most cassette
tapes and greatly increase the chances of a successful load.  I
used Lunter's TAP2VOC conversion utility in conjunction with
another utility to convert several TAPs into WAV files which I then
burned as a music CD.  The result was I had a CD of beautifully
clean sound files but the files were compressed to such a degree
that they would not load into a real Sinclair computer.  They
sounded like the game programs that required Hyperloader.  However,
the VOC files I created and burned as data files reloaded
beautifully into Lunter's emulator even though they originated from
a CD.  Still, the VOC files were in a compressed state and could
not be played on a standard CD player or reloaded into a real
Sinclair computer.  If I hope by this method to have a CD that will
load into a real Sinclair computer, I need to find a way to
decompress the VOC files to a point that they can be recognized by
the original computers.

  Some of you may be wondering why I am going to all this trouble
to create sound files when I could just as easily save emulator
MDR, TAP, Z80 and suchlike files.  The reason is that I would want
files that will reload into the original computers.  The second
reason is because emulator file characteristics change from
emulator to emulator and pc platform to platform, I want something
that is common to all systems.

  Thank you all for hearing me out.  Any ideas and/or suggestions
would be welcome.

David Solly

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