Audio Cassette formats; what about ADAM?

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Mon Nov 30 09:32:20 1998

At 07:53 PM 11/25/98 -0500, Roger Merchberger wrote:
>
>My vote is mono 22Khz 16-bit (tho 8 might be fine for some types of
>computers - it would prolly depend on the type of encoding it used) and
>then zip the file...

I can't imagine why 8 bits wouldn't be sufficient, given the
frequency range of a cheap cassette player. I recently acquired
Sound Forge, a top audio recording program, and I was perplexed
by the sheer number of audio codecs available, and next to no
documentation of each format's strengths and weaknesses, or even
whether the format was compressed or not - all this in a $500 program.

>What about the ADAM computer from Coleco??? It uses a digital tape that
>holds (around) 256K or so... (Never set mine up yet).
>Is there any way you could run that thang thru an audio player and have a
>PC routine re-digitalize it, or are you stuck with read a thing and
>serial-send it over to another PC?

I don't know much about ADAM tape formats. Can you place its tapes
in an audio tape player, or does the shape prevent that? You may hear
nothing at all when it plays, if it fits. If you do hear something,
I suppose there's a slim chance that a more sophisticated decoder
could analyze the resulting spectrum and derive the original data,
but that's a stretch.

- John
Received on Mon Nov 30 1998 - 09:32:20 GMT