Audio Cassette formats; what about ADAM?

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Mon Nov 30 15:02:16 1998

>> I can't imagine why 8 bits wouldn't be sufficient, given the
>> frequency range of a cheap cassette player. I recently acquired
>Considering that most (all?) home computers feed the cassette input into
>a schmitt trigger (essentially 1-bit sampling), and that the level of the
>input signal is set by twidding the recorder's volume control until it
>loads, so it's not that critical, I would think 8-bit sampling was easily
>good enough.

8-bits ought to work just fine. One fine point, which won't hit you
until you try to do some decoding: some tape formats are polarity
sensitive (they use a variant of Manchester encoding). If at all
possible, you should try to figure out whether your tape player/digitizer/
recorder/player chain inverts are not.

Tarbell-format tapes are (speaking from experience!) polarity-sensitive.
Apple ][ tapes aren't. Kansas-City format tapes aren't.

Tim. (shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com)
Received on Mon Nov 30 1998 - 15:02:16 GMT