talk at VCF-East on audio cassettes for data; stuff
http://www.retrotechnology.com my home page starts with Web links to my VCF-East talk, and to a Web page stuff I'll be selling there as a vendor. http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/cass_data.html There are adults alive today, who have *no idea* what an "audio cassette" is! Shocked me. Learn how the Ancients communicated in tones! Lost technology, recovered by experts, even as we speak. Voices from the past! http://www.retrotechnology.com/vcfe_may18.html Less exciting fare. I'm adding more by the day. Lights that blink, boards covered with chips, clicky keyboards. Some of you know me - ask me about something I have you don't see. Root around my domain to see more. No IMSAIs No Altairs pls, light stuff OK? Surprisingly, I don't get axed much, about old Macs. Herb "The Beep" Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
No IMSAIs No Altairs pls, light stuff OK? Surprisingly, I don't get axed much, about old Macs.
Herb "The Beep" Johnson
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
Funny you should say that. Had a gentleman from NY ask me on the FB apple II group about the consignment and vendor area. His main interest is mostly Macs as he put it. Tony
Herb -- This is an interesting topic because I did some work on this for the Altair32 Emulator. I just dug the code out and it was just about 10 years ago. I was trying to add the ability to directly read WAV files (22050Hz, 8-bit) from within the emulator and Bob Grieb helped me with the Fast Fourier Transform code needed to make it work and tought me a bit about DSP and filter design. The add-on basically became a WAV-to-digital converter based on the Altair ACR recording format. I don't think it ever made it into the main code tree because of the inability to locate WAV images at the time. Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32 On 5/10/18, 5:45 PM, "vcf-midatlantic on behalf of Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic" <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org on behalf of vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: http://www.retrotechnology.com my home page starts with Web links to my VCF-East talk, and to a Web page stuff I'll be selling there as a vendor. http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/cass_data.html There are adults alive today, who have *no idea* what an "audio cassette" is! Shocked me. Learn how the Ancients communicated in tones! Lost technology, recovered by experts, even as we speak. Voices from the past! http://www.retrotechnology.com/vcfe_may18.html Less exciting fare. I'm adding more by the day. Lights that blink, boards covered with chips, clicky keyboards. Some of you know me - ask me about something I have you don't see. Root around my domain to see more. No IMSAIs No Altairs pls, light stuff OK? Surprisingly, I don't get axed much, about old Macs. Herb "The Beep" Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
This may be too beyond audio cassettes, but I figured I'd share. I never really was interested in this portion of my first PDP-8 haul, but I ended up with a Tennecomp Fidelipac drive. For those unfamiliar, these were commonly used for commercial breaks in radio stations and the stations' jingles. Similar to 8-track, but they didn't have a built-in pinch roller. I have yet to see if the unit is functional, and need to figure out where the interface card is (if it came with the interface, even), as I would like to digitize the tapes. Fortunately, I've got a friend with some radio station cart machines, so I could possibly record them to audio files and reverse engineer them from there. So yes, even a PDP-8/M, ca. 1974, and possibly prior, used an audio tape system for data storage! Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kBL9gRGF697A0xUT2 Kyle
Wow. Now that is really, really, REALLY cool. I'd not seen a continuous loop cartridge used for data storage in this manner before. I'm surprised you weren't interested in this, I think it's amazing! You know, if you're not interested in it, I have a good home for it... lol. But, that's interesting, and the continuous nature of the tape creates some issues for recording, I suppose it's designed with fixed size program blocks for filling a fixed amount of memory with data from tape to run the equipment the 8/M used to control. Wonder if this is used as a standalone program without an OS, or if there is an OS that supports running from this sort of tape? That is *really* cool, and I look forward to hearing more about what you uncover about it! -Ian On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 12:38 AM, Kyle Owen via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
This may be too beyond audio cassettes, but I figured I'd share.
I never really was interested in this portion of my first PDP-8 haul, but I ended up with a Tennecomp Fidelipac drive. For those unfamiliar, these were commonly used for commercial breaks in radio stations and the stations' jingles. Similar to 8-track, but they didn't have a built-in pinch roller.
I have yet to see if the unit is functional, and need to figure out where the interface card is (if it came with the interface, even), as I would like to digitize the tapes. Fortunately, I've got a friend with some radio station cart machines, so I could possibly record them to audio files and reverse engineer them from there.
So yes, even a PDP-8/M, ca. 1974, and possibly prior, used an audio tape system for data storage!
Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kBL9gRGF697A0xUT2
Kyle
Kyle, Since that is a 4 track drive/cart that will NOT be compatible with the broadcast Fidelipac drives, as those are 2 track running at 7.5 IPS. 4 track would be a 4 track "Muntz" stereo cartridge running at 3 3/4 IPS, which is what William Lear based the "Lear stereo 8". For the Fidelipac and the Muntz machines the cartridge is exactly the same with the pinch roller swinging up into the cart for playback, which is an advantage in this case as the pinch roller that normally turns to goo, can be replaced in the machine saving the tape carts from destruction. On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 12:38 AM, Kyle Owen via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
This may be too beyond audio cassettes, but I figured I'd share.
I never really was interested in this portion of my first PDP-8 haul, but I ended up with a Tennecomp Fidelipac drive. For those unfamiliar, these were commonly used for commercial breaks in radio stations and the stations' jingles. Similar to 8-track, but they didn't have a built-in pinch roller.
I have yet to see if the unit is functional, and need to figure out where the interface card is (if it came with the interface, even), as I would like to digitize the tapes. Fortunately, I've got a friend with some radio station cart machines, so I could possibly record them to audio files and reverse engineer them from there.
So yes, even a PDP-8/M, ca. 1974, and possibly prior, used an audio tape system for data storage!
Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kBL9gRGF697A0xUT2
Kyle
-- Matt Patoray Owner, MSP Productions KD8AMG
On 05/11/2018 12:38 AM, Kyle Owen via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
This may be too beyond audio cassettes, but I figured I'd share.
I never really was interested in this portion of my first PDP-8 haul, but I ended up with a Tennecomp Fidelipac drive. For those unfamiliar, these were commonly used for commercial breaks in radio stations and the stations' jingles. Similar to 8-track, but they didn't have a built-in pinch roller.
I have yet to see if the unit is functional, and need to figure out where the interface card is (if it came with the interface, even), as I would like to digitize the tapes. Fortunately, I've got a friend with some radio station cart machines, so I could possibly record them to audio files and reverse engineer them from there.
So yes, even a PDP-8/M, ca. 1974, and possibly prior, used an audio tape system for data storage!
Pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kBL9gRGF697A0xUT2
Kyle (the man, the myth, the legend!) that is a really neat find. I was going to say Matt Patoray could probably tell you a lot about it, but it looks like he beat me to it. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Sent the scans of my Tennecomp Minidek manuals along to Al at Bitsavers. Here they are! http://bitsavers.org/pdf/tennecomp/ Hope everyone has a great time this weekend. Sorry I can't be there this time! Kyle
Kyle, Very cool, I am looking at the documents right now. Thank you for making them available to Al. On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 10:50 PM, Kyle Owen via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Sent the scans of my Tennecomp Minidek manuals along to Al at Bitsavers. Here they are!
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/tennecomp/
Hope everyone has a great time this weekend. Sorry I can't be there this time!
Kyle
-- Matt Patoray Owner, MSP Productions KD8AMG
Thanks for Kyle's discussion of yet another audio cartridge format in use for data storage; and for remarks by Michael Thompson and Matt Patoray. I've added that content today to the cassette-data Web page. Maybe in the future, I'll move it to my PDP-8 Web pages. In the 1960's and 70's, PDP-8's were the "embedded controller" of that period. Just needed a bigger bed. The 8's also used Phillips-type cassettes recorded in a digital format and driven by logic-controlled drives. DEC had such a product, and I know of another product used on PDP-8's to operate commercial sewing machines. The Phi-Deck digital cassette product was available on some microcomputers of the mid-1970's including the Digital Group; a similar product was part of the MCM/80 8008 computer of the early 1970's. Details linked from my Web page above. Richard Cini, my old friend and S-100 colleague, and I are talking about the cassette-decoding software he mentioned in his post. I'll update my Web page accordingly. I recall some hobby efforts to use 8-tracks on microcomputers, but (ka-THUNK) they weren't all that convenient, and many 8-track drives were "read only". Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
As an aside to Herb's original notes on analog data storage on tape, what the heck is this thing? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Computer-Cassette-Drive-Trs-80/282954934826... [https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/282954934826-0-1/s-l1000.jpg]<https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Computer-Cassette-Drive-Trs-80/282954934826?hash=item41e16daa2a:g:WjcAAOSwKwBa7suQ> Vintage Computer Cassette Drive Trs 80 | eBay<https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Computer-Cassette-Drive-Trs-80/282954934826?hash=item41e16daa2a:g:WjcAAOSwKwBa7suQ> www.ebay.com Trs 80 cassette reader writer drive Untested | eBay! Looks like a TEAC MT-6 with GPIB interface, but I couldn't find anything on it. Anyone remember this?
participants (8)
-
Dave McGuire -
Herb Johnson -
Ian Primus -
Kelly Leavitt -
Kyle Owen -
Matt Patoray -
Richard Cini -
Tony Bogan