Hi all,
This is Ed from Spain, usual reader of this forum but never posted before. I'm very excited about this being first post and to share the following story with you all.
I travel with frequency to the UK mainly for business, and usually take the opportunity to buy things here and there related to my hobbies. During my last trip to London I took the opportunity to collect a lot of ~100 Amstrad CPC tape games from a very nice guy somewhere north east of London city.
The lot consisted in a mix of interesting and uninteresting titles, about a quarter of them being incomplete (missing inlays etc..). The games were presented to me in a box which wasnt very convenient for me to carry all around London's public transport ;) , so placed them in couple of semi transparent supermarket plastic bags and took off to my hotel. As an anecdote, I must admit that while on transit I got a few looks from random people, I guess I was being judged as an odd guy with a ton of old tapes in the year 2014 ;D , nothing you see everyday.
Now, to the interesting part of the story. Back home and once I had the time to go over the tapes to file them in my inventory list, I came across a set of 4 tapes with no inlays that looked remarkably odd. The tapes contained known Amsoft launch titles and were labeled as "prepod sample" but belonged to a company I never heard of before "Kiltdale Ltd", here's a photo:
(http://i.imgur.com/XvtlYAFl.jpg)
Research on the internet returned information about Kiltdale Ltd, apparently this company was one or the largest tape duplication factory dedicated to software. At this point I realized these tapes must had been pre production samples for quality control purposes or something similar. Now, what really called my eyes what the date printed on the tapes:
(http://i.imgur.com/3bV6xRrl.jpg)
Eureka! 7th of June 1984. the tapes are dated before the official first launch of the Amstrad CPC 464 in the market, 21st of June 1984. Some testing on the tapes returned positive results, the games are what the label reads and the work, the game is recorded identically on both sides of each tape.
I haven't verified if the games are any different to the ones officially published with the launch of the Amstrad CPC 464, but I will put some more time in comparing them.
Has any of you seen tapes like this ones before? Do you have any information about Kiltdale Ltd or know anything about pre production sample tapes? Do you have additional information that may help understand the source or nature of the tapes?
Thank you all for reading.
Ed
Hi Ed!
This is incredible! (and btw welcome to the forums :D) and, yes, I want to buy those tapes for 1€ each ;-)
I have never seen cassettes like that and I think your assumption that you got your hands on some pre-production samples is just spot on.
Maybe you could record a wav of each of the tapes and post them here so that we can have a load"" in our favourite emulator? :)
I will dump them when I have a chance.
Is there a way of doing this with a unmodified 464? Or I need to find a cassette player with an output?
Quote from: BSC on 17:06, 26 March 14
Hi Ed!
This is incredible! (and btw welcome to the forums :D ) and, yes, I want to buy those tapes for 1€ each ;-)
I have never seen cassettes like that and I think your assumption that you got your hands on some pre-production samples is just spot on.
Maybe you could record a wav of each of the tapes and post them here so that we can have a load"" in our favourite emulator? :)
Is there a chance that these are original masters, or maybe "pre-production" verification cassettes that were shipped to Amstrad to verify that the tapes were correctly being copied at their cassette reproduction facility?
Those tapes should take place into a computer museum like MO5.COM
Wow. Just wow.
I think only someone with experience in the duplication or software industry can answer those questions, but wow.
Please do take good care of them and do try dumping them!
Oh, and of course, welcome!
I will said... Better to not try to dump them, if you are not familiar with that.
Yeah, that's true maybe - there's a risk in handling them...
Holy Roland on the ropes! :o
Amazing. They seem to be more of demo samples (pre p'r'od) than master tapes.
best make copies them dump them
Quote from: dcdrac on 19:40, 26 March 14
best make copies them dump them
Seconded... Make a backup of them if you still have a working tape to tape device, then try dumping from the backup. :)
Any news? :)
Hi Gryzor, they are now with a local friend who owns a tape deck and can record them into files. I expect to get them back in a week and a half or so.
Btw, I found a fifth tape, Hunter Killer, same format and sticker from the tape duplication factory.
Quote from: Gryzor on 15:26, 15 April 14
Any news? :)
Hey, thanks for the update man!
Hey Ed!
Where in Spain do you live? I'm in Madrid, so if you live nearby, we can always meet and I'll help you preserve those tapes.
Nice find!
Regards,
Rob
Hi all, apologies for the waiting but here they are:
WeTransfer (https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/4ce512c76a127b2c298bef697e9cff4d20140515190551/fe7a1fbb0c9575dea9ea569da9fe7b0620140515190551/1e7e4c)
I happened to have a fifth tape (Hunter Killer) which is also included in the download above. The download will stay live until May 22nd.
Ed
What?? No more Likes?
Downloading right away... thanks so much man :)
I have downloaded the files
Looking forward to hearing from the experts about any differences.
I missed the download link, are they up anywhere else?
I converted the tapes to CDT...
Cubit and Punchy only work on a CPC 464 without AMSDOS rom! (And without any other expansion roms, I think)
Here are the files:
Quote from: Gryzor on 17:01, 17 May 14
What?? No more Likes?
It's interesting stuff and also interesting to compare how these tapes compare to the final product & if there's any difference, however I haven't been able to download the CDTs until now.
Personally though I've been sourcing out what Amstrad programs the public were sending to magazines in 1984, programs just waiting to be typed in, after lying dormant after so many years. :D
Thanks, @Devilmarkus (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=93) , great work!!! Going to upload them to the Downloads section... :)
EDIT: here: http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=dldir;sa=details;lid=3930 (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=dldir;sa=details;lid=3930)
Quote from: AMSDOS on 11:24, 02 June 14
It's interesting stuff and also interesting to compare how these tapes compare to the final product & if there's any difference, however I haven't been able to download the CDTs until now.
I had a go at Haunted Hedges and didn't notice any noticeable difference, even the corrupt Game Over message was on the distributed edition. :D
Quote from: edcross on 20:13, 15 May 14Hi all, apologies for the waiting but here they are:
WeTransfer (https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/4ce512c76a127b2c298bef697e9cff4d20140515190551/fe7a1fbb0c9575dea9ea569da9fe7b0620140515190551/1e7e4c)
I happened to have a fifth tape (Hunter Killer) which is also included in the download above. The download will stay live until May 22nd.
Ed
Hi there everyone,
By any chance does anyone still have access to the original recorded audio files shared back then? The WeTransfer link is down now and I can't find any other working link from
@Gryzor or
@Devilmarkus...
We are working on some audio processing tools for the Amstrad CPC and would love to have real recordings from real tapes, specially these, due to their "supposed" origin.
Thanks!
Quote from: ilys on 22:50, 09 September 23Quote from: edcross on 20:13, 15 May 14Hi all, apologies for the waiting but here they are:
WeTransfer (https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/4ce512c76a127b2c298bef697e9cff4d20140515190551/fe7a1fbb0c9575dea9ea569da9fe7b0620140515190551/1e7e4c)
I happened to have a fifth tape (Hunter Killer) which is also included in the download above. The download will stay live until May 22nd.
Ed
Hi there everyone,
By any chance does anyone still have access to the original recorded audio files shared back then? The WeTransfer link is down now and I can't find any other working link from @Gryzor or @Devilmarkus...
We are working on some audio processing tools for the Amstrad CPC and would love to have real recordings from real tapes, specially these, due to their "supposed" origin.
Thanks!
Hmmm why would you need these specific recordings? Wouldn't any old tape do?
That said, it's hard to find if I sitll have them without knowing the filenames... Will take a look though.
Hi
@Gryzor,
Yes, any old tape will do. Those tapes seemed interesting because what we are looking for is a variety of sources, and pre-production tapes fit into that (assuming they were created to test precisely that, the quality of the recording).
Other sources we are interested in are old tapes that people want to recover, like the case
@llopis explains in his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woko_i58w4c
Thanks for the help!