Had fun doing this. Squeezed 68 games on to a C-90 cassette. :D
that's saving space !!! :o
Meet you behind the school after day's end?
So, how much KB do fit on an 90 Minutes cassette?
Quote from: Gryzor on 14:13, 18 September 20
Meet you behind the school after day's end?
Don't forget to bring a blank! ;)
Quote from: GUNHED on 14:23, 18 September 20
So, how much KB do fit on an 90 Minutes cassette?
I didn't count, but you can feel free to check all the sizes on CNGSoft's website and add them all up from the tracklist that I provided. ;)
What did you use to transfer them?
Does a 90mn tape do not have a drawback around the mechanism making it forcing at end and the tape slowdown?
If I'm not wrong, the hardware was made for computer cassette that was mainly around 15mn?
Quote from: tjohnson on 01:58, 31 October 20
What did you use to transfer them?
I converted them to wav file using JavaCPC and then copied them using a USB tape recorder. :)
Quote from: TotO on 10:49, 31 October 20Does a 90mn tape do not have a drawback around the mechanism making it forcing at end and the tape slowdown? If I'm not wrong, the hardware was made for computer cassette that was mainly around 15mn?
I've heard this but I've never experienced it. I've been copying stuff on to 60 minute and 90 minute tapes for years for the Amstrad and never had a fail personally.
OK!
Quote from: TotO on 10:49, 31 October 20
Does a 90mn tape do not have a drawback around the mechanism making it forcing at end and the tape slowdown?
If I'm not wrong, the hardware was made for computer cassette that was mainly around 15mn?
Just like Shaun i also copied files constantly for like 5-7 years straight & never had issues with 60 or 90 mins tapes. Not even above the default baud speeds of 1000 & 2000. Must admit i in general always used 60 min tapes especally when doing the 2500-3000 baud recordings in combination with "quicksaving" the files (quicksaving: instead of saving a 26x blocks of 2k bytes you save one file 2k byte & one long 24k byte one). Amstrad 464's really had an incredible quality tape deck in it. Cant really remember a single time saving/loading went wrong unless there was a physical error on the tape or user errors of cause. But i also always used good brand tapes as you could certainly get some horrible trashbin worth tapes as well. Also only used "normal position" tapes as metallic tapes (like chrome) distort the audio. Trying to remember if we even had 120 mins tapes back then as i cant remember using one.
I do remember the short data tapes like 15 mins too. I mostly remember them from the really early zx81 days. Like the early budding IT stores or music hardware stores would have like a bin of mixed zx80/81 tapes with homeprinted lables. Cant speak for the zx80 but the 81 was certailly a bit more unreliabele when it came to recording & reading back but we also just used some random casette/data recorder so it could have been the recorder. They did have short tapes in the later Amstrad days as well. I did get lured into buying a dozen at rebate price at a the local store. That is where i discovered how apparently useless the c10/C15/C20 tapes was .. for storing real games at least because of how short they are. Wasnt untill later that i got into my brain that ultra short tapes are really usefull for storing a single program that you use a lot. Like i had one with a paint program on both sides, one with a copy program, one with a speech program etc. Quite handy to have easy to access tools without having to dig thru long tapes.
One concern about long tapes isnt just the normal "bit-rot" that is slowly happening over the last 30 years, but i have noticed that longer tapes do tend to last less well like i got a Frankie Goes To Hollywood game tape where the spools/tape has clearly "fallen" aka not kept in place to a point where the tape is damaged & even if you where to open the tape & manually put things it place i doubt it will load without errors. So the short original tapes do have a pro there.
EDIT: and 68 is a really impressive number of games on cassette showing how amazingly compressed the games really are. Also Renegade is a "multiload" so it technically takes up space for 2 games. Had it been normal non-compressed mixed games im guessing you could put on a good dozen games on each side.
Quote from: Cholo on 02:11, 01 November 20
EDIT: and 68 is a really impressive number of games on cassette showing how amazingly compressed the games really are. Also Renegade is a "multiload" so it technically takes up space for 2 games. Had it been normal non-compressed mixed games im guessing you could put on a good dozen games on each side.
I ended up making two more of these. The second tape had 71 games on it! :D ;D
I'll have to try this, I've got quite a few cassette recorders and blank tapes. I still haven't managed to transfer breaking baud though.
Quote from: tjohnson on 18:53, 01 November 20I'll have to try this, I've got quite a few cassette recorders and blank tapes. I still haven't managed to transfer breaking baud though.
I've done it successfully with one of these. :)
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740413?clickSR=slp:term:usb%20cassette:8:232:1
I imagine you'd be the king of the schoolyard with a tape like these back in the day :D
Quote from: Gryzor on 10:06, 02 November 20
I imagine you'd be the king of the schoolyard with a tape like these back in the day :D
Knowing me, I'd still be the red headed stepchild for having an Amstrad. Was third popular 8bit here in Ireland.
The 'cool' kids had the C64.
Well you'd have been the king here in Greece anyhow :D
Maybe so, but the collapse of the blank tape industry would have left a dent in the Irish economy, I'd bought so many blanks between 87-91!
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 18:56, 01 November 20
I've done it successfully with one of these. :)
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740413?clickSR=slp:term:usb%20cassette:8:232:1 (https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740413?clickSR=slp:term:usb%20cassette:8:232:1)
Interesting, I've tried with 3 different shoe box cassette machines and still been unable to get past the loader, as soon as it gets to the part where it should start to load the graphics it doesn't. Maybe I need some better cassettes.
Quote from: tjohnson on 16:25, 03 November 20Interesting, I've tried with 3 different shoe box cassette machines and still been unable to get past the loader, as soon as it gets to the part where it should start to load the graphics it doesn't. Maybe I need some better cassettes.
It's not a standard shoebox recorder though, it has a USB port in it which can play the files from wav and record directly to it. No messing about with volume, tone etc.
Quote from: tjohnson on 16:25, 03 November 20
Interesting, I've tried with 3 different shoe box cassette machines and still been unable to get past the loader, as soon as it gets to the part where it should start to load the graphics it doesn't. Maybe I need some better cassettes.
Are you getting read errors like "Read Error A" or Read Error B" (aka probably just a volume issue) or is the game crashing (aka attempting to load a protected game or motor pause issues)?
Oddly amstrad games should be one of the easiest 8 bit games to load from tape but since the original 464 had motor control (aka can pause while loading) so many things can suddenly go wrong. Even old Amsoft games pause the motor when they draw the into logo, so if you arnt loading the game on a real 464 or a 6128/664 with the correct lead & compatible cassette player (with motor contol aka "ear" plug) thing will go wrong. Also im still puzzled why amstrad released the 464 plus without motor control too .. i mean why release a new Amstrad machine & make it incompatible with 1000s of already released original proteacted games?
Neither read error a or b just doesn't start to load the graphics.
Quote from: tjohnson on 23:34, 04 November 20
Neither read error a or b just doesn't start to load the graphics.
Which games is this happening on for you?
Ah yes as Shaun mentioned it help a lot if we know the game/file you are trying to tranfter/run.
About the CNG compactages is a bit different as not only is their games heavily compressed but the whole game including the loading screen is contained in the one package so you actually dont see the loading screen untill the whole thing has completely loaded. Also i can hear that the games are recorded with probably a very high 2500-3000 baud & "quicksaving" aka only 2 blocks (one small & one really really long). This works really well & will load really fast in any emulator but the "breakneck" speed may be too fast for transftering onto tape (unless you have the volume 100% correct. Might be worth remaking the tape file to a more human 1000-2000 baud to ensure less things going wrong in a transfer ;)
EDIT: fun thing to remember that these old amstrad games is compressed on a modern pc with huge ram as the actually compression always takes a huge amount of ram but that decompressing takes much less ram. So these old 8 bit games couldnt actually excist that compressed back in the early 80'ies (well a Atari or Amiga might have done the job). So its a little bit like finally having that hover-scateboard from Back to the future 2 ;D
Quote from: Cholo on 21:26, 05 November 20
Ah yes as Shaun mentioned it help a lot if we know the game/file you are trying to tranfter/run.
Exactly, more specifically, what protection the game is using which will provide some pretty useful information. :)
Sorry I probably wasn't clear enough, I've been trying to put breaking baud demo onto a physical tape but just can't get it to play back and load. Is there a way to reduce the baud rate?
Quote from: tjohnson on 22:04, 06 November 20
Sorry I probably wasn't clear enough, I've been trying to put breaking baud demo onto a physical tape but just can't get it to play back and load. Is there a way to reduce the baud rate?
You need to be quite accurate when it comes to volume adjustment when recording that.
You *could* convert the cdt to wav and lower the pitch in an audio editor such as Audacity, but it would defeat the purpose of it to begin with.
@Craigsbar Wanna weigh in here, Breaking Baud king? :)
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 11:11, 07 November 20
You need to be quite accurate when it comes to volume adjustment when recording that.
You *could* convert the cdt to wav and lower the pitch in an audio editor such as Audacity, but it would defeat the purpose of it to begin with.
@Craigsbar Wanna weigh in here, Breaking Baud king? :)
I've tried quite a few decks without luck. I've given up trying now tbh. The annoying thing is it loads 100% using an cassette adapter so the recording must be sufficiently degraded when saved to tape to not work. Tried different tapes too, normal and chrome.
Never use chrome tapes for games. They end up adding distortion and screwing up the tone.
They were great for music but complete rubbish for data.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 15:34, 07 November 20
Never use chrome tapes for games. They end up adding distortion and screwing up the tone.
They were great for music but complete rubbish for data.
I tried just in case. but I wouldn't ordinarily if nothing else because they are much rarer and expensive now and a waste for data
Quote from: tjohnson on 09:40, 10 November 20
I tried just in case. but I wouldn't ordinarily if nothing else because they are much rarer and expensive now and a waste for data
I just thought of something. When you're recording BB over from PC to tape recorder, are you using a stereo or mono cable?
I know the Spectrums don't like stereo cables, Amstrads generally aren't that fussy, but this is BB we're talking about.
Try recording a regular game first and see if you run into issues?
I found one of those USB Bush tape decks locally for sale. Sorry to say but the one I got is truely awful, terrible build quality, I opened it up and had a look, I don't think it could be worse made if they tried,
I managed to record BB onto a tape from USB and it started to load on my other machine but failed fairly early on. I couldn't even get the loader to start from this pile. Even the earphone socket is suck poor quality that removing the connector often leaves it shorted so the internal speaker doesn't work until poking the socket. I'll be selling it on, my other one is an Alba probably from the 1990s which is about 100x better made.
Sorry just a warning to anyone looking to buy a shoebox, avoid this!
Quote from: tjohnson on 11:41, 11 November 20
I found one of those USB Bush tape decks locally for sale. Sorry to say but the one I got is truely awful, terrible build quality, I opened it up and had a look, I don't think it could be worse made if they tried,
I managed to record BB onto a tape from USB and it started to load on my other machine but failed fairly early on. I couldn't even get the loader to start from this pile. Even the earphone socket is suck poor quality that removing the connector often leaves it shorted so the internal speaker doesn't work until poking the socket. I'll be selling it on, my other one is an Alba probably from the 1990s which is about 100x better made.
Sorry just a warning to anyone looking to buy a shoebox, avoid this!
What were you expecting for 25 quid to be honest?
I've never had a load fail from anything I recorded from it. You sure the alignment on your machine isn't off a bit?
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 13:26, 11 November 20
What were you expecting for 25 quid to be honest?
I've never had a load fail from anything I recorded from it. You sure the alignment on your machine isn't off a bit?
I didn't even pay £25 and I was still dissappointed. Argos retail these at £30 but feels like the sort of thing you would find on a market stall not in a retail shop, just feels very poor quality and not something fit to be sold in a shop like Argos and would rather pay more and get something that's well built and will last. I haven't played around with it much but will do by the way I'm not having a go about it just feel that what would be deemed acceptable quality has gone down alot!
For expectations, that's you getting old, I'm afraid. ;) :laugh:
Truth of the matter is tape recording these days is a novelty, and will be treated like a toy. So it'll be made out of cheap parts and sold at a cheap price, usually to target the beardy hipster brigade. I won't argue the build quality of it, but it actually does what it does quite well. I've made about 30 odd tapes with the thing!
So I'm guessing you either got a dodgy one, or your alignment might be slightly off. I doubt it's the tapes. I recorded onto a used tape from 1997 and it still worked fine. :)