New cassettes converted

[nama]

Yes, some new software heading your way soon:

Aardvark Alien II
Aardvark C2/4 Cursor
Aardvark C2/4/8 Editor (as far as I can tell this is basically the same as 'C2/4 Cursor' but the data statements holding the HEX does seem to differ)
Aardvark Escape from Mars
Aardvark Pyramid
Aardvark Pyramid Set Up (I believe this needs to be run first to allow the 'Pyramid' program to work on a C1 (maybe I'm wrong). It also seems to work with Escape from Mars)
Aardvark Tiny Compiler
OSI Assembler Editor

I recently received these cassettes, and I used some of my spare time to backup the tapes. I used a program called KCS which can convert Kansas City Standard recordings to text, and visa versa. It sounds easy, but as the recordings were fairly degraded after 30+ years, the process actually involved doing multiple recordings of each side of the cassettes, then using KCS to convert them. KCS has a number of settings and they effect the text output in mysterious ways, I was never able to get a perfect convert, but had to do multiple samplings using different settings then manually assemble the text files hoping that It could actually be done. It would have been impossible if it wasn't for the fact that the programs were recorded on both sides of the cassettes so I was able to get basically two completely different samples for each program. Where one side may have multiple drop out areas, the other side would have dropout areas in (hopefully) different places, and with a little luck, a lot of persistence and occasional guesswork, I was able to piece things together. Needless to say it was far more difficult than I was expecting, and on average I could do one cassette a day if I put about 4 hours of late evening time into it...added up, thats a lot of hours! The good news is I think I have been able to convert and assemble everything, and have been able to superficially test them on the OSI emulator.

Dave, I'll send the files your way very soon so you can share.

Cheers
Philip

[Steve Gray]

Nice!

Thanks for all the work you've done. Looking forward to seeing them. I made the mistake of throwing out all my OSI tapes one day while cleaning. I had the floppy disks so I didn't think I needed them...

Looking forward to a new tape and disk archive on this site soon

Steve

[dave]

Phil, that's awesome. I have been neglecting the site a bit lately, as we have three new devices heading to testing, but I plan to tend to the site, and to my OSI this month.

Steve, I still have some of your files I also need to upload.

Thanks guys!

[Steve Gray]

Phil,

Just a thought, but it might also be an idea to simply digitize the audio as-is into WAV format. That way the original is preserved. Write those WAV files back out to audio cd for loss-less archival.

Steve

[nama]

I have all the audio files that I recorded archived, but I was (mostly) copying them in stereo as I discovered that this gave me more flexibility when filtering noise from the recording. I could just combine the left and right tracks to create a single mono track, but I'm wondering if that would produce differences from a file that was originally only recorded in mono? If so I could go and rerecord them again in mono.

Phil