Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Update on backing up my ZX Spectrum games
Elsewhere on this blog I have described how I have backup up my ZX Spectrum cassettes to my PC, but tonight I had some trouble.
It has been a while since I backed up my tape collection, but I finally got round to it. Unfortunately, my trusty old cassette player seems to have been mysteriously damaged - the pinch wheel is unattached and the motor seems intermittently jammed too.
So, I connected my WHSmith Computer Program Data Recorder to my PC, but the .wav files produced could not be reliably decoded by MakeTZX.
After a couple of hours of messing about with stereo leads, mono lead, stereo/mono adapters, volume levels etc, the following concoction worked and I've managed to backup my Cronosoft collection:
It has been a while since I backed up my tape collection, but I finally got round to it. Unfortunately, my trusty old cassette player seems to have been mysteriously damaged - the pinch wheel is unattached and the motor seems intermittently jammed too.
So, I connected my WHSmith Computer Program Data Recorder to my PC, but the .wav files produced could not be reliably decoded by MakeTZX.
After a couple of hours of messing about with stereo leads, mono lead, stereo/mono adapters, volume levels etc, the following concoction worked and I've managed to backup my Cronosoft collection:
- WHSmith Computer Program Data Recorder, with a volume setting of 4.8-ish
- A stereo/mono adapter in the LOAD socket
- The Spectrum's mono lead connecting the tape player to my MacBook's Line In socket
- Audacity recording the incoming .WAV file and exporting it to my PC as 8-bit Mono
- Running MakeTZX Foo.WAV -f on my PC
Labels: audacity, backup, cassette, Cronosoft, MakeTZX, Sinclair ZX Spectrum
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