Accessing Coleco ADAM cassettes?

[Gapporin]

Just recently got this question asked in the Knowledge Base:


Hello, Years ago I had a coleco ADAM. I had stored lots of valuable family info on the cassette tape usee for storage....Well...now I do not know how to retrieve that info. I have info on it that has been lost...besides what is on the tape. How can I access these files?

Anybody know how he could go about doing this?

[SkiDragon]

I dont know how, but in the mean time he should find some way to protect the tapes from degrading, as they are bound to do.

[rbudrick]

Well, if nothing else works, maybe you can print out the data with an old ADAM printer....maybe OCR software could get it into Windows.

I don't actually know of any ADAM-(modern OS) cables or sofware.

I'm sure there's a way...I'd really be interested in knowing this myself.

The alternative is to back up the tapes as .wav files in the least....at least you could remake the cassettes from that if you needed to.

-Rob

[PDP-13]

http://www.pivar.com/

will do data conversion from the tapes.

It is always wise to do backups in non-proprietary formats and media. Or upgrade your backups every 7 years to the latest 'popular' media.

Hopefully your data will not wind up like That. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project)

Coleco ADAM tapes are some kind of wierd proprietary high speed tape, I would NOT recommend playing them in a normal tape recorder.

[adamcomputer]

Standing offer..... IF anyone needs to have information on Coleco ADAM digital data pack tape translated into Dos text format and/or printed material, I am able and willing to help you accomplish that end.....for FREE, as long as you only have a tape or two. I am just the ADAM NEWS NETWORK editor, not a business with lots of time on my hands. You may visit me @ http;//ann.hollowdreams.com which is my ADAM website. Contact information is available there or here on this forum. <adamcomputer@yahoo.com> :image:

[rbudrick]

I remember there being a program for the Atari 2600 Supercharger tapes that allowed you to feed in the tape as a .wav file, and the program converted the sounds to digital code (basically, a file). It just took the simple sine wave of the file and determined whether a 1 or a 0 appeared during the stream. Pretty simple.

I would imagine such a program would be very easily adapted for ADAM if info on the wave form info (example: length and possibly pitch for the 0 and 1...pitch is likely unnecessary as long as it is distinguishable, iirc) could be obtained.

Another program converted regular roms to .wav so the Supercharger could read them from any audio source.

Thoughts?

-Rob

EDIT: Found it! Written by Bob Colbert. I used to see his name all over the VCS homebrew scene. He even wrote a Game Genie program for the VCS called Cheetah.

http://members.cox.net/rcolbert/makebin.htm


Now you can digitally remaster your Supercharger tapes, or play the games on an Atari 2600 emulator! Makebin is a DOS application (32-bit and 16-bit versions included) that allows you to convert a .wav file of a Supercharger game into a .bin file for use with an Atari 2600 emulator. You can also use the .bin file to create a digitally remastered .wav file by using Makewav v3.1!

Just feed the tape into a .wav, run this program on it, and you have your .bin. Use Make Wav to go backwards:

http://members.cox.net/rcolbert/makewav.htm

I'm sure the code would be very easily adapted for any computer tape format.