Looking for programs on audio tape/cassette containing programs for Sinclair ZX80 PC?

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Looking for programs on audio tape/cassette containing programs for Sinclair ZX80 PC?

OK, so back before ice age, I recall having a Sinclair ZX80 PC (with TV as a display, and a cassette tape player as storage device).

Obviously, the programs on cassette tapes made a very distinct sound (er... noise) when playing the tape... I was wondering if someone still had those tapes?

The reason (and the reason this Q is programming related) is that IIRC different languages made somewhat different pitched noises, but I would like to run the tape and listen myself to confirm if that was really the case...

I know these come up on auction sites like Ebay quite frequently - if you want to buy them yourself. If you get someone else who owns one to listen then you are going to get their subjective opinion :)

In any case, the language used to save it would be the secondary cause of the pitch changes - it will be related to the data. IOW you could probably create a straight binary data file that sounded very similar to a BASIC program (the BASIC would have been saved as text, as it is interpreted).

slugster 2010-03-19 01:00:47

In fact the ZX80's BASIC, while interpreted, was not all text. Keywords were not typed in; they were entered as tokens (i.e. in the keyword mode you would press `G` and GOTO would appear). Entering `GOTO` would do nothing. The character set wasn't ASCII, so all regular printable characters were in the range 0-63 and all the symbols and keywords were 213-255.

Gabe 2010-03-19 01:14:41

Cool (and a bit different). My background was on Apples, the BASIC programs were tokenised when you ran them.

slugster 2010-03-19 01:43:16

And with a whopping 1K of RAM shared between code and video, there wasn't much space. In fast the video memory was like a file, each line taking up only what it needed with CR characters. It was fun to watch the end of the video screen gradually disappear one character at a time as you used more memory :-)

paxdiablo 2010-03-19 06:33:45

+1 A:

I have the tapes but they've been stored in the garage at my parents' house and the last thirty years hasn't been kind to them.

You can get images here though: http://www.zx81.nl/dload if that's any use. Perhaps there is a tool out there for converting from the bytes back to the audio ;)

Edit: Perhaps here: http://ldesoras.free.fr/prod.html#src_ay3hacking

5arx 2010-08-18 10:44:36

Ah your post has got me all nostalgic for the heady days of Sinclair computing. And especially the games I thought so highly of as a ten year old... Remember 3D Monster Maze? 3D Defender? Ask a coder to write a playable 3D arcade game in 16K of shared memory nowadays and they'll probably look at you like you're some kind of crazy :-)

5arx 2010-08-18 14:10:38

ansaurus

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Looking for programs on audio tape/cassette containing programs for Sinclair ZX80 PC?

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