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1200-Baud Archeology

Posted by kdawson on from the when-men-were-men-and-interpreters-ran-in-4k dept.

jamie found this singularly geeky article on reconstructing Apple I BASIC from a cassette tape. It claims to offer the first confirmed perfect dump (BIN) of the 4096 bytes of this venerable interpreter. Terrific fun for the whole family. "The Apple I is extremely rare. Only 200 were built, and less than 100 are believed to be in existence. Neither Steve nor Woz own an Apple I any more, and neither does Apple Inc. The cassettes are even rarer, as not every Apple I came with one... So here is how to decode the signal. Let us first open the audio file in Audacity and look at the waveform... It is now time to write a small program to measure and dump the width of the pulses."

5 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. this makes me want to take a dump of my own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    *off to bathroom*

    I'll report my findings later

    1. Re:this makes me want to take a dump of my own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      be sure to check the logs

  2. Sounds like a great idea for an iPhone app. by jcr · · Score: 4, Funny

    It would be way cool to have an Apple I emulator on my phone. Come to think of it, a DEC PDP-1 emulator with SpaceWar would be pretty sweet, too.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. Uhh... by consonant · · Score: 5, Funny

    Terrific fun for the whole family.

    That must be one weird family...

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  4. Those were the days... by Digital_Mercenary · · Score: 4, Funny

    Many seasons ago, in a high school computer lab in the Bronx. I would save programs from computer labs Commodore PET to tape and wonder why they would always be blank the next day. Over time I realized that riding the NYC trains with my school bag on the car floor was not such a cool idea. NYC trains were somehow erasing the tapes when they were place closed to the floor. Until I figured this out there were many nights spent pondering what the gods of computing had against me. Curse you Number 6 Line! Curse you!!!

    "Ahhh the suffering...."