[ILUG] Re: OT: Data to Audio Tape

[Ronan Cunniffe]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Niall O Broin wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 05:17:23PM +0100, Colin Whittaker wrote:
> 
> Ah, children - we put those times behind us 20 years ago, with the BBC
> micro, the Commodore 64 and the Spectrum. Audio tape is an atrocious data
> storage mechanism.
> 
I second that.  I grew up with an Electron (32kb baby brother of the BBC),
which stored data on tape in 256 byte blocks @ 1200 baud (and hence so
did the Beeb). Now, ok, the encoding scheme was primitive, but your chance
of getting 2x or 3x 56K baud is exactly zero.

This is getting very OT, so people mail me if you want the gory details,
but I suggest you look very closely at the number 44.1Khz, the highest
sample rate cards is likely to support.

BTW: Know where the magic number 44100 Hz comes from?  The early
guys doing digital audio used *video* tape.  So unless in possession a
genuine Cloak of Analogue Wizardry (+4 to Signal Processing, +9 vs.
Flames), we should probably take the hint.

Ronan C.