Microcassette data backup using acoustic coupling
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- Turning a microcassette into a data storage container. In this experiment I will be testing the ability of microcassettes to store data using only a microcassette dictation machine and a computer. Without even connecting them together, just passing the data as an audio sound through the air between devices.
Music: DJ TR!P
Song: Janus Cycle (Cyba)
Techmoan - Obscure 1980s HiFi - The Stereo MicroCassette. The tiny tape that wanted to go big.
• Obscure 1980s HiFi - T...
WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars
www.wired.com/2008/07/ff-warg... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I've been messing around with data on microcassettes and KCS for years now. I'm glad someone else is as crazy as me to try this stuff! That said, you're quite lucky that 'robust' deck still works; I've had 3 inexplicably quit working and just refuse any sort of power input, and just beeeeeep forever. They're a complete pain. At the moment I still use micros with a ZX81 and it works quite well.
Guess only a few people are interested in this stuff, I think its awesome and think this content is great. I just got into c64 programming but have a background in electronics. Im trying to create a microcomputer that runs basic and want to use microcassettes for storage. Great vid
Hey thanks. Good luck with your project. Feel free to let me know how it goes.
I had an Epson HX-20 as a kid.
SONY MICRO WALKMAN M-50, JVC and Fisher also made portable stereo microcassette players/rec. SONY made a few portable MC stereo recorders aimed at birdwatchers? They also made a stereo MC deck.
Acoustic coupling, microcasette, data backup - niche, but fits my interests perfectly!
The data sounded much like the AOL connecting sound...
omg digital sample was from War Games. It's been decades.
Looking back, audio based data transfer was tried for pretty long. I remember acoustic couplers even being available for early mobile phones and PDAs in the late 90ies.
There were also interfaces to use VHS recorders by encoding digital to video images (resulting in color bars on the screen), and "channel videodat" to squeeze broadcasted BBS data via the return lines of satellite TV programs.
On the other hand, you could use miniDV cassettes as a native digital backup medium, and in theory it should have outperformed early DAT standards (13GB per cassette and around 3.5MB/sec via Firewire), but I don't think no one ever used this software in practice.
Anyhow, fascinating, what has been tried to deal with expensive data storage and slow transfers.
Yea DAT tape was also used for Data Storing purpose. The so called DDS tapes. Reel to reel was also prominently used because the higher tape speed and better frequency response made it an ideal storage medium.
Could you also use suction cup inductive coulpling the kind that is used for recording from a telephone handset?
Sorry for the late reply/comment, but I discovered your channel only hours ago.
I like your thinkiing and approach here. It resembles my own you see.
In fact I've been thinking of putting digital data onto Cylinder Records, since the Edison Phonograph in its very nature is born with a recording feature. All it needs is a specific recording cutter head and a fresh new wax cylinder and voila....
There were 2 and 4 minutes machines around. Some were bought as 2 minutes machines and retrofitted with new gearings so you could choose between 2 and 4 minutes.
I've always wondered if it was possible to store a tiny picture or some text using "modem sound" recorded on one of these Edison Phonograph wax cylinders.
QAM-coding could prove to be a bit too much for this format, but it doesn't seem impossible.
Cheers mate. Have a great day.
May I suggest also trying recording sstv on a cylinder. I tried sstv in a more recent video about 'Analogue Image Transfer'. I also like the idea of storing digital information on a cylinder, please let me know how it goes.
@@JanusCycle Yeah, SSTV. It must be 15 years ago or so when I discovered that concept, but I devoted some time instead of recoding films and documentaries into 320x240 MP4's and keeping the bitrate high (3-4 mbit/sec) so they could and can be watched on my still functioning Nokia E72.
The interesting part is, that by keeping a high bitrate, these 320x240 videos can be upscaled without being a massive letdown.
I do have a working Edison Home Model-B Phonograph, but the gear on the governor is very worn and so are the non-existant "bearings" everywhere, that is nothing but drilled holes in the motor side plates.
The result is a intolerable level of flutter making it truly impossible to make any recordings with the recording cutter stylus. There's no purpose in even trying. It's that bad.
So I'm really on the hunt for someone with a lathe and gear cutting tools and equipment who would be interested in creating/making two new motors for research and experimentation.
Number One for the sake of making just a new motor. A reproduction with the one change of it having mini/micro ball bearings for the gear axls. This is to have a fresh base for measurements.
Number Two for the creation of double herringbone helical gears and worm, miter or screw gears (haven't decided yet. Probably worm would have the most fluid and silent operation) where appropriate, all for the sake of speed stability/lowest level of flutter during operation.
My problem is, that I don't have much energy on a daily basis. I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and is still receiving treatment that drains half of my week away, so I'm left with two-three days where I'm back in business. But then household tasks have priority.
I can't see when I would be able to put digital files onto cylinders, but the idea is alive. There's just too much to do first and some of it I can't do myself.
Anyway. I have a Sanyo RD-XM1 Stereo Micro cassette, new old stock and new in unopened box if you by any means should be interested.
I managed to find the exact sizes and types of belts that was recommended by Sanyo back in the day, inside one of their service books. (It was so hard to dig out)
I asked MIHOKM from ebay if he could provide me with the correct sized belts and he could, so an unused set of these belts will of course come with the machine.
www.ebay.de/str/walkmanbelts
I'm having enough trouble with KCS using it the proper way! I've had good and bad luck with it in the past. If there's anyone out there that wants to make an easy to use improved version of this sort of thing with error correction and more up to date techniques, I'd love to waste my time with it!
Have u gotten anywhere, im interested in this.
@@jakep8484 Daniel Faradey is making something like what I'm talking about. Supposed to be much faster but I couldn't get it to work it all myself for some reason.
Finland had radioshow called silikoni in 1985. They send programs via FM radio.
Wow, that sounds really interesting, it must have been odd to hear these signals coming over radio.
really awesome!! this is what i was looking for!
maybe you can get more capacity by using "amodem" (and python (but not sure if that will run on your system)).
and probably you could get more reliability by using a cable instead of just acoustic coupling.
I was exploring acoustic coupling for this video specifically. But I would like to try other backup methods in the future. Glad you enjoyed this :)
Genius
this is so coll. Which KCS program did you use?
The software I used is a simple DOS program called KCS.EXE version 0.8 or KCS08.zip
Modem protocols are inherently not well suited to tape. Because phone network doesn't play tricks on the timing. Tape is subject to all sorts of mechanical slip in the mechanism.
Though it's a simple FSK isn't it, so perhaps with smarter software you'd get a better chance to get the data recovered. Unfortunately noise is likely to interfere with recovery somewhat.
cassette is stereo, so there'd be nothing stopping you from writing a clock to one channel and data to the other, then the software can sync to the clock so regardless of wow and flutter the timing is maintained. More like 2 wire serial in that regard I guess.
I thought he would connect the aux in to the aux out on the portable computer. That's kinda were a lot of loss came in from
Cool, I've been looking for something like that for ages to use on my phone, so I can output any files as a kcs audio.
It run in termux with only one small modification of the python script.
Next step is to see if it successfully decide a recording.
Edit: on line 83, replace "U" with "r"
The c64 datacassette i believe plays coded audio twice then compares for errors I believe
Also the datasette did the analogue to digital conversion in the datasette itself. Minimizing the analogue path to hopefully increase reliability. The disadvantage was you had to use the Commodore unit. Other 8-bit computers could use any cassette recorder, with lots of audio level twiddling to get it right.
@@JanusCycle being interested in this I picked up a ti99/4a computer and was able to read and write to cassette pretty easily. Volume should be around 4/5 the way up, at least that worked well on the few cassette recorders I tried, no problems with it except if volume is too low.
@@jakep8484 I had a friend who had a ti99/4a a long time ago. Good times :)
@@JanusCycle yeah TI made a well designed computer for the time imo its not very powerful but there is some things about it that are useful, great for hobby basic games.
the normal ROM load method has a lot of data redundancy for error correction, yes. That is also why it's so slow because it was made with all the high error rate of Typ1 tapes in mind, from the late 70s. As tape quality got increasingly better and more reliable (less drop-outs & better frequency response) all these safety measures weren't really needed anymore. Hence why Turbo loaders became a thing which increased the audio speed of the bit-signal and also dropped the data redundancy.
I have
Impressive. Is there a software for Windows 10 that does the same thing?