The SamRam has built in it some snapshot software. Using this software you can save any 48K Spectrum program to tape or to a .TAP file, as is explained in section 3.2 below. But the SamRam software cannot handle a 128K program.
The utility that can convert a 128K snapshot (and 48K ones for that matter) to a .TAP file is called Z802TAP. The .TAP file includes a basic loader, and a loading screen if you want. Z802TAP compresses the blocks it writes (using a better method than used in compressing .Z80 files) to save loading time. If you don't want it to compress the blocks, for instance when you want to take a look at the ram pages of the Spectrum 128, specify -u when you run Z802TAP. You can load the converted program simply by executing
Z80 -ti tapefile
|
LOAD "" (for a 48K program) or changing the hardware
mode to Spectrum 128 and choose `Tape Loader' in the menu.
The program TAP2TAPE writes .TAP files back to tape. The program consists of a batch file TAP2TAPE.BAT, which executes the TAP2TAPE.Z80 file using the emulator. The .TAP file is written to tape exactly as it is, so that if a block contains a tape error, it won't load correctly from tape either. If the entire .TAP file has been saved the emulator will start loading from tape. At that point, press space once to return to DOS.