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1996-06-05
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T A P E F I X v1.00
ZX Spectrum Tape Recovery Tools
(c) 1996 Busy Bytes
by Arsen Torbarina
...Revive your memories!!!...
Do you still have some dusty ZX Spectrum tapes with those good
old simple games, or perhaps there are some programs of yours
that you were proud of ten years ago ... And now you are keen to
load them again, but they just seem not to be readable anymore!
IF YOU THOUGHT THAT THOSE RECORDINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO READ -- YOU
WERE AWFULLY WRONG!!! TAPEFIX WILL RECOVER ALMOST ANY OLD RECORDING
THAT IS DUE TO THE DAMAGES OR SIGNAL LOSS CAUSED BY AGING, IMPOSSIBLE
TO LOAD IN THE ORDINARY WAY. RECOVERED DATA WILL BE SAVED EITHER BACK
TO TAPE, OR IN THE WELL KNOWN "Z80" EMULATOR'S TAP FILE.
Version 1.00 requires as input a 16-bit WAV or RAW sample. After
the filtering, the data will be read, and then written to a TAP
file, that (in case you don't own the "Z80" Emulator) can be
transformed back to a WAV sample and then played back to tape.
The whole process performed on a 486 computer, supplied with the
SmartDrive, takes less than the ordinary loading.
TAPEFIX uses specially developed digital filtering methods to
separate the useful signal from noise and errors. Although the
default filter settings and included INI setups are quite enough
for most of the recordings, sometimes it will require some
experimenting before the recording is successfully processed.
For detail information, please read TAPEFIX.TXT.
INCLUDED EXAMPLE
----------------
Included file EXAMPLE.WAV is a short sample of an obviously deformed
recording, that is absolutely impossible to load in the ordinary way.
If you play it, you will hear that it contains TWO short blocks, but
if you run the TAPEFIX with the default settings, only ONE block will
be found! In this case, it helps to make a LOG file, and to observe
why the other block was not found:
tapefix example.wav example.log
Observing the LOG file, you will see that the LEADER tone comes and
goes after every few impulses. It means that:
■ either the frequencies are out of the given boundaries,
■ or the threshold should be set to a higher value.
Try to vary the THRESHOLD (/THRESH=x). Set it first to 0, then 1, 10,
50, 100, 200, and if this doesn't help -- combine it with the frequency
boundaries settings.
After a few tries, you should find out that the threshold value should
be set to a value higher than 40.
tapefix example.wav /thresh=50
The correct setting is saved in EXAMPLE.INI:
tapefix example.wav example.ini