[Coco] makewav

[Tormod Volden]

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 1:56 AM, keithclark1966 wrote:
> I'm using a program called makewav to convert a .cas file to a .wav file.
>
> Here is a sample conversion and the output:
>
> keithclark at keithclark-eM355:~/CoCo/toolshed-2.1-linux$ ./makewav -r -0 -v
> golf.cas
> makewav - S record to CoCo/MC-10 audio WAV file
> Copyright (C) 2007 tim lindner
>
> Total data length is 6350 bytes
> Encoded filename: FILE
> File type: 0x0
> Data type: 0x0
> Start address: 0x0000
> Exec address:  0x0000
> End address:   0x18ce
> sample size: 1200 hertz: 10, 2400 hertz: 5
>
> Now, the -r switch is supposed to allow for a binary instead of an S record
> input file.  The -0 switch outputs a basic file as opposed to a machine
> language file, or a basic data file.

Hi Keith,

A binary input file must be a "pure" binary supposed to be loaded byte
for byte into the CoCo's memory, for instance the output from an
assembler, or an ascii (-a) or tokenized (-b) BASIC text file.

A .cas file is something different, it is an encoding of the data
stream going through the cassette cable, including cassette transfer
headers, checksums and the like.

What you need is a .cas to .wav converter, like for instance Ciaran's
cas2wav.pl at http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/

makewav currently doesn't do this conversion. It shouldn't be too
difficult to add, since it has all the pieces needed (generating a
waveform from a bit stream) and just need to skip the header
generation. But on the other hand there are other tools specialized
for this.

Note that converting a .cas to .wav is not guaranteed to work. A .cas
file targeted for emulators often omits the long leader bytes
sequences (the long tone that you can hear on the start of every
cassette file) and the "silent" bytes between blocks when there is no
sound and the CoCo is given time to digest the data. Advanced
converters might try to parse the .cas file in order to insert leader
and silent bytes.

By the way, the .cas files generated by makewav -k are targeted for
emulators and minimum size. That is not the best for e.g. archival
purposes, but if you use makewav you have the original data file
anyway and can generate a full .wav directly.

Tormod


>
> It works and it will even load into the coco, but when I list the program,
> just garbage appears.  If I try the machine language version, it starts
> loading and then stalls.
>
> Has anyone got this program to work for them?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keith