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Re: [ARSCLIST] Digital Audio Preservation Question



Speaking of all this, what formats were used with the Commodore computers in the 80's? I remember a very primative "computer music" setup at college, circa 1984-88, based around a Commodore color computer and a Radoshack TRaSh-80. Come to think of it, what sound format(s) did the TRS-80 use?

For what it's worth, as I recall, the output of the computers were dumped onto Tascam multi-tracks and then over-dubbed with more bad-sounding nonsense from the computers. I think the computer programs were saved on 5.25" floppies but it may have been cassette tapes for the older gear. I remember thinking, I guess they can't spring for a Synclavier.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Digital Audio Preservation Question



On 14/04/08, Frank Strauss wrote:
Nothing that I know of can read the images that were produced by an

Apple ][ based graphics system that we used around 1980. There are
many custom graphics setups from that period whose output will be
lost unless somebody managed to convert it in time.

Even reading cp/m data disks at all is very difficult.

And we are talking about a period that is considered quite recent in
audio recording terms.

Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Maybe some of those images were saved on the 5 1/4" Apple 140 kb floppy disk drive.

Fortunately I was able to transfer most of them to "modern" floppies before the Apple gear was thrown out. But suppose you were presented with such disks, with images (or audio) that needed to be preserved, you would be in difficulties.


Physical data carriers are just as much a problem as data formats.


And the example is just one of hundreds of formats that were in use in
the 80s.

Audio is actually in a good position - relatively few formats were used,
compared to graphics.

Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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