Tape To UEF On Windows

[melchett]

I have a few old C90 tapes that I want to grab the content from e.g. elite commander files, saved Wordwise documents and so on. I have quite a few old games that I might rip too just to see what version of software I had (could I actually have completed the version of Repton 2 I had or did it contain the bug).

I spent about an hour today looking at the instructions for capturing tape audio and converting it to a UEF but there are so many dead links e.g. to acornpreservation.org or many other places I'm finding it impossible to follow a good set of instructions and even find links to download the latest tools. There are years old versions of tools which I don't know if they are current. CSW.exe doesn't seem to work on 64-bit windows either and googling I can't find a 64-bit version.

Do we have a set of maintained instructions somewhere that I missed? If not, does anyone have some simple instructions to follow? I can capture the audio in Audacity and convert to 8-bit mono but then I'm not sure. Should I skip Audacity and pull via makeuefam? Is there a more modern method?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks, Andy

[lurkio]

Does this help at all?:

viewtopic.php?p=301777#p301777

[melchett]

I will try that and report back. Thank you Lurkio.

[vanekp]

I prefer to capture the tape to a WAV file and then process that.
WAV files I also process with a filter which helps to give you a better chance of converting it to a working UEF you can read up about it here https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/unsorted/ ... manual.pdf

and have the same problem that there is no 64bit version of CSW, the way I get round that is to run CSW in DOS box, only fun bit is working with the 8.3 file names.
and then makeuef in a normal DOS windows, to convert it to UEF.

[melchett]

I had time for experimenting this morning and worked out the following "process" for now - I too wanted the WAV files, something about hearing those tape loaders too that brings back young memories of waiting a long time for anything to load.

Piecing this together from various threads on this site and just experimenting, I have successfully created a UEF as described below. Future me may thank current me for writing this down.

Initial Setup
1. Downloaded and installed Gold Wave, I am only using the trial version so far -> https://www.goldwave.com/
2. Put a cassette into my official BBC Micro cassette recorder, it's one of these -> https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/co ... er-ANF-03/
3. Put Volume to about 5 and Tone to 7 (no idea if tone affects the capture)
4. Plug the 3.5mm jack socket into the Line In on my sound card using e.g. one of these -> https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9421941

Recording
5. Started Gold Wave
6. Selected New from the menu bar ribbon
7. Set "Number of channels" to "1 (mono)"
8. Set "Sampling rate" to "44100"
9. Clicked OK
10. Left all settings to default unless mentioned othewise below
11. Hit F11 to open Control Properties
12. Clicked the device tab and selected my Line In input in the recording section and my HDMI monitor for playback output
13. I tested the input by clicking the Test button for record and playing the cassette
14. Clicked the System tab and then Configure... which opens the Windows sound settings
15. Selected the Recording tab
16. Double clicked Line In
17. Went to the Listen tab and selected "Listen to this device" and made sure my HDMI monitor was selected as the play back device and clicked OK and then OK to get back to Gold Wave
18. Click OK to close the Control Properties window and commit my changes
19. Hit F9 to bring up the recording controls
20. Rewound cassette (don't forget )
21. Hit the red record button on the popped out recording controls in Gold Wave
22. Hit play on the cassette - you should be able to hear it recording through your PC if you set it up correctly above
23. Hit the stop recording button when I had what I wanted - just started with a small sample to test the tool chain first

Exporting to unsigned 8-bit mono uncompressed WAV
24. Select File -> Converted Save in Gold Wave
25. Click Edit Presets
26. Select PCM unsigned 8 bit, mono and give it a name in the Presets box below e.g. BBC and click the green plus symbol (you only have to do this step the first time)
27. Click OK and select File -> Converted Save -> Wave -> BBC
28. Save the WAV file somehere as <something>.wav and back up this file before proceeding in case you make a mistake and need to restart from the next step.

Removing High Frequencies
29. More information on why here -> https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/unsorted/ ... %20CSW.pdf
30. Make sure all of the wave is selected in GoldWave using CTRL + A or the "Sel All" icon
31. Select Effect -> Filter -> Low/Highpass...
32. Change the Initial Cutoff (Hz) value to 3600
33. Set Steepness to 1
34. Leave all other values to be the same - you can save this as a preset here for "Acorn 1200 baud cassette" if you wish otherwise just click OK
35. Click OK and select File -> Converted Save -> Wave -> BBC to overwrite your file

Smoothing File Gaps
36. Look for gaps in the waves, more information here -> https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/unsorted/ ... %20CSW.pdf
37. Manually select the "gap" between files by right clicking on the wave and using Set Start Marker / Set Finish Marker
38. Select Effect -> Filter -> Low/Highpass...
39. Change the Initial Cutoff (Hz) value to 1000 or 400 (note there's a contradition in the linked PDF above and the CSW Viewer). I have been using 1000)
39. Set Steepness to 5
40. Leave all other values to be the same - you can save this as a preset here for "Cassette gap smooth" if you wish otherwise just click OK
41. Click OK and select File -> Converted Save -> Wave -> BBC to overwrite your file

Converting to Compressed Square Wave (CSW)
42. Downloaded CSW Viewer 40a from here (I think this was Fraser's last version) -> http://www.stairwaytohell.com/cswviewer ... r_v40a.zip
43. Download CSW DPMI "https://www.dosgames.com/files/cwsdpmi.zip"
44. Unzip both and put in the same directory
45. Installed DOSBox from here -> https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
46. Start DOSBox
47. Mount your working directory as the C drive using "mount c c:\path\to\directory"
48. Put the wav in that CSW directory for ease of finding it and using 8.3 filenames that DosBOX has
49. Type "csw <something>.wav" which should create <something>.csw

Note you should be able to read a CSW directly into BeebEm but I have yet to be successful with this hence the next step.

Converting to UEF
50. Download MakeUEF v2.3 from here -> https://www.stairwaytohell.com/essentia ... F-v2.3.zip
51. Unzip it into a directory somewhere
52. Copy <something>.csw into that directory
53. Type "makeuefam -i <something>.csw" note that it's case sensitive and will complain
54. NOTE that even from the same tape recorder, if I and capturing in it parts, sometimes I have to use a phase shift switch -p e.g. "makeuefam -i <something>.csw -p"
55. You know if this works as it should list the filenames and blocks as it processes them and say "Checksum ok" next to each
56. You should now have a UEF file you can load into BeebEm etc

Testing
57. Download and install BeebEm from e.g. http://www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/
58. Start BeebEm
59. Select File -> Load Tape
60. Select <something>.uef
61. Type *TAPE
62. And then *CAT or *. or commands to load a file
63. Watch the files catalogue on the screen

And all this because I want to get my broken copy of Jet Boat off of a cassette... I plan to migrate to Audacity now I have figured out the format that the rest of the chain requires.

[melchett]

and have the same problem that there is no 64bit version of CSW, the way I get round that is to run CSW in DOS box, only fun bit is working with the 8.3 file names.
and then makeuef in a normal DOS windows, to convert it to UEF.

Thank you - I got there eventually and running in DOSBox was a great suggestion.

[flaxcottage]

Brilliant, thanks.

[melchett]

Brilliant, thanks.

You're welcome - note that I just added one bit I missed (steps 6-8)

[vanekp]

I posted the wrong document for preparing wav files it should have been thisone https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/unsorted/ ... %20CSW.pdf

as the filter steps I do find important, also making uef files of some protected tapes is a lot harder to do depending on the protection.
And be carefully of hq.uefs that have what i call "the dummy byte bug" as they will give problems when trying to load them in beebem.

[melchett]

I posted the wrong document for preparing wav files it should have been thisone https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/unsorted/ ... %20CSW.pdf

as the filter steps I do find important, also making uef files of some protected tapes is a lot harder to do depending on the protection.
And be carefully of hq.uefs that have what i call "the dummy byte bug" as they will give problems when trying to load them in beebem.

Yeah I'm noticing I need to do that - the tool chain is quite temperamental and sensitive. I don't understand some of the errors but tidying up the WAV sometimes makes them go away e.g. if I edit the noise at the start/end. I can't find much documentation of errors for e.g. MakeUEFAm and CSW.

I have an HDMI monitor with Windows on the main screen and a Picture-in-picture of my BBC Micro. It's great because I can grab the audio directly into the sound card and Audacity/Gold Wave (and hear it) but also with the DIN cable I can see it cataloguing on the BBC so I know what's going in and when it's finished a particular file. Means I can hopefully stitch the "good" captures together.

It's a shame they aren't open source too, I'd understand more certainly however I completely respect people's decisions to keep the source private but I think in some instances there's a huge amount of talent on this forum who could help carry the tools forward.

Thank you for the updated link, will try and find some time at the weekend for the filtering and see if I can update the instructions above to "make it simpler to digest" with the link to the docs for advanced instructions and deeper understanding. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants this so it is frictionless or needs minimal tweaking. Great tools.

[melchett]

OK I have updated the instructions again - I seem to have a reliable way now of capturing tapes to UEF files (famous last words).

I added the following:

1. HIgh frequency filtering for Acorn 1200 baud cassettes
2. Low frequency filtering for gaps between files
3. Phase shifting sometimes on makeuefam

[vanekp]

yes indeed the phase shifting is important too.

[lurkio]

OK I have updated the instructions again

Thank you for doing this.

[fuzzel]

I have a few old C90 tapes that I want to grab the content from e.g. elite commander files, saved Wordwise documents and so on. I have quite a few old games that I might rip too just to see what version of software I had (could I actually have completed the version of Repton 2 I had or did it contain the bug).

I've been rooting around the the loft today and like Melchett I've some some old cassette tapes that I'd like to load up and see what goodies are stored on them. One game that intrigues is called Adventure Sato and I can't find that anywhere on the net.
It seems there are various options available to me which I'll summarise as follows:
1. Purchase a cassette player (sadly mine has been consigned to the local landfill at some point in the dim and distant) fire up the old beeb (quite literally in my case, when I last switched it on I heard a pop and was subjected to some pretty nasty acrid smoke so quickly turned it off again), load the files and either copy to one of those clever usb disc drives or for the luddite in me, use *MZAP and my phone camera to take lots of pictures of memory, then recreate the memory contents on my emulator. Not massively keen on this option really.
2. Follow the method as outlined by melchett above. Sounds complicated but doable if I purchase a cassette recorder.
3. Buy a cassette file to WAV convertor - see here - https://www.mooz.reviews/cassette-to-wav-converters/. This looks like my preferred option but does anyone know if these are actually any good?

[vanekp]

they are okay, not perfect but do work, I find the audio has some noise coming through which I think comes from the motor in the tape deck (on mine anyway). but still prefer to use my proper data cassette player to convert.

[fuzzel]

I wonder if someone could kindly provide a sample wav file, say of a small basic program, so I can test the wav to uef conversion software before I part with my dosh for a cassette tape audio to wav converter device?

[vanekp]

here is a link to my google drive will all the tapes I have converted included are the original waV files for each. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... QRxU4tE-dP
You can also use PlayUEF to convert any UEF file to a WAV file if you wish.

I wonder if someone could kindly provide a sample wav file, say of a small basic program, so I can test the wav to uef conversion software before I part with my dosh for a cassette tape audio to wav converter device?

[fuzzel]

That's brilliant thanks. Time to experiment...

[vanekp]

Good luck

That's brilliant thanks. Time to experiment...

[fuzzel]

Well, I've just received my cassette convertor and managed to create a WAV file from a Twin Kingdom Valley cassette. My first problem is that when I try to convert it to a SCW file I get the message "Checking input file... sorry, stereo WAV samples not yet supported." So I suppose I somehow have to convert the file to mono or record it in mono in the first place which I don't think was an option with the supplied software (AudioLava). Can anyone help?

[gfoot]

Most media players can convert stereo to mono I think (e.g. VLC) if you know what you're doing - or something like Audacity. But there are also online sites that can do this for you, you just upload the wav and they send you back a processed one. It should be easy to find one that works for you.

[fuzzel]

Ok thanks, fixed that but now it says " 16-bit WAV samples not yet supported." Looks like this is going to take a while...

[Diminished]

Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but there's also Quadbike, which will take WAV files and produce CSW files (which are supported by a number of emulators).

[fuzzel]

I decided to follow melchett's instructions to the letter and on my first attempt, amazingly, I managed to convert Bug Byte's Twin Kingdom Valley to UEF and successfully ran it within Beebem. Many, many thanks to melchett for the script. Buoyed by this I then tried to convert two of my tapes to UEF but unfortunately I've failed dismally. I produced a WAV file with Gold Wave but as you can see from the graphs below, the program doesn't appear to be picking up the data from the cassette very well. After doing a test and taking the advice I turned the volume on my player from 3/4 to max and this improved things but not sufficiently to create a WAV file of sufficient quality to then create a working UEF. Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong would be gratefully received (the top half is the commercial Twin Kingdom Valley, the bottom half is a recording by my younger self of a musical ditty btw).
EDIT: Just to be clear, the lower half is a BASIC program of a musical ditty, not an audio file!

[vanekp]

viewtopic.php?p=311826#p311826 Hear you can find a well written step by step guide written by melchett how to converting tapes to UEF.