Virtual Tape Utilities

Clarification

Reading and Writing tapes does not require a special utility in and of itself. Audacity, Goldwave, or any other audio recording software will work, because tapes are, in fact, just audio. There is a page devoted to how to read TRS-80 tapes into WAV format here.

What is the issue, is what to do with a WAV file once you have it. That is what this page is for. It has utilities that will convert WAVs to CAS format for use in an emulator, and back again. It has utilities that will convert high speed (1500 baud) tapes to Level II (500 baud) or even Level 1 (250 baud) and back again.


Repair WAV’s and Convert Between MANY File Formats

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TRS80-Tool v2.7.0 (Win/Mac/Linux)
April 2024
Lawrence Kestleoot
 

Its 3 main functions are:

  1. It can try to correct a WAV file
  2. It can convert between many different formats. This includes converting from tokenized (BAS) to untokenized (ASCII), converting machine language files (CMD or SYSTEM) to disassembled listings (LST), and converting between 250 (Level 1), 500 (Level II), 1000 (LNW-80), and 1500 (Model III) baud rates. You want to take a BASIC file, a CMD file, and a SYSTEM file and put them all into a WAV file … it will do it!
  3. It can display a guessed start address for system programs with no specified start address.

TRS80-TOOL supports the following formats:

.BAS
This is a BASIC program. It’s typically tokenized (token words like PRINT are stored as a single byte), but the tool supports reading Basic programs that are in text (non-tokenized) format. When writing a file with a .BAS extension, the file is always tokenized.
.ASC
This is also a BASIC program, but always in text (non-tokenized) format. The extension is mostly useful when writing a BASIC file, because it tells the converter to use the non-tokenized format.
.WAV
This is a cassette’s audio stream. It can be at any sampling rate, either 8 or 16 bits per sample, and either mono or stereo.
.CAS
This is a cassette stored in a compact form where each bit on the cassette is stored as a bit in the file. It includes synchronization headers and bytes, as well as start bits (for high-speed cassettes). This is a decent archival format for cassettes.
.CMD
This is a machine language program as stored on a floppy disk.
.SYS
Same as CMD but for DOS files.
.3BN
This is a SYSTEM file (a machine language program as stored on a cassette). The name comes from “Model 3 BiNary”. This is typically not used, and instead these files are stored within .CAS files.
.L1
250 Baud Cassette File
.JV1
This is a floppy disk format for the Model I. It’s very simple, capturing the basic sector data. It does not capture enough information for copy-protected floppies. It’s named after Jeff Vavasour.
.JV3
This is a floppy disk format for the Model III. It’s very simple, capturing the basic sector data and IDAM structure. It does not capture enough information for copy-protected floppies. It’s slightly more capable than .JV1 because it can encode a mix of FM and MFM signals on the same track.
.DMK
Another floppy disk format, capturing more information from the floppy, such as some bits between sectors. Named after David M. Keil.
.SCP
Another floppy disk format … SuperCardPro format.
.ASM
This is an assembly language file, generated by disassembling a .CMD or .3BN file using the convert command.
.LST
This is an assembly language listing file, generated by disassembling a .CMD or .3BN file using the convert command.
.ROM
Raw machine language file (such as a ROM or CIM).

Web Page Version:

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This utility is in the form of an extremely powerful web page.

The web page can be found at https://www.my-trs-80.com/cassette/. You can drag and drop a WAV, CAS, or BAS file and from there see the individual pulses of the WAV (original and filtered). You can click on the BASIC or Machine Language output listing and see the individual clock pulses in the WAV which gave rise to whatever you are pointing to. You can run the program in a virtual emulator in the browser. And, of course, you can export the corrected WAV to WAV, BAS, Binary, or CAS.

Standalone Version:

Command line options are as follows:

Usage: trs80-tool COMMAND args …

Options:

–version
Show the tool’s version number
–help
Show the usage message
–color=COLOR
Force color mode (off, 16, 256, 16m, or auto).
dir
Show the contents of WAV, CAS, JV1, JV3, DMK, and SCP files
info
Displays a one-line description of the contents of the file, such as its type (system program, Basic program); if known, the embedded filename; and the starting address (or its best guess for one) for SYSTEM tapes.
hexdump
Displays a hex dump of the input file, with annotations. By default the command will collapse consecutive identical lines (turn off with –no-collapse. Then –color flag will force coloring on or off.
sectors
Displays a table of the sectors in a floppy disk. The columns are the sectors and the rows are the tracks. For each sector a character is displayed. The –contents flag will show the contents of each sector.
repl
Start an interactive session for exploring the Z80. You can type an assembly language instruction (such as “ld a,5”) to assemble it, write it to memory, explain it, execute it, and show its effects on flags and registers. This virtual machine is not in a TRS-80 context (it has no ROM or peripherals).
asm
Assembles the specified assembly language source code.
program.asm program.cmd
Assembles program.asm into program.cmd. Output can be .CMD, .3BN, .CAS, or .WAV
–baud 1500 program.asm program.cas
Assembles program.asm into a 1500 baud CAS file.
–listing program.lst program.asm program.cmd
Assembles program.asm into a program.cmd with a listing file of program.lst.
disasm
Disassembles the specified program.
saucer.cmd
Disassembles saucer.cmd
–org 0x8000 saucer.cmd
Disassembles saucer.cmd with an ORG of 8000H
run
Run a TRS-80 emulator in the shell.
–model 1 –level 1
Starts a Model I Level 1 Emulator. Choices are Model I, III, and 4, Level 1 and Level II.
tdos13a.dsk
Runs an emulator and boots tdos13a.dsk
convert
Converts a list of input files to an output file or directory.

The convert option is quite powerful and has three arguments of its own: –baud, –entry, and –start. Here are SOME examples:
in.cmd out.3bn
CMD file (Diskette) to SYSTEM format (Cassette)
–start 17408 in.rom out.cmd
Raw Image file to CMD format, with a load address of 17408
in.bin out.3bn
Raw Image file to SYSTEM format
in.bas out.asc
Detokenize file
in1.bas in2.3bn in3.cmd out.wav
3 files into a WAV file (including converting CMD to SYSTEM)
in.dmk out.wav
Diskette to WAV
in1.cas in2.cas in3.cas out.wav
3 CAS files into a single WAV file
in1.bas in2.3bn out.wav
BAS file and SYSTEM file into a single WAV file
in.cmd out.lst
Disassemble CMD file
in.3bn out.lst
Disassemble SYSTEM file
in.wav outdir
Extract the files from a WAV file to a directory
in.cas outdir
Extract the files from a CAS file to a directory
in.dmk outdir
Extract the files from a DMK file to a directory
in.wav out.wav
Clean and radically shrink the size of a WAV file

trs80-tool convert –baud …
1500 in1.bas in2.3bn out.wav
BAS file and SYSTEM file into a 1,500 Baud WAV file

trs80-tool convert –start …
17408 in.cas out.cas
Set the start address to /17408
auto in.cas out.cas
Set the start address to its best guess
0x7059,0x7064,0x71B9,0x7263 lower.cas lower.lst
Disassemble the cassette file LOWER.CAS to LOWER.LST but treat locations 7059H 7064H 71B9H and 7263H as entry points. This will stop the disassembler from wrongly assuming relocated code is actually an ascii string.

Current limitations

  • Cannot write floppy disk files.
  • Can only read TRSDOS and LDOS floppy disks

Outputting CAS Files

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May 2018
Knut Roll-Lund
 

Use your PC as a cassette player for your TRS-80 Model I/III/4 Level I and II by connecting your TRS-80 cassette input (“Ear” Output) into the PC’s headphones output.

Supports Level 1 (250 Baud), Level II (500 Baud), LNW (1kHz), and Highspeed (1500 Baud) and SYSTEM, BASIC, EDTASM, LEVEL 1 SYSTEM, and LEVEL 1 BASIC files. It does NOT support Scripsit, or ASCII files.



Convert between File Formats

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TRLD v1.5.2
July 2018
George Phillips

Reads one or more TRS-80 programs in .cmd, .cas, .hex or .bas format and saves them as a single .cmd, .cas, .wav, or .hex file. As input it supports 250, 500 and 1500 baud .cas cassette image files as well as tokenized and ASCII .bas BASIC program files. Output can be in .cmd, .cas, .hex or .wav (audio file) format.

One additional feature, the “-s” option, detects relocation code and cassette loaders, runs them and puts the resuls into the output file. For example, many disk executables (.cmd) start with a short block of code that copies the entire program to a different spot in memory and jumps to it. Similarly, a few games had their own custom cassette loaders. The first program on the cassette was a short loader program that would load the rest of the tape in some custom format.


Everything below this line, while fine programs, have functionality which is included in the above programs.

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Nov 2004
Knut Roll-Lund

Convert a CAS file into a WAV for making a real TRS-80 cassette.


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July 2020
Anton Argirov

Convert WAV files to CAS. It accepts WAV files with any sample rate (11025 / 22050 / 44100) and format (float / 8-bit / 16-bit / stereo / mono), uses auto-detection mechanism to get clock frequency which depends on baud rate (model I level2 500baud, level1 250baud or model III highspeed 1500 baud). Requires Ruby v2.3 to be installed.


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Feb 2008
Knut Roll-Lund

Wav2cas is a Windows program, run in a DOS window (or you can use drag’n’drop, dropping the wav file onto the wav2cas desktop shortcut icon), which takes an uncompressed Windows wav file (made from a Model I Level II (500 Baud), Model I Level 1 (250 baud), or Model III (1500 Baud) cassette tapes) and generates a cas file for use by TRS-80 emulators. Silent bits doesn’t matter, so an entire tape can be converted (but header synchronization is only done once, so this is risky).


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Apr 2005
Knut Roll-Lund

Highlow is a small utility for converting CAS files between Highspeed (1500 Baud) and Lowspeed (500 Baud). Since 1500 Baud includes a startbit, making the file contents unreadbale, it is useful for viewing the contents of a highspeed CAS file after a wav2cas_h conversion, to do a preliminary check for success or to get the name from a system tape. It can convert both ways and does so automatically. It can’t handle multiple files in a CAS file so only single content CAS files may be used, and it must detect the header so it can’t deal with fragments.


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Apr 2005
Knut Roll-Lund

Highlow is a small utility for converting CAS files between Highspeed (1500 Baud) and Lowspeed (500 Baud). Since 1500 Baud includes a startbit, making the file contents unreadbale, it is useful for viewing the contents of a highspeed CAS file after a wav2cas_h conversion, to do a preliminary check for success or to get the name from a system tape. It can convert both ways and does so automatically. It can’t handle multiple files in a CAS file so only single content CAS files may be used, and it must detect the header so it can’t deal with fragments.


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N/A
Knut Roll-Lund

ACAS is another small utility, this time for checking the cas files. Actually it is a beta as it will be incorporated in another program but I decided that I would release this standalone version anyway. As it is now it will scan through a cas file and find out what it can about it and output what it thinks to a txt file with the same path and name.


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CMD2CAS (Win)
Mar 2005
Attila Grosz

Cass80 is a tool by Jurgen Buchmueller to load, analyze, disassemble or list, modify, and save EACA Colour-Genie 2000 and Video-Genie 3003 (which was a TRS-80 clone) cassette images. Cass80 can be downloaded from https://github.com/pullmoll/cass80.

One thought to “Virtual Tape Utilities”

  1. One issue in modern PC’s is the use of USB for disk interfaces. There are NO 5 1/4″ disk drives with USB interfaces! I have one PC with a 5 1/4″ drive. It is an old XT class machine with a 4.77MHz 8088 and 8087 coprocessor so the emulator is not recommended for it. Last I heard it required a 100MHz pentium class machine. What is needed for those of us with working TRS-80’s is for Tandy to waive its copyrights and allow us to get what we need for these machines that we have loyally used. If you followed me (HigginsCharles) on twitter you’d know my brother bet me my TRS-80 would not work after it spent 9 years in non climate controlled storage. This afternoon I got bored and hooked up my TRS-80 W/4 180 KB drives, stereo sound system and monophonic sound system up and saw if it would work. It did. Amazing reliability. I even played music (Orch90) through its stereo amp and speakers. And yes the old disks are still readable.

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