Invitation to Programming 1?

[NightSprinter]

Where is that part of the series? I have an box kit labeled "The Programmer" (I have the BASIC ref. manual, boxed basic cartridge, and self-teaching guide. The person I bought it off from eBay a year ago also had some tape programs titled "Invitation to BASIC Programming 2" and "Invitation to BASIC Programming 3". But where's volume 1 though?

Edited August 1, 2007 by NightSprinter

[miker]

I think the answer to your question can be found here. And someone has/had it for trade on this site.

Edited August 1, 2007 by miker

[miker]

Btw. Anyone has dumped these tapes???

[+orpheuswaking]

I have a big black box that says Invitation to programing 2 & 3 on it, although when I open the box up it has tape 1 also (I also have a copy of tape one that came as a pack in for my UK purchased 800xl)

[NightSprinter]

Btw. Anyone has dumped these tapes???

 

I think it would be possible to do so if someone had an SIO2PC or SIO2USB adapter and the tape drive.

[Urchlay]

Btw. Anyone has dumped these tapes???

 

I think it would be possible to do so if someone had an SIO2PC or SIO2USB adapter and the tape drive.

 

Not really... they're mixed data/audio tapes. The first program loads, then there's narration that's synced to the stuff on screen for the next 5-10 minutes, then the 2nd programs loads, same thing...

 

The .cas format has no way to store the audio, and even if it did, the SIO2PC has no way to signal when it's time to stop or start the (emulated) cassette motor... unless the USB version has the motor control line connected, and the new APE supports it (anyone know?)

 

It might be possible for an emulator to play the audio as an mp3 or wav file, stopping and starting when the Atari program wants it to, but AFAIK no emulator supports this.

[www.atarimania.com]

It might be possible for an emulator to play the audio as an mp3 or wav file, stopping and starting when the Atari program wants it to, but AFAIK no emulator supports this.

I would love to see this... There are a number of early programs that can't be properly archived because of this.

 

BTW, you can find An Invitation to Programming in different flavors: there are versions in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian!

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Urchlay]

It might be possible for an emulator to play the audio as an mp3 or wav file, stopping and starting when the Atari program wants it to, but AFAIK no emulator supports this.

I would love to see this... There are a number of early programs that can't be properly archived because of this.

 

Probably the best way to archive these for now is as a giant flac file containing both the data and audio tracks... not really useful with emulators or SIO2PC, but can be recorded on a real cassette and used with a real tape drive.

 

I did a little bit of testing and found that the data channel of an A8 cassette doesn't survive MP3's lossy compression... Flac is a lossless audio codec that can shrink a .wav file by up to 50% without losing any information.

 

IIRC, the Invitation to Programming 1 is recorded on a 60 minute tape (30 minutes per side)... 60 minutes of CD-quality stereo audio is approx. 600 megs of data, which should compress pretty well with flac (assume 50% ratio). Split into 2 files for the 2 sides, and you end up with approx. 150 megs per file, not that bad by modern standards. Could probably fit all the Invitation to Programming tapes on 2 data CDs.

 

You'd want to split out just the data channel and run it through wav2cas, to make sure the recording is usable... then at some future date, when/if there's an extended .cas format that supports audio data, and/or an emulator that supports playing cassette audio from a separate wav/mp3/etc file, you'd be able to convert your flac files into whatever format you need.