Restoring or renewing TAPs unloadable with Spectaculator 8
Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 9:01 pm
I have some troublesome with few TAP files saved in my PC hard drive, downloaded from different sources (WOS and Spectrum Computing, mostly): they can't be loaded with well-known Jonathan Needle's emulator, giving me the same error message: "Spectaculator cannot open ‘program name' (not working on Spectaculator). The file is not valid or is corrupt."
However, if using other emulators I have on my PC as ZX Spin 0.7s, ZesarUX 10.1 or Retro Virtual Machine, load perfectly in each one of them.
I thought to manage/edit them with ZX Block Editor tool by Klaus Jahn (having installed 2.2.1 and 2.4.3.1 versions), but strangely they can't be used with it. If trying to load one of these TAP files, same message prompts in every case: "Invalid block length!".
As Spectaculator 8 is the program I mostly use nowadays, I was wondering if there is a chance to redo or restore these apparently-not-working TAPs easily.
On the other hand, I found somehow a way to restore contents of those TAP files by creating new ones, converting them into WAV and then transfer audio files into new TAPs. Using following PC Windows/MS-DOS utils: Tape2WAV by Mark Woodmass first and WAV2TZX v0.6 (Tomaz Kac, & Martin V.d. Heide, updated by M. A. Rodriguez Jodar), next. For example, "Temperament" simulator by Martin Stepaneck (existing TAP can't be loaded with Spectaculator). After transfering all blocks into a new TAP this way, I tested it and works fine as with Spectaculator as with any other ZX Spectrum emulator.
Here you have:
TEMPERAMENT (New TAP)
However, if using other emulators I have on my PC as ZX Spin 0.7s, ZesarUX 10.1 or Retro Virtual Machine, load perfectly in each one of them.
I thought to manage/edit them with ZX Block Editor tool by Klaus Jahn (having installed 2.2.1 and 2.4.3.1 versions), but strangely they can't be used with it. If trying to load one of these TAP files, same message prompts in every case: "Invalid block length!".
As Spectaculator 8 is the program I mostly use nowadays, I was wondering if there is a chance to redo or restore these apparently-not-working TAPs easily.
On the other hand, I found somehow a way to restore contents of those TAP files by creating new ones, converting them into WAV and then transfer audio files into new TAPs. Using following PC Windows/MS-DOS utils: Tape2WAV by Mark Woodmass first and WAV2TZX v0.6 (Tomaz Kac, & Martin V.d. Heide, updated by M. A. Rodriguez Jodar), next. For example, "Temperament" simulator by Martin Stepaneck (existing TAP can't be loaded with Spectaculator). After transfering all blocks into a new TAP this way, I tested it and works fine as with Spectaculator as with any other ZX Spectrum emulator.
Here you have:
TEMPERAMENT (New TAP)