DATASETTE
Out of context: Reply #3
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- DutchBoy0
"1.3 Audio tape
Compared to diskette, the tape is slower and more unreliable. However, cassette tape drives used to be cheaper than disk drives, and C cassettes are still available (for audio applications) unlike 5¼-inch diskettes and disk drives. Furthermore, the data recorded on the tape can be captured and produced with the built-in audio equipment of modern personal computers.
Audio data can be represented with a stream of PCM samples. However, the cassette tape circuitry in 8-bit computers only recognises changes in the signal polarity. Therefore, the data can be represented as the delay between polarity changes. Most 8-bit Commodore computers only recognise the positive-to-negative polarity changes. Thus, most low-level tape images (TAP files) record the time between successive positive-to-negative polarity changes."