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Old 23rd Apr 2021, 1:00 am   #1728
julie_m
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Derby, UK.
Posts: 7,735
Default Re: Non-working Commodore PET 3016

As far as I can make out, the Commodore Datasette does not use any bias, but drives the head firmly into saturation when recording. During playback, the waveform is badly distorted, but the computer only really cares about how much time elapses between successive crossings of the zero line.

The cassettes can be played on a standard cassette deck; the head will see no difference between saturation and the very ends of the linear region. A faithful reproduction should read fine to the computer as long as you have a strong enough signal.
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