Iffy Books | 404 S. 20th St., PHL
hacking, free culture, gardening, zines
In this workshop you’ll convert text data into audio using the program minimodem, then record the audio to a cassette tape. Then you’ll use minimodem to play back your text onscreen in real time. We’ll provide computers and tape decks, and everyone who signs up will get a few free cassette tapes.
We’ve been using Bell 202-style ASCII encoding at 100 baud (bits per second) because it works reliably and plays back at a comfortable reading speed. Using these encoding settings, a 60-minute cassette tape can store ~34 KB of data. If you want to record a specific text file to a cassette tape, we recommend bringing it on a USB drive.
We’ll have computers to share, but you’re welcome to bring a laptop too. Here’s a link to the zine we’ll use for the workshop (a work in progress).
This workshop is free, but donations are welcome.