The Kansas City standard (abbreviated KCS) for storage of digital (micro)computer data on an ordinary compact audio cassette is also known as the BYTE standard, from its connection with BYTE magazine, or the Processor Technology CUTS (PT Computer Users' Tape Standard). The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era. ... A computer is a machine capable of undergoing complex calculations. ... Typical audio 60-minute Compact Cassette. ... The front cover of the April 1981 issue of BYTE (Vol 6. ...

The standard got its name from a symposium held in Kansas City in the fall of 1975, which BYTE magazine sponsored, with the goal of reaching a recording standard for digital data on audio cassette recorders. The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is a metropolitan area situated at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers and straddling the state border between Missouri and Kansas. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...

KCS uses asynchronous serial data, encoded using audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) such that a '0' bit is represented as four cycles of a 1200 Hz sine wave, and a '1' bit as eight cycles of 2400 Hz. This gives a data rate of 300 baud. Asynchrony is the state of not being synchronized. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The word encoding has a number of meanings. ... Audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) is a modulation technique by which digital data is represented as changes in the frequency (pitch) of an audio tone, yielding an encoded signal suitable for transmission via radio or telephone. ... The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the SI unit of frequency. ... In trigonometry, an ideal sine wave is a waveform whose graph is identical to the generalized sine function y = Asin[ω(x − α)] + C, where A is the amplitude, ω is the angular frequency (2π/P where P is the wavelength), α is the phase shift, and C is the... In telecommunications and electronics, baud (pronounced ) is a measure of the signaling rate which is the number of changes to the transmission media per second in a modulated signal. ...

Tapes with Kansas City standard data stored on them may be accurately archived in the UEF file format. For other uses of the word Archive, see Archive (disambiguation) Archives refers to a collection of records, and also refers to the location in which these records are kept. ... UEF (Unified Emulator Format) is a compressed, chunk based file format first implemented by the ElectrEm emulator and related tools for the storage of audio tape, ROM, floppy disk and machine state snapshots for the 8bit range of computers manufactured by Acorn Computers Ltd. ... A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. ...

Computers using the Kansas City standard

Early microcomputers (several of them S-100 based): The S-100 bus was an early computer bus designed as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard bus for the microcomputer industry, and S-100 computers, processor and peripheral cards, were produced...

• Compukit UK101
• Lucas Nascom 1, 2 (which also supported a 1200 bit/s variant, see below)
• MITS Altair 8800
• Motorola MEK D1 6800 microcomputer board
• Ohio Scientific C1P/Superboard II
• Processor Tech SOL-20
• SWTPC's 6800-based computers
• MOS Technology, Inc. KIM-1

Home/personal computers: The Compukit UK101 microcomputer (1979) was very similar to the Ohio Scientific Superboard. ... The Lucas Nascom 1 and 2 were single-board computer kits issued in 1977 and 1979, respectively, based on the Zilog Z80 and including a keyboard and video interface, as well as a serial port that could be used for storing data on a tape cassette using the Kansas City... Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was an Albuquerque, New Mexico company founded in 1968 by Ed Roberts. ... Altair 8800 The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975, based on the Intel 8080A CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine, the designers intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold over ten times that many in the... Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is a global communications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. ... Ohio Scintific was a computer company that built and marketed computers from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. ... SWTPC (Southwest Technical Products Corporation) was a designer and manufacturer of electronic products, many available in kit form, based in San Antonio, Texas, in the US. Until the mid-1970s, most of their kits were intended for audio use (hi-fi and utility amplifiers, test equipment, etc). ... Motorola 6800 Microprocessor The 6800 is a microprocessor produced by Motorola and released shortly after the Intel 8080 in 1975. ... MOS Technology, Inc. ... The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, was a small 6502-based microcomputer kit developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. ...

• Acorn Computers Ltd
  • Acorn Atom (300 baud only)
  • BBC Micro (300 and 1200 baud variations)
  • Acorn Electron (1200 baud only)
• MicroBee Systems
  • Microbee (300 and 1200 baud)

Acorn Computers Ltd. ... The Atom was Acorns first computer to be aimed squarely at the home market. ... The BBC Micro, affectionately known as the Beeb, was an early home computer. ... The Acorn Electron Acorn Electron BASIC - the first thing displayed when an unexpanded Electron is switched on The Acorn Electron was a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. ... MicroBee Systems may refer to Microbee Systems, Australia MicroBee Systems, USA This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... MicroBee (Micro Bee) was a series of home computers by Applied Technology, later known as MicroBee Systems. ...

1200 baud variation

Acorn Computers Ltd implemented a 1200 baud variation on CUTS in their BBC Micro and Acorn Electron microcomputers, which reduced a '0' bit to one cycle of a 1200 Hz sine wave and a '1' bit to two cycles of a 2400 Hz wave. Standard encoding includes a '0' start bit and '1' stop bit around every 8 bit piece of information, giving an effective data rate of 960 bits per second. Acorn Computers Ltd. ... The BBC Micro, affectionately known as the Beeb, was an early home computer. ... The Acorn Electron Acorn Electron BASIC - the first thing displayed when an unexpanded Electron is switched on The Acorn Electron was a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. ... In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate) is the frequency at which bits are passing a given (physical or metaphorical) point. It is quantified using the bit per second (bit/s) unit. ...

External links

• Sound sample of stored KCS file
• SWTPC.com's article on the AC-30 cassette interface
• KCS decoding software for MS-DOS
• MakeUEF - KCS audio to UEF file conversion software