FYI: SWTPC "X-record" binary load format parser tool

[bzotto]

Hi all: I've recently been recovering some data off of SWTPC-published data cassettes, which sometimes had an "ASCII" side and a "binary" side. The ASCII side was a file in S-record format (the native MIKBUG load format), but the "binary" side had a stub loader and then a much more compact binary blob of the same content. I needed to dump out and work with one of these binary blobs without using an actual SWTPC so ended up reverse engineering it (it's basically a parallel S-record format for raw bytes). I didn't find it documented as such so I wrote xrec2srec, a little tool/library and put it up on GitHub here, in case anyone out there ever has this same very esoteric need. Enjoy.

(An example of the binary format can be found in this archive of a SWTPC 8K BASIC tape).

 

[deramp5113]

Great work! Here’s a link to SWTPC notes about the binary format: https://deramp.com/downloads/swtpc/software/Two-Stage Binary Loader/BinaryLoader.pdf