Kansas City standard

The Kansas City standard (abbreviated KCS) for storage of data on an ordinary audio cassette was also known as the BYTE standard or the CUTS (Processor Technology Computer Users Tape Standard).

Developed in 1975, it uses asynchronous serial data encoded using frequency shift keying such that a '0' bit is represented as 4 cycles of a 1200 Hz sine wave[?], and a '1' bit as 8 cycles of 2400 Hz. This gives a data rate of 300 bits per second.

Computers using the Kansas City standard included:

• Several S-100 based systems, such as MITS Altair 8800
• PT[?] SOL-20
• Ohio Scientific[?] C1P/Superboard II
• Compukit[?] UK101
• Acorn Atom
• Nascom (which also supported a 1200 bps variant)
• Motorola MEK D1 6800 microcomputer board
• SWTPC 6800 based computers

External links

• Sound sample (http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/AC30/memcon1.wav)
• SWTPC AC-30 cassette interface (http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/AC30/AC30_Index.htm)