The Kansas City standard (abbreviated KCS) for storage of digital microcomputercomputer 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 standard got its name from a symposium held in Kansas City Metropolitan Area in the fall of 1975, which BYTE magazine sponsored, with the goal of reaching a recording standard for digital data on audio cassette recorders.

KCS uses asynchronous serial communications, encoding using audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) such that a 0 bit is represented as four cycles of a 1200 Hertz sine wave, and a 1 bit as eight cycles of 2400 Hz. This gives a data rate of 300 baud.

Tapes with Kansas City standard data stored on them may be accurately archived in the UEF (file format) file format.

=Computers using the Kansas City standard=

Early microcomputers (several of them S-100 based): *Compukit UK101 *Lucas (computer company) Nascom 1, 2 (which also supported a 1200 bit/s variant, see below) *Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Altair 8800 *Motorola MEK D1 6800 microcomputer board *Ohio Scientific C1P/Superboard II *Processor Technology SOL-20 *SWTPC s Motorola 6800-based computers

Home/personal computers: *Acorn Computers Ltd **Acorn Atom (300 baud only) **Acorn Electron (1200 baud only) **BBC Micro (300 and 1200 baud variations)

=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.

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