VIC freezing up

[bishop144]

Hi all,

I have a VIC-20 that I picked up and it works really well except for one thing. I have the C2N cassette drive and it records and plays back programs really well, but whenever I try to load a program from a tape I recorded elsewhere (because I don't have any original VIC tapes) The VIC loads the program and says "Ready" but then I can't type Run to start the program. Why would it be hanging here and not letting me run the program?

The programs I'm trying to load are .prg files from Zimmer that I've played back with Tapdancer on my Galaxy tablet.

Yes, I do have a 32k expansion cartridge plugged in to the VIC.

[Kweepa]

Does the cursor still flash?
Could be a faulty VIA.

[eslapion]

@bishop144
the key words here are "recorded elsewhere". As soon as this is factored in then there are billions of possible reasons.

- wrong speed on what you used to record the data
- wrong speed on your C2N (if you save and load at the same wrong speed then obviously you can only load back what was saved with this specific C2N).
- head alignment problem in the tape deck used to save the data
- inadequate signal intensity on the recording tape deck
- signal inversion on recording caused by tapdancer or your tablet

I truly don't see how the presence or not of a 32k expansion can matter. You should always begin with the smallest possible file at first with this sort of thing.

BTW, you provide strictly no information about the tape deck you recorded your tape with or how things look on the VuMeter of that deck when recording.

@Kweepa
It can't be a faulty VIA because...

I have the C2N cassette drive and it records and plays back programs really well

[Kweepa]

They said that the READY prompt came back, but they couldn't type RUN.
That's weird, right?

[highinfidelity]

They said that the READY prompt came back, but they couldn't type RUN.
That's weird, right?

Not really, should there be no flashing cursor displayed on screen.

[Vic20-Ian]

Try removing the memory expansion and loading a tape from elsewhere.

It could be you are loading a machine code program into the wrong memory location and causing the machine to hang.

Is the tape from elsewhere a commercial game? What is it?

LLamasoft games and others load in multiple parts. The first part loads and creates some user defined graphics before loading the second part. It could be hanging if the memory configuration is incorrect.

If you load an unexpanded game into 32k it could conceivably go wrong.

Tell us what you are loading and we will see if we can help.

[DrVeryEvil]

You might try loading the program with ",1,1" after the filename. If it's a machine language program that loads into a location it wasn't supposed to go, it could cause your VIC to hose up.