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New Tape Hardware

Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 4:29 am
by English Invader
Vimfuego at Lemon has designed a device that will allow people to upload/download TAP files via a sound card and record them onto cassette via a 1531 datasette. For the particulars, see the following thread:*
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33490

*Vimfuego has given permission for his project to be posted here.

Re: New Tape Hardware

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 12:22 am
by Bacon
English Invader wrote:Vimfuego at Lemon has designed a device that will allow people to upload/download TAP files via a sound card and record them onto cassette via a 1531 datasette. For the particulars, see the following thread:*
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33490
Cool stuff!
*Vimfuego has given permission for his project to be posted here.
I don't see the need to ask permission to post about it here, even as a matter of courtesy. He himself posted it in a public forum, so he should expect (and most likely welcome) that the news spreads in other forums. If he had told you about it in a private conversation it would of course be a completely different matter.

Re: New Tape Hardware

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 4:35 am
by English Invader
Bacon wrote:I don't see the need to ask permission to post about it here, even as a matter of courtesy. He himself posted it in a public forum, so he should expect (and most likely welcome) that the news spreads in other forums. If he had told you about it in a private conversation it would of course be a completely different matter.
It was Golan who sought permission. He never got round to posting and it seemed rude to disregard Vimfuego's consent once it was given.

Re: New Tape Hardware

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 8:28 am
by gklinger
Bacon wrote:I don't see the need to ask permission to post about it here, even as a matter of courtesy.
English Invader wrote:It was Golan who sought permission.
I asked because I was fairly sure he knew about Denial and wanted to make sure that he hadn't specifically chosen not to post here.
He never got round to posting and it seemed rude to disregard Vimfuego's consent once it was given.
We were looking for a way to confirm that it did in fact work on a VIC-20 before posting here.

Re: New Tape Hardware

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 1:26 am
by English Invader
gklinger wrote:We were looking for a way to confirm that it did in fact work on a VIC-20 before posting here.
No better place to find out than a community of VIC-20 users.

In any case, I see no reason why this hardware couldn't work on a VIC-20 or, at the very least, be modded to work on a VIC-20.

Re: New Tape Hardware

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:28 am
by gklinger
English Invader wrote:
gklinger wrote:We were looking for a way to confirm that it did in fact work on a VIC-20 before posting here.
No better place to find out than a community of VIC-20 users.
You might want to run that one through the meat processor again. :)

If anyone in Australia has a spare VIC-20, please let me know. It would be great if we could find one for Vimfuego.

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:46 am
by ral-clan
I have an old Cardco device which plugs into the datasette port and offers mini headphone type jacks to go both into and out of any recording or playback device you want (in the 80s this was meant to be a generic audio cassette deck, but today it could be an MP3 player or computer soundcard).

Also, public domain schematics for a similar device were fairly widely known even in the 1980s in order to allow people to use their Commodore computers with home cassette recorders. How is this new device any different from what has been around for 20 years?

EDIT: Ah, I see it will allow you to directly record from a sound card to the datasette, but this could be accomplished by using the device I described above an buying/building one of those datesette "Y" adapters that were well known in the early 1980s (I think Ward Shrake even publicly posted a schematic).

Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:04 pm
by vimfuego
Hi All,

Guess I better jump in at this point. First up thanks to the mods and gklinger for sorting out my registration to this forum (I accidentally registered as under 13).
To answer the previous posts at the outset of this thread, I must confess I had not heard of this forum (please don't be insulted). Going way back to the 80's my first Commodore was a 64, time warp to now and I've slowly been building back up my collection of Commodore computers. Up to this point I have not got a Vic-20.
When I had posted on Lemon 64 the details on the tape interface some people had asked if it would work on the Vic-20, that answer I did not know. At this point I would say yes, but to confirm I have now stepped up my hunt for a Vic-20 to purchase to confirm.

ral-clan, I understand that my idea is not revolutionary and I've never intended to make it out like it's the first time anything like this has ever existed. With the current range of software for working with tapes (such as tapclean, tap2wav etc) I felt it was time to create some hardware to match the hardware available on modern PC's / laptops (eg, no real LPT or game port) but just using the soundcard.

Aside from just allowing you to play and record to/from the datassette it also mimics the operation of one enough that you don't actually need a datassette to play tape games, you can just play the .tap, .prg file directly out of the PC's sound card to the Commodore. Finally it will also allow you to use the C16, Plus/4 1531 datassette on a Vic-20/64/128.

Like most of you, collecting these computers is a hobby for me, any profits I make from selling some of these will go straight back in to more product development or saving another old computer from the scrap heap. So, once I get myself a Vic-20 I will be able to confirm it works on one, if not I can modify it so it will.

Cheers,
Ross