Modding a C2N as an Audio Player

[Jeff-20]

I've been thinking about changing a C2N into a regular music player. DC power in and RCA stereo out. Anyone have any ideas on this? Is it possible?

[dave01253]

I don't think it is simple. The output is digital and might be at 5v (ttl levels). Also the player is mono.

[Jeff-20]

I worried that might be true. I was also thinking about gutting the case and replacing the whole tape mechanism if it's a standard size.

[Pedro Lambrini]

I thought of this a while ago but never got around to it. It would be extra cool if you could put a power amp into a Vic case!

As an aside, I am going to mod a C2N case and put a uIEC in it. If I had the skills I would dearly love to create a mini model of the C2N and put the uIEC in that so that I could press eject and the mini door would open so that I could insert the SD card in as if it was a tape and it would all be in scale...I can but dream.

[carlsson]

Well, the R/W head must still deliver an analogue signal, which the daughter board converts to digital. I suppose what you should do then is to cut up the daughter board at a suitable place and add some amplifying circuit. Exactly where or how I don't know, but at least you should be able to reuse the wires coming from the cassette mechanism onto a fresh board. Perhaps there are DIYs or even ready made kits which lets you connect a raw signal source.

[DanSolo]

Could the meter he uses here be replaced with a little speaker or audio jack?

[Jeff-20]

Wow. The things people do...!

[carlsson]

Suddenly I am now up to at least seven 1530's, not counting clones, square C2N or 1531's. I feel for hacking one up, perhaps convert to an audio tape player that can be used with other computers.

[English Invader]

I've been cleaning up on the datasettes as well. I have seven (two of which are completely unused). I still use the same old one that came with my VIC though. Old habits die hard.

[Pedro Lambrini]

Could the meter he uses here be replaced with a little speaker or audio jack?

I just bought one of those! It'll be interesting to have a wee look-see under the casing.

[rmelick]

Does anyone remember a program to play music cassettes through the C2N connected to your computer? Or was that for the C64? I seem to remember a magazine, maybe RUN, that had a program to do this.

[Clockmeister]

Does anyone remember a program to play music cassettes through the C2N connected to your computer? Or was that for the C64? I seem to remember a magazine, maybe RUN, that had a program to do this.

You wouldn't get audio as the analog signal is converted to TTL level signals but I suppose it could be sent to the audio chip and you would hear the signal.

That would be the same for the VIC as it is the C64.

You could mod a C2N to play music by taking the amplified analog signal before it gets munted to TTL levels by the 7414 Schmitt trigger.

[e5frog]

Get a plain tape recorder, remove the electronics from the C2N, replace the head with a stereo version instead and place the electronics from the other tape recorder inside the C2N, attach speaker and amplifier if needed.

You could also try and find the amplifier after the head and pick the analog signal there and just hook up a speaker amplifier as well. For stereo sound you still need to replace the head though.

[rmelick]

Does anyone remember a program to play music cassettes through the C2N connected to your computer? Or was that for the C64? I seem to remember a magazine, maybe RUN, that had a program to do this.

Here it is. It was called Tape Ton. I don't remember it being in German, but whatever. Right-click and save the following binary for use on a real VIC-20: http://rickmelick.org/tapeton (~1k)

It is a little ML program for unexpanded VIC. Lode and run it. Type SYS7424 to activate. It adds a new keyword to BASIC, called "TAPE". Place a music cassette into your datasette and listen to the audio on your monitor's speakers through the VIC-20. Press F7 to quit.