Tapuino, the $20 C64 Tape Emulator

Hi,

I've got everything onto vero including the buttons.
I had a nasty time debugging the HW, but it all seems stable and working well now. I'm going to try and get this into a neat project box and take lots of pictures on the way then post it up on my blog.
The next major piece of code work will probably be a recording function, I'd like to see if that is going to work with the SD card timing. A completely functional device would be nice to have :)

-(e)

p.s. if anyone knows where I could buy a really nice C64 / SCART cable with SVIDEO I'd appreciate it. I soldered one up but it would work properly for some reason and now I just want to buy a good quality one and stop wasting time! :)
Oge was making them but something seems to have happened to those threads?
 
I made a C64 to s-video socket adapter that works great, I use it with a bought (long ago) S-Video cable. We don't have SCART here so even if I could get the connector I couldn't test it, but s-video to SCART shouldn't be hard to find. Most problems that I've had with video cables have been to do with shielding- should be grounded at one end.
 
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Excellent work mate!
Is it just me, or does that donor Datasette look familiar? :D

Hehe, it's actually not one of yours. I'm saving those for when I can get hold of some real tapes to see if they work!

I made a C64 to s-video socket adapter that works great, I use it with a bought (long ago) S-Video cable. We don't have SCART here so even if I could get the connector I couldn't test it, but s-video to SCART shouldn't be hard to find. Most problems that I've had with video cables have been to do with shielding- should be grounded at one end.

Any more info on this? Do you mean shield ground?
 
Tapuino, the $20 C64 Tape Emulator

Yes, it might vary from cable to cable, but the way I do VGA and Atari ST cables is to hook the connector shield up to the ground pin at both ends, but only connect the cable shield to ground at 1 end (the computer).
 
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I've added the vero board layouts for the main board to the "layout" folder in Github if anyone wants to take a look.
edit: button vero is in now as well.
 
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Congratulations on getting this working mate! What an awesome project!

Do you know if your code will run on a standard Arduino Duemilanove or Leonardo? I have spares if these lying around.

Regards

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk 2
 
Congratulations on getting this working mate! What an awesome project!

Do you know if your code will run on a standard Arduino Duemilanove or Leonardo? I have spares if these lying around.

Regards

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk 2

Hi,

This should definitely work for the Duemilanove. The Nano is an ATMega 328 so the capabilities should be identical.
You'd just need to wire appropriately and build the opto circuit on some vero or breadboard.

The Leonardo should also work from what I can see, the only issue would be wiring the SPI bus which seems to be via the ISP header.
I don't have one of these so this is guesswork based on the Arduino pages for the device and this: http://provideyourown.com/2012/arduino-leonardo-versus-uno-whats-new/
Let me know how it goes and if I can help! :)

-(e)
 
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shut_up_and_take_my_money.jpg
 
OK great to hear. Can I suggest some kind of way that interested people like me can keep up with your progress like a blog or mailing list or something like that?

- - - Updated - - -

Scrap that, I just realised that you already have a blog! derrrrrr
 
Well it took a couple of hours, but finally I've managed to put together a post on how to build the Tapuino:
http://sweetlilmre.blogspot.com/2014/07/tapuino-part-2-building-20-c64-tape.html

I've updated the first post to reflect this, now hopefully someone will be brave enough to join me in Tapuino Land! :LOL::LOL::LOL:

Hopefully now I can get back to looking at the code.
Things I'd like to add:

  • Long filename support
  • Write support
  • Fix the weird end-of-signal issue (this is cosmetic as far as the user is concerned but bugs me...)
  • Other stuff

I still have about 20K of program space left so there is a lot of code possible.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.
-(e)
 
Hi,

I've been working away at the code and have added a percentage complete indicator which helps with the long TAP loads :)

I need some help: does anyone have an original tape of BC's Quest for Tires? If so please could you PM me?

Thanks
-(e)
 
I think I have quest for Tires mate.

Just need to dig it out and test it. what do you need?

Regards

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk 2
 
Just ordered the parts from eBay in the UK, so should be here by the end of the week. Another project to build and take up my time!

Regards
 
Awesome! Can't wait to see it built. And thanks for your help, everything seems to be working now! Onwards and upwards!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 
Good news!

I migrated the SC card library and now have long filenames working, which makes viewing available TAP files much more pleasant!
Next up I'm going to start looking at write support.

-(e)
 
Hi mate.

I got my parts today and have literally thrown it together on these small breadboards just to test it. I haven't yet hooked it up to the C64 as I want to make sure it's working first.

However, I am currently not getting any activity from the device and was wondering if that is normal without it being connected to the C64?

Everything is powered and I have double/triple checked all the connections, but still getting nothing on the display. Is this supposed to draw power from the C64 or do you power it via the USB port?

Thanks in advance!

Regards


20140723_150030.jpg
 
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