26 replies to this topic

[grant74]

Hi guys - just wondered if anybody has ever managed to graft an sio port from a 1010 tape deck onto a standard tape deck of any description and how did you do it? So that I dont have to rely on the often unreliable 1010 atari deck. Any diagrams etc would be nice too! If anybody has achieved this, did you get much better reliable loading?
Many thanks guys.

[spookt]

As far as I know it's not possible. The 1010 is more than a tape deck with an SIO interface. There is circuitry there which encodes and decodes the signal. Someone else who has a better memory than me will probably explain exactly what that is.

[oracle_jedi]

 grant74, on Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:16 PM, said:

Hi guys - just wondered if anybody has ever managed to graft an sio port from a 1010 tape deck onto a standard tape deck of any description and how did you do it? So that I dont have to rely on the often unreliable 1010 atari deck. Any diagrams etc would be nice too! If anybody has achieved this, did you get much better reliable loading?
Many thanks guys.

Questions.

This is a joke right?

If you want to try this for the hell of it, then cool - but have you considered you will not only need to transplant or emulate the SIO supporting circuitry, but also the FSK circuitry.

If the 1010 isn't working, why not get a 410 or XC11 deck instead.

Why are you using a tape drive at all?  Get an SIO2PC or SIO2SD device and ditch the deck.

[grant74]

Hi! Cheers for the advice! I reckon I'm way outta my depth here! lol! I'll leave the 1010 well alone - it does work - just not 100% reliable loading but then I am expecting a bit much from a 20 odd year old tape deck with old tapes too! maybe you're right about sio2sd - seen em on ebay for about £45 - sound about right? does this item allow you to boot .atr roms straight from an sd card and play them on your atari? this would be awesome as loads of roms floating about in cyberspace! Does it come with some software to enable the atari to boot the .atr files?

Edited by grant74, Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:48 PM.

[oracle_jedi]

 grant74, on Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:42 PM, said:

Does it come with some software to enable the atari to boot the .atr files?

Yes it does, you can download the ATR images down to an SD card and then use the device to mount them as though they were real floppies.

Solid state technology means no mechanical failures and SD card capacity is so high now you can pretty much have your entire collection on a couple of cards.

Much simpler than the old cassette systems!

HTH.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

If using real tapes is the goal you can use an external cassette adapter.

I have this combo:



It's a General Electric Compu-Mate data recorder with an external FSK interface.  The recorder itself isn't that special.  Just an old ordinary cassette player with little internal speaker and volume control and connectors for Audio Out, Mic In and REMote motor control.  As-is one can use it with a Sinclair ZX81 for example but the external interface is more interesting (General Electric Model No. 3-5149A).  It contains the required Atari FSK filter (with on/off switch) and it came with 2 different adapter cables, 1 for Commodore and 1 for Atari computers.



As long as your tape deck has a headphone output you can use it with this interface to load tapes.  If you want to save to tape too your deck also needs a microphone input.  The motor control is not really needed, you can start the deck manually.


edit: for those who cares, while I was at it I opened the thing...

Edited by Fox-1 / mnx, Fri Apr 23, 2010 2:31 PM.

[Stephen]

 Fox-1 / mnx, on Fri Apr 23, 2010 2:09 PM, said:

If using real tapes is the goal you can use an external cassette adapter.

I have this combo:

It's a General Electric Compu-Mate data recorder with an external FSK interface.  The recorder itself isn't that special.  Just an old ordinary cassette player with little internal speaker and volume control and connectors for Audio Out, Mic In and REMote motor control.  As-is one can use it with a Sinclair ZX81 for example but the external interface is more interesting (General Electric Model No. 3-5149A).  It contains the required Atari FSK filter (with on/off switch) and it came with 2 different adapter cables, 1 for Commodore and 1 for Atari computers.

As long as your tape deck has a headphone output you can use it with this interface to load tapes.  If you want to save to tape too your deck also needs a microphone input.  The motor control is not really needed, you can start the deck manually.

edit: for those who cares, while I was at it I opened the thing...

Neat - I never knew such a device existed.

[Almost Rice]

 grant74, on Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:42 PM, said:

I'll leave the 1010 well alone - it does work - just not 100% reliable loading but then I am expecting a bit much from a 20 odd year old tape deck with old tapes too!

Tapes did not work 100% of the time when they were new.  If you are saying you had to rewind and reload the tape, this is normal even back in the 80s.

[walter_J64bit]

WOW, Fox-1 / mnx I had no idea that there was an after market tape drive for the Atari.

[bob1200xl]

I think there were quite a few tape converters, actually. I have one that hooks up to a Norelco recorder. Maybe another one different than either of these. You really don't need much - motor control, for the most part.

Bob

 walter_J64bit, on Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:32 PM, said:

WOW, Fox-1 / mnx I had no idea that there was an after market tape drive for the Atari.

[130XE]

There was an Atari Tape Interface too.

Here enclosed pdf file with it's schematic and needed data.

I always dreamed about Nakamichi Dragon as electronically controlled tape drive for my Atari 130XE!!!
Atari may control it's start and stop itself!!! And Nakamichi can control it's tape signal quality.
Real PARADISE!

[130XE]

Another try, sorry...

Attached Files

•  AtariTapeInterface.pdf   1.27MB   204 downloads

[mimo]

Wow, now the dragon was an awesome tape deck. Could never afford one though

[130XE]

I can't remember without tears and crying this specific sound of XC12 when I pressed PAUSE while tape moving.
And Dragon obviously can do it MUCH MORE professionaly...

[suspicious_milk]

I'm not sure the hang up on FSK "only" atari tape drives.  Couldn't someone could take an Atari tape drive and flip two pins (audio out/data out R L tracks?) and just blast an un-modulated frequency to the Atari (Of course it would then have to be decoded via 6502/software).  

In the same vien, instead of trying to hardware hack a standard tape deck by strapping on a demodulator/modulator; outdated FSK at that, a simple adapter for audio out and mic to the data in/out pins on the SIO . . .  again, only now some FSK software would be needed (for old tapes) - - but there are newer and way faster demodulating techniques, so with this solution tons of "turbo loaders" could be had.

If FSK analog  to digital for some reason I'm missing *must* be done in hardware, why not not use a modem  -- - thats pretty much what they do?  <<--- I'm sure that was stupid for some reason of which I am grosly ignorant.

[Rybags]

It wouldn't work.

SIO audio in is mixed in with the Atari's audio, there's no hardware that can monitor it present.
You can't just pipe audio into SIO in - SIO requires a bitstream with start/stop bits to be able to work.

There's not much point in making tape interfaces or improving on it besides e.g. APE interface.  The cost of doing it would be virtually the same as other much faster and user-friendly solutions.

[130XE]

As I can remember Turbo interfaces use Pulse-width modulation (PWM) for modulation and demodulation.
Does it possible to use AVR or PIC controllers for very high speed tape interfaces?
And another question. I have scsi DDR3 strimmer. Is it anyway usable with Atari?
It contains MoDeM itself because it is DAT (Digital Audio Tape) standard basically...

[suspicious_milk]

Ha!  Yes, good luck with your Nakamichi Dragon!  Do you have one???  Those are awesome.
The PDF you posted using the XR2211 would be the cheapest way to make an interface which would allow the use of any standard cassette deck.  XR2211 can be purchased for around $1.  Making a simple SIO passthrough box with it (adding a line-in/line-out) would be only a few dollars in parts.  Much like the GE device Fox-1 posted.  

What Turbo's used PWM?  Does Pokey do the modulating or 6502?

[130XE]

Seriously The Dragon's Main Idea is to make 'tape-as-is' to eat as much technical aspects of recording as possible.
No more!
Certainly this idea is perfect of it's kind...
And I beleive that Dragon is one of the best approximation to plain engineering.

But this approach have nothing to do with acoustics science.
Humans way of hearing is the mixt of integral and differential approach.
FJC as a musician knows that for obtaining sense of loud increasing often enough to prolongate sustained sound with the same sound level...

Acoustics approach is the way of Panasonic Cobra for example.
Someone who heard it's sound was unable to understand how this simple boombox sounds like low range musical hi fi complex.
The secret is simple. They divided each of two stereo sound tracks to high+mid frequencies and low frequency electrically on the level of pre-amplifier and then gave each of four  channel it's own power amplifier. All sound distortions on pre-amplifier level is so negligible that we obtain clear and power sound from output.
We eliminate all cross-acoustics effects having place in plain loudspeakers.

Another example of acoustics approach is well known Dolby systems.
They all concearned different aspects of human way of hearing and the result is known to all of us.

BUT... But Dragon being as precise as possible approach to perfect recording is THE BEST choice for Atari-8 program recorder!!!

[130XE]

2suspicious_milk

> What Turbo's used PWM?
Certainly all of them.
Please look this page _http://www.arus.net.pl/FUJI/a8cas-util
There is the list of various PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) encodedformats.

[suspicious_milk]

 130XE, on Wed May 23, 2012 4:16 AM, said:

2suspicious_milk

> What Turbo's used PWM?
Certainly all of them.
Please look this page _http://www.arus.net.pl/FUJI/a8cas-util
There is the list of various PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) encodedformats.

Nice!  Thank You.

[Bryan]

Nakamichi was a monster when it came to engineering, but there are some other excellent tape decks out there that don't command such a high price. Also, the Nakamichi CR-7A is an excellent alternative to the Dragon. Of course, it's getting harder to get high quality tape to really take advantage a good deck. I don't think anyone is making Metal (type IV) tape anymore.

[sup8pdct]

From what i remember of tapes, One track has the fsk, 2nd track has normal audio that comes in on audio in pin on sio port.
The FSK when recording is generated by Pokey and put on sio out pin and tape deck simply records it.
Reading, the tape converts the fsk to digital. I do remember reading an artical in an early antic about adding a notch filter to a 410. This improves the digital conversion somewhat.
But these days, who uses tapes?

James

[suspicious_milk]

I use tapes.  In my experience, they've been more reliable than floppy's.  I've had cassettes ride in a hot car all summer (in Indiana) and still work.  Keep good care of them and your deck - - they last a long time.  I've got working heavily used tapes over 25 years old.  My floppies have not fared so well - - over half of them done in by an extended stay in a hot (but dry) attic.

You could also (in theory) publish a tape game at a fraction of the cost of carts (nothing like having REAL hardware).  Tapes are readily available and cheap.  Sure they are slow (that *could* be mitigated) but that's what beer and cigarettes are for

But mostly, It's just for their charm

Unfortunately, for me at least, I'm in the minority and Atari cassette decks will all die out before the actual cassettes do.

[130XE]

Surprisingly my XC12 works too (and in turbo mode) after 30 years of sleeping.
Seriously XC12 is very cheap and dirty for data transfer.
It consearns both the mechanical and electrical circuits.
I beleive that using precise mechanics and perfect circuitry with full logic control
will bring us very stable results.
DAT device in theory is much more advanced choice.