low.blow

Atari 400! My parents bought me one when they first came out. Eventually got an 850 and 830. Also eventually got it upgraded to 48k and my parents bought me a rana 1000. So that is the system I use now. This is all nostalgia for me, so I'm not real interested in owning hardware I didn't own back in the day(except sio2pc of course - I love that thing). I don't mind playing with games/software on altirra that won't run on my system. I stopped using computers for a bit shortly after the xl's came out. I wanted a 1450xld soooo bad back then, but I never really got a chance to use any of the xl's. Until Amiga, my computer time was spent on a friend's c64. Edit: forgot to mention the 410 before owning a disk drive.

Looking at the .wav in audacity, the audio looks like it was recorded extremely low volume. I used audacity to amplify it, then ran wav2cas, which seemed to work - but I still can't get the .cas file to run in altirra... edit: actually messing around I got it to load in altirra. I used hardware 400/800, rom os-b, 48k ram(800), sio patch on. Had to boot basic, then cload. SE2B.rar

Soooo awesome. I've been waiting for this one!

Atari 400 GTIA, NTSC, original 16K (now upgraded to 48K): AV 428709 033 Not my original 400, that one is long gone I got this one(my only Atari) from ebay.

Thanks for all the kind words. It was a fun little project. One thing I didn't mention in the video that I think is cool, is the power button. A pc normally requires a momentary switch, but the 810 uses a toggle switch. I really wanted to use the original switch, so I put a capicitor inline on one of the switch legs. When the switch is flipped, the cap charges and the motherboard sees a momentary flow of current until the cap is charged. The negative to this is that to shut down, I have to use the start menu or flip the switch back and forth again.

2600daptors are like the stelladaptors. The have an Atari joystick port on one end and a usb port on the other. So you can use just about any Atari controller on a pc.

Hi all, Someone asked about this, so I thought I'd make a quick video to show it off. This is my sio2pc setup that I recently put together. Here. Basically, a mini-itx mobo w/ i5 processor. 2 2600daptors(mounted inside case). dual-port sio2pc from atarimax(also mounted inside). running altirra and ape(registered). touch screen interface. pretty tight fit with the power supply and all... probably could have had plenty more room if I'd thought it out better in advance, but it runs cool enough.

Thank you dude, Truly awesome!

Cool. Thank you. I am not certain that my dump is totally good though. Any way to be sure? I can try anything that someone thinks might work better while dumping. I'd like to get this one perfect before converting the rest of the tapes... In altirra, there was no music. Was it the same for you?

Well, after MUCH trial and tribulation, I finally got somewhere with this. Initially I was trying to convert a test cassette so as to make sure I could have the process work, and not have one of these tapes get eaten. For the life of me I could not get anything to work(about 98% of the hex dump showing "bad"). I believe several of the test cassettes I tried to convert are actually bad to begin with. I also had battery issues with the tape player. Finally I found a test cassette that didn't work, but at least had mostly "ok" flags in the hex file. Through all of this no tapes were damaged, so I felt comfortable trying to get one of the poussinet tapes converted. The files in the link below are from my most successful attempt. There are still 2 "bad" flags near the end of the hex file, but I was able to load the game in altirra(atari 400/800 osb 48k) and play it(i didn't get past the first screen as yet). The cassette case claims 16k required, but the loaded game says 32k on the screen. The casssette itself is simply labelled "commercial (18 juin)". Anyone interested please check these files out. Are the 2 "bad" flags potentially normal? I don't really understand how all of this works. I have available the .hex, the .cas, and the .wav files. Could someone check all three and let me know what I need to do further? is the .wav acceptable quality? I did do a small amount of noise reduction if I remember correctly. And I'm not toatally sure, but I may have normalized the signal as well(can't remember as I've tried different things soooooo many times to get this to work). Hopefully my link works, Files Here! I will have to take this down if my bandwidth gets destroyed. If that happens, maybe someone else can host them?

Ok, I've sourced a tape player, and found a cable. I've installed Audacity and plugins. I think I'm ready to try this. What bit rate should I use for mp3? I will save as wav as well. Should I filter noise with software? I assume I should set levels for as high as possible withoutclipping? Stereo or mono?

Thanks for the tips Rybags. Unfortunately I don't have a cassette player to rip from. Perhaps I could send these to Allen or somebody(luckybuck?) that could get this done?

Sorry for the necro-bump, but www.atarimania.com, were you able to get a copy of these tapes? I believe I was the one that ended up buying them off ebay. If you want copies let me know. I tried to pm you instead of posting, but I think your box is full! I see you were interested in this stuff in another ancient thread.

I'm glad I could help you with this. Lucky eBay find. Thank you for doing the conversion! Hopefully you can find more buried treasures.

I'm in California, but as an obviously regular poster here, I would trust you. If scanning doesn't work out, maybe we can talk about that. The printer/scanner I have does have an auto feeder. I assumed it would not work very well with 2 sided pages being out of order. And lower quality... I wonder how many I could stack on the feeder at a time without worry of jamming?

I can photograph with a camera as well. Probably much quicker for me, but I would rather save you a little effort on your end, so scanning is probably better?

Looks like it ocr'd quite well. I think I will have a go at scanning myself. Hopefully it is ok if I give multiple pdf's, as I do not think I can get it all done in one shot. I will pm you in a moment.

So I tried three different copy shops. The first one said it was too much work. The second and third ones hassled me over copywrite. Looks like I'll be doing this the hard way. I was able to borrow a scanner/printer from an in-law. I got the drivers installed and can now scan to pdf from my computer. I cannot scan to ocr pdf, the drivers don't have that functionality. Attached is a test scan of the first couple of pages. What settings do I want to use for the final? The test scan is 300 dpi black and white "auto exposure type: document"(whatever that means...). I did not scan with black paper on the back side for this test print, but I will do that for the final scan(the wife is at the store to buy black construction paper right now). Target size is set to "original". it looks like the manual is printed on A5 size paper. Are these settings sufficient? Anything I'm missing? basicxl30daytest003.pdf

Allan, thank you for the tips. Definitely want to do the best job possible.

Would it be best to scan these as separate pdf's, or as one?

The manual that I have, which is in the same D-ring binder as the 30 day manual, is indeed 135 pages. And it appears to be different than the pdf you linked. Attached is a pic of the last page...

I won't consider any compensation. But I have never scanned a text to pdf before. Will the copy shop do the work? If not, any advice to making the best possible scan is appreciated(and will definitely scan as pdf with ocr).

@Stephen thanks, I'm pleasantly surprised that I will actually be able to contribute something to the community!

I do have this book. It is the first section in front of the manual. I will try to get this scanned over the weekend( I don't have a scanner, but will figure something out...). Also, hi all! This is my first post on atariage, but have been lurking for a long time.