toptenmaterial Posted May 30, 2013 Share Posted May 30, 2013 So I got a nice cassette of a Frogger clone from a fellow AAer. I decide to test out the 410 drive that I recently rescued, and it's pretty much dead. The wheels turn a little in fits and starts, but mostly nothing. Easy fix? I warn you that I have zero technical knowlege. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dripfree Posted May 30, 2013 Share Posted May 30, 2013 Sounds like the belt is bad. I got a 410 it had bad belts. With age the belts got dry and a little loose it would turn the spindles if there was no tape in there but when the extra resistance of a tape was added the belt just slipped. I went to the dollar store and bought a big ol bag of rubber bands and tried a bunch of different one's till I finally found one that worked. It can't be too loose, too tight, or too stretchy. Too stretchy was the biggest problem I had. The motor will actually stretch the rubber band rather than turn the spindles until finally there is enough tension on the band to make it go. But then the tension gets relieved and the process starts over again. I actually found the right one by putting in John Denver tape. The stretching issue gave the audio output a wah wah effect, cuz the tape would speed up slow down speed up slow down. I just listened to John Denver and experimented with different bands until I found one that didn't distort the audio. Then I tried a datasette and it loaded. The little fits as you describe them sounds like a old dry loose belt which is very common (unless it was refurbished I think you would be very lucky to find a 410 with belts that are still good). There are real replacement belts on ebay sometimes, or you could cannibalize some other cheapy cassette recorder from goodwill for its belts. But with a little experimenting a dollar store bag of rubber bands may do the trick for you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dripfree Posted May 30, 2013 Share Posted May 30, 2013 (edited) I just thought this thread may be somewhat relevant to you. I started it when I was playing around with a workaround to my belt issue before I had it solved. I was trying different ways of loading tapes that wouldn't require the 410 to actually turn the tape. I first used one of those cassette tape adapters that you would use to hook a discman up to your car that only has a cassette player. It does work. If your really itching for some Frogger action you could take a different audio cassette player that works well and put frogger in it. Then get one of those cassette adapters and plug it into the headphone jack of the audio cassette player. Then stick the cassette end of the adapter into your 410. The cassette adapter's don't actually get turned cuz they don't actually contain any tape so a bad belt is no longer a problem. I took it to another level that allowed me to pump audio into my 410 from my ipod through a direct line in. I use my ipod much more then real tapes now. Not that you need to do all that, but the cassette adapter should at least get you playing Frogger pretty soon. http://atariage.com/...ee#entry2730286 Edited May 30, 2013 by Dripfree 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magic Knight Posted May 30, 2013 Share Posted May 30, 2013 I have a 410 belt kit listed on Ebay if you cant find any in North America. (as well as other Atari belts). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toptenmaterial Posted May 31, 2013 Author Share Posted May 31, 2013 Thanks MK. Depending on how my money situation looks this week I'll check it out. What about the 5 1/4 floppy drives? I have 2 and hope that they still work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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