captcapcom Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 I have an option to buy a Atari 410 Tape Recorder in good working order (Supposedly) and wanted to know if it will hook up to the Atari XE, and can I load Tapes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Sure, why not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Yes. The XEGS can use any of the peripherals that the 400/800, XL or XE computers can. The XEGS is basically a 65XE with a detachable keyboard and Missile Command built in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
captcapcom Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 Thanks guys... I'm still a newbie with Atari Computers. Didn't know I had Missile Commend built in until recently... LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Just expect long load times. I remember Pharoahs Curse takng about 45 minute...and it wasn't always successful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 I'm going to say no Not to say the 410 isn't compatible with XE, just that there aren't any that work anymore unless you've replaced the belts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
captcapcom Posted November 22, 2013 Author Share Posted November 22, 2013 would anyone have already converted WAV files that run on an MP3 player? Because I suck at converting them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Just expect long load times. I remember Pharoahs Curse takng about 45 minute...and it wasn't always successful. Wow, 45 minutes!, I've never owned a tape drive, I guess that was a right decision then , having said that I do understand its collectible or sentimental value for people who owned one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Wow, 45 minutes!, I've never owned a tape drive, I guess that was a right decision then , having said that I do understand its collectible or sentimental value for people who owned one. If my memory from that far back serves me. I do remember starting it and then going and making lunch and then watching at least a 1/2 hour of TV until it was done. The progress was indicated by the pharaoh who would move sloooowly from the left side of the screen to the right. When got all the way over, the game would start. I remember sometimes it would get so close and then for some reason it would freeze and I would have to start the load all over again. The 410 cost about $70 at the time and the 810 was like $400 so you can see why I went with it but it wasn't a great devices. I tried to store programs on tapes but that was hit and miss...mostly miss. There was a little tape counter on it which you were suppose to use to know where you program started and end. Using that you could store many programs on a tape. Even then my programs would seem to disappear. Another great feeling when you spent hours typing in some program from a magazine only to loose all of that work. Yes, the cassette tape drive was a sorry excuse for a real storage devices....but even so I do have some fond memories. Tapes could store more data than what the cartridges could but sometimes the games wouldn't allows as much data as the disks. I remember that the tape version of Crush, Crumble, and Chomp was missing a monster or two that the disk had so I held out until I got my Indus GT. One cool thing I found out by accident was that if I taped audio over the cassette first and then stored my programs, when I loaded the programs, I could listen to the audio. I guess you could consider that the first load music. Unfortunately, loading data also made this beep and boop sound come out of the speaker so it wasn't like it would be straight music. Maybe if I taped Kraftwerk, I wouldn't have noticed the load sounds. It is weird that I have fond memories from such a pathetic storage device but today everyone pretty much has what they want when they want it. Everyone has a computer. Few people could afford a computer and they were something you had to learn to use on your own and that took time and patients, just like loading something off tape. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+skr Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 (edited) would anyone have already converted WAV files that run on an MP3 player? Because I suck at converting them... I am not the expert on this, but I know that you can´t feed WAV-files to the Atari, as you can do with ZX Spectrum and others. The signal is sent to the Atari via the SIO-Bus, and this does not transport analog data. It is converted inside the tape drive. You can easily copy Atari-Tapes with a double tape drive for example. But just feed wav-files won´t work. Edited November 22, 2013 by skr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pseudografx Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Actually, the tape drives (mostly XC12 models) were THE storage devices in the post-communist countries. However, we used a hardware modification (and a software loader) that increased the speed to over 2200 kBaud, which made loading a matter of minutes. Most games loaded in less than two minutes (about 30 KBytes loaded) so in fact it might have been faster than the C64 disk drive at stock speed :-) Moreover, the recordings were more reliable so load errors became less frequent. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magic Knight Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 The Wav files would need to be converted to CAS format which is easily done using WAV2CAS and some of the other common convertors out there. Emulation these days is great - you can load wav's into them to test the integrety before recoding to tape (and finding out they dont load). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 The 410 cost about $70 at the time and the 810 was like $400 so you can see why I went with it but it wasn't a great devices. Yeah I could certainly understand why one would buy it, I was just lucky (or actually late in the Atari scene), that disk drives (1050) were affordable when I bought my first Atari computer (800XL) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firestorm Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Pharaoh's Curse loading time from tape 45 minutes??? Only 6:58 minutes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Pharaoh's Curse loading time from tape 45 minutes??? Only 6:58 minutes On cassette?!?! On a non-modded system?!?! That I would have to see. Maybe it seem like 45 mins but it wasn't 7 minutes. I had an Atari 800 with 48k and the second generation 410 & that game took forever to load. If I am wrong about then then reality as I remember it is put into question. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magic Knight Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 Perhaps there were one or two batches run. I remember the first run of Mastertronics Kickstart bike game - which was over 30 minutes and long pauses between beeps! The later batches were less than 10 minutes, so it shows that game loading experiences can vary depending how often runs are done on cassettes with compiling changing to suit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firestorm Posted November 22, 2013 Share Posted November 22, 2013 (edited) I have just loaded Pharaoh's Curse on my Atari 800XL with Atari 1010 tape recorder with standard 600 baud, time 6:33 minutes! 6:58 is from Altirra. I love Atari tape recorders, my first Atari computer was Atari 800Xl with Atari XC 12 tape recorder back in 1986. I have few Atari 1010 and XC 12 all in working condition. Now, with tapes like Maxell UR 60 or TDK D 60 recorded on good quality tape deck using cas2wav, Atari recorders loads games almost without errors. Edited November 22, 2013 by firestorm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Well, that is the 1010, not the 410. Is it possible they sped up the loading times with that newer version? I mean, that's newer hardware all around so not exactly the same test.I only used the 410 for about a year and then I got the Indus...and I never looked back. I think my first cassette game was Protector II. I can't remember how long that took to load. I just remember Pharoh's Curse and the curse of the long load times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 The perception of time changes with age. The day before Christmas (or the night before Christmas if you live in the part of the world served by Santa) may be used as proof. It seems to last endlessly when you're child waiting for presents but races by when you're a parent preparing everything for Christmas while the kids are away with the grandparents 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 410 and 1010 are both 600bps (loading speed). Times just seemed much longer when you're a kid. Waiting for the microwave oven to heat an after-school snack seemed like an eternity back then, too, while now I'm happy to wait for superior (even-heating) of standard cooking. The years click by much faster now too; this one's almost over!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 With the conversion being done inside the tape drive, it seems to me, modding one to inject the audio where it would come from the tape head, or right after would work just fine. Has anyone ever attempted this? I know it's slow, but just wondering... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 Disregarding leader, data throughput at 600 baud should be a touch over 3K per minute. 600 bps = 60 bytes remembering we have 10 bits per byte including start/stop bits. Records are 132 bytes including the 2 for speed measurement, 1 control, 1 checksum. 1/4 second for IRG, didn't look it up but I think that's it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 Disregarding leader, data throughput at 600 baud should be a touch over 3K per minute. 600 bps = 60 bytes remembering we have 10 bits per byte including start/stop bits. Records are 132 bytes including the 2 for speed measurement, 1 control, 1 checksum. 1/4 second for IRG, didn't look it up but I think that's it. Ok. You're using that ol' black magic called math on me but I think I'm sorta following. If the game is 32K (32,768) and you read at 600bps (or 60 bytes per second) and there are 60 seconds in a minute so... 32768/(60*60)=9.10 minutes. You mention some other info I'm not familiar with but 9 minutes is no 45 minutes so this confirms that time and memory is relative to age. This really blows my mind to actually see this proven to me. I knew it happens but I never proved it to myself. Thanks for working this out with me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 Hmmm... with a purely software UART routine it might be possible to decode larger words meaning fewer framing bits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magic Knight Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 With the conversion being done inside the tape drive, it seems to me, modding one to inject the audio where it would come from the tape head, or right after would work just fine. Has anyone ever attempted this? I know it's slow, but just wondering... Using a Headphone jack to those fake tape things works good and cost around $2 these days - they are so magnitized that you dont even have to press play - as soon as you press return after holding down start etc, - the tape head part does its thing via the headphone jack (to a pc or mp3 player - not the music - the beeps from a cas 2 wav file). MP3 played throguh media player from converting cas to wav to mp3 works and saves space. its also possible to hardwire the audio in but it does make your drive look a little hacked together unless you install a jack socket in a discreet place. i have tried both, but the first one is more practical. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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