Starpath Supercharger using an mp3 player.

[CemeteryMan69]

I recently snagged a supercharger on ebay and am trying to load games using an mp3 player. The problem I'm running into is that the headphone jack is a little too big. Anyone know what size adapter I can use to get this to plug into a mp3 player?

Thanks.

[uveprom]

did you resolve the problem ?

[neilo]

I also recently bought a Starpath Supercharger off ebay and initially had difficulties loading mp3. As many have probably noticed the Supercharger only has a mono 3.5mm jack. All modern devices have a 3.5mm stereo socket (for a standard 3.5mm headphone jack). I initially noticed that if I halfway connected the jack I got better loading outcomes. That got me thinking. On my computer I adjusted the headphone balance to 100% Left and then instantly had better loading success (approx. 95% better) - because this makes it mono. You may not be able to adjust your headphone balance on an mp3 player, but you could also try an adapter - female 3.5mm mono socket to male 3.5mm stereo jack (if you can find one). I hope this helps. I found the "Stella Gets a New Brain" and "Worship the Woodgrain" mp3s online and I am having a blast. Long live the 2600.

 

Good Luck

 

Neilo

[alex_79]

What I did was to build an adapter using an in-line mono female socket, a male stereo plug and a short piece of wire. I only connected the tip (left channel) and base (ground) of the stereo plug to the mono socket. If you plug directly a mono plug in a stero socket, the right channel gets shorted to ground which in some cases might cause damage on the audio equipment (mp3 player, pc soundcard, etc)

[YANDMAN]

I got a supercharger a year and a half ago, never got it running on tapes.

 

Just bought a seven quid ipod copy and literally two hours ago it fired straight up. headphone jack is too long for modern sockets but it works anyways.

[bohoki]

i too had to go through a couple tape players to find one of enough quality to load it without screwing up a panasonic walkman type player works good for me set to one knotch before full volume

 

on the cassettes they have the program recorded at 2 speeds side one is the fast load side b is the slow load (more forgiving to bad tape decks

 

most mp3s online are recorded at max speed and will not likely ever work if recorded to tape because of the noise floor and warble (maybe if you use dolby nr)

 

having a commodore64 there is also other things to consider using tapes

 

there are mono tapes and stereo tapes cause originally cassettes were mono they used wide tracks but when they went to stereo the tracks were halved so if you record on a stereo deck and play it on a mono deck the head is situated between tracks so is getting less signal and the stereo heads are situated toward the outside of the mono track

 

very similar to a really old problem when people would write data to a 360k 5.25 floppy on a high density drive often a 360k drive would not see the data

 

i recorded them to cds and play them on my playstation (if you have the one with the stereo out jacks)or portable diskman

Edited June 12, 2016 by bohoki

[RickR]

I've never had an issue with the Supercharger and an MP3 player. The plug fits fine in the jack. I've had a lot better luck with games loading by storing them as WAV files with no compression.

[Dauber]

Just curious as to why people use Supercharger stuff in MP3 format, which is lossy compression, I can't help but think there'd be some data loss, which could theoretically result in a not-so-good copy. Why not just use WAV??? They can't possibly take up that much room.

[RickR]

I've never had an issue with the Supercharger and an MP3 player. The plug fits fine in the jack. I've had a lot better luck with games loading by storing them as WAV files with no compression.

Do you ever get the impression that on one reads what you type?

[Dauber]

Just curious as to why people use Supercharger stuff in MP3 format, which is lossy compression, I can't help but think there'd be some data loss, which could theoretically result in a not-so-good copy. Why not just use WAV??? They can't possibly take up that much room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AlwaysOnPlanetPatrol]

We're talking about data transmission, not audio fidelity. You're sending 1s and 0s over an audio channel, similar as what we used to do in old modems over phone lines.

 

You're not caring out getting that awesome pitch of a violin where you like to get those high sampling rates, you care about "hearing" enough about the flow of highs (1s) and lows (0s). So MP3s with a much smaller size would work just fine as a native wave file or OGG. I won't make comparison about analog audio from a tape versus digital MP3, before we know people are talking about gold connectors and stuff like that. I would just use MP3 because they would quicker to copy across devices and would work just as fine.

Edited June 16, 2016 by AlwaysOnPlanetPatrol

[neilo]

Hey I worked out another cool way to upload homebrew (wav), Worship the wood grain (wav) and Stella has a new Brain (mp3) files on the Supercharger. I uploaded all these files to Dropbox using my computer. On my IPhone I opened settings/general/accessibility and made sure the headphone balance is set to the left channel. I connected the supercharger to my iPhone and transferred the games directly from the Dropbox app. I works a treat 98% of the time.

 

It doesn't seem to matter whether its wav or MP3 both work just as good. I've been using Makewav to turn Homebrew.bin into wav files and that works a treat. Some games glitch but most work well. Its all part of the fun.

 

By the way I doubt a sound file can damage a stereo socket, it is just that the stereo signal creates interference to the mono jack and that is why if you adjust the balance to the left it will create a mono signal!

 

Cheers

 

Neilo

Edited July 1, 2016 by neilo

[Flojomojo]

We're talking about data transmission, not audio fidelity. You're sending 1s and 0s over an audio channel, similar as what we used to do in old modems over phone lines.

BINARY SOLO

http://youtu.be/CTjolEUj00g

[AlwaysOnPlanetPatrol]

BINARY SOLO

That's funny. Totally forgot about that one; loved that show.

[Dauber]

We're talking about data transmission, not audio fidelity. You're sending 1s and 0s over an audio channel, similar as what we used to do in old modems over phone lines.

 

Still, it's data being converted into an audio signal, and the Starpath converting that audio back into data. And I just can't help but think that lossy audio compression could theoretically convert to a few missed bits here and there. If it doesn't great, but it's just the logical conclusion...

Edited July 1, 2016 by Dauber

[Flojomojo]

Still, it's data being converted into an audio signal, and the Starpath converting that audio back into data. And I just can't help but think that lossy audio compression could theoretically convert to a few missed bits here and there. If it doesn't great, but it's just the logical conclusion...

 

 

Nah, you're not going to miss anything by compressing this kind of signal.

 

Music is like this.

 

 

Binary is like this.

 

If you compress the music signal, you're smoothing out the edges, trimming the highs and the lows, potentially losing dynamic range. If you compress the binary signal, you don't lose anything. There isn't any nuance lost, it's just ON and OFF, not peaks and valleys of varying size. These files are small enough that the raw .WAV files wouldn't be troublesome, but that format won't play on a pocket music player, hence the conversion to MP3.

[AlwaysOnPlanetPatrol]

 

 

Nah, you're not going to miss anything by compressing this kind of signal.

 

Music is like this.

 

 

Binary is like this.

 

If you compress the music signal, you're smoothing out the edges, trimming the highs and the lows, potentially losing dynamic range. If you compress the binary signal, you don't lose anything. There isn't any nuance lost, it's just ON and OFF, not peaks and valleys of varying size. These files are small enough that the raw .WAV files wouldn't be troublesome, but that format won't play on a pocket music player, hence the conversion to MP3.

 

You're spot-on. MP3s are certainly much better quality than what the original tapes provided.

[SoundGammon]

I got 2 Superchargers and I was wondering if there is a real small mp3 player I could build inside and then mount a couple buttons on the case to use to select tracks?

[+save2600]

Pictorials and explanations above are rather crude and don't represent just what digital sampling is doing to an analog signal, let alone its resolution/word length/sampling rate.

 

 

 

 

but agree about the type of signal in_this_case. Back in the early 2000's when I was using an mp3 player and a SuperCharger, had no problem loading the games. That was 14+ years ago. No need to further compress already compressed signals in 2016. Especially since storage constraints are no longer. And an mp3 player? You mean your phone or tablet?

[+iesposta]

Don't forget that members here have already converted every 4K and 2K game for the Supercharger, changing game code if it his a bank-switch location and crashes.

Search for "Nukey Shay's Hacks". That thread has all the "Supercharger" fixed ROMs that would crash an unmodified Supercharger.

 

With those and "Worship the Woodgrain" I have an iPhone Playlist with 315 MP3 game files, 91.8 MB.

Make sure "skip when shuffling" is checked, or during your shuffle playback you will get those loud, screechy game MP3's.

 

I checked a random few and the encoding ranges from 161 Kbps (VBR), to 256 kbps.

I found when making fast load, the higher rate has less failed loads.

 

I use a headphone 3.5 to 3.5 extension cable from my iPhone to the Supercharger's slightly oversized connector so as to not hurt the phone and it lets me keep it in the case w(hich recesses the phone's headphone connector way inside that the Supercharger would never fit).

 

The new PacMan 4K by DINTAR816 works 100% using bin2wav then to MP3. With Cut Scenes!

That new PacMan 4K game, and the Supercharger's The Official Frogger still blow my mind to this day that such fun, arcade accurate games exist for the 2600!

I'd share my MP3, but there I s an even newer 4K version that I haven't converted yet.

[Flojomojo]

Superchargers are great. It would be neat if someone could mod one into the case of a 2600.

 

Speaking of visualizing audio, I stumbled onto this explanation of "loading bars" on tape-based games. The Atari doesn't do this but it's interesting nonetheless, I think: http://www.nostalgianerd.com/what-are-loading-bands-for

[Video]

I use one of those cheap dual mono to stereo adapters that many people confuse for stereo splitters. It works great. Well when plugged into the proper side.

[KABOOMER!]

I burn the CD of Stella Have A New Brain in my library of iTunes, I have all the games in my iPod classic and no problemas to charge a game with the Starpath connected to the iPod, only I have got to change the iPod audio output to monaural.