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SCRAM cassette won’t load - error 140 at line 0 both sides


ianoid

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I’m trying to run SCRAM original cassette on an 800xl with a 410. It loads partially, getting through the basic loader, then when I get well into loading after the Fuji screen, it fails with the above error, on both the 16K side and the 24K side.

 

Any suggestions or ideas?

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Both sides, might be a problem with the tape drive or cable.

140 = framing error.  Usually the computer has received a false start bit and no proper stop bit.  Can occur on tape when there's noise causing it.

 

Suggestion - see if you can obtain a CAS image that equates to what you have then put it on another cassette and try it.

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This is why I'm not interested in using cassettes or floppies anymore. Hassle then, hassle now. The only reasons I would bother are to recover some old file, or to show my kids how it used to be.

 

Some enjoy the full retro experience. I prefer the more modern peripherals.

 

Last time I played SCRAM was after the Fukushima accident. I could recreate the meltdown by shutting off the coolant. No matter how quickly I got the control rods in, it would eventually melt, IIRC.

 

Edit: IDNRC

 

Edited by ClausB
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1 hour ago, ClausB said:

This is why I'm not interested in using cassettes or floppies anymore. Hassle then, hassle now. The only reasons I would bother are to recover some old file, or to show my kids how it used to be.

 

Some enjoy the full retro experience. I prefer the more modern peripherals.

 

 

I agree with you 110%.

 

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Probably a damaged tape. You can try fast-forwarding and rewinding it multiple times, you might get lucky.

 

And ofcourse what others say, clean the tape head and try to align the tape head with a screwdriver. You can hear the sound of the tape without loading it with POKE 54018,52 to align the tape head.

 

When all these tips don't work, try another cassette. If the scram tape is damaged you can not repair it. What you can do is downloading a CAS-file, convert it back to a WAV-file and record it on a new tape. You can place the new tape in the case of the old cassette.

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2 hours ago, ClausB said:

This is why I'm not interested in using cassettes or floppies anymore. Hassle then, hassle now. The only reasons I would bother are to recover some old file, or to show my kids how it used to be.

 

Some enjoy the full retro experience. I prefer the more modern peripherals.

 

Last time I played SCRAM was after the Fukushima accident. I could recreate the meltdown by shutting off the coolant. No matter how quickly I got the control rods in, it would eventually melt, IIRC.

 

Edit: IDNRC

 

Hey Claus - can you upload that ATR from the link in the other thread to this one for the sake of convenience? Or maybe someone else can do it. I’m on a tablet at the moment and can’t. 

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8 hours ago, ClausB said:

This is why I'm not interested in using cassettes or floppies anymore. Hassle then, hassle now

Without a doubt (I would only make an exception for the Japan-made quality 1010 and Indus/GT, for CP/M)

 

That stupid 410 I had made my 400 look barely usable... it actually held my learning back for a long time, because I needed every bit of time for my formal education (as a kid), and had little time for aggregate hours of tape-loading (and dreadful errors). Therefore, playtime, programming-time, etc., all got shrunk to effectively little, almost making me hate the system... until the XL / IndusGT arrived...

 

SCRAM is an absolute must have (have it on Incognito's HD Basic-apos folder, w/ loader screen)... and above the top-5 games I first showed my kids... and oddly, they got a kick finding out every way to melt that tower, no matter what... ??

Edited by Faicuai
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Hated the 410 back in the day. You can always tell by the noise if it's going to error.  I sometimes had luck with a dual cassette deck creating a new tape from the old. Or at least as much luck as the original tape. As soon as I was old enough to make a few $$, I bought an Indus GT. Totally skipped the Atari drives because of my 410 experience.

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Scram from tape normally required no disk drive be turned on at boot, possibly early OS and and early basic....

An 800XL may need to run an OS fix or Translator and have not disk drive device etc to occupy memory on at boot/load/execution

 

I could be wrong, but It's the way I remember 400/800 use of the cassette.

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2 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Scram from tape normally required no disk drive be turned on at boot, possibly early OS and and early basic....

An 800XL may need to run an OS fix or Translator and have not disk drive device etc to occupy memory on at boot/load/execution

 

I could be wrong, but It's the way I remember 400/800 use of the cassette.

Scram runs fine under XL/XE OS 2 and Basic rev. C. So no translator is needed. 

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4 hours ago, Fred_M said:

Scram runs fine under XL/XE OS 2 and Basic rev. C. So no translator is needed. 

That's good to hear, this leaves our OP with choosing different cassette loading methods, making sure the head, pinch roller, capstan are clean, and possibly belts to change in his program recorder

...

I hope he is following this method by turning on the Atari with no drive on and waiting for the Basic READY Prompt

then typing

 

CLOAD

press play on deck

RETURN KEY

 

Edited by _The Doctor__
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On 4/12/2021 at 10:20 AM, _The Doctor__ said:

Scram from tape normally required no disk drive be turned on at boot, possibly early OS and and early basic....

According to the manual it just needs more RAM when loading with DOS present. 

 

After watching the Chernobyl mini-series I decided to try my hand at nuclear power generation but whatever version of Scram I load, Atari800MacX shows garbled text in the left part of the text window:

image.thumb.png.11a2313a34834bca4b504efc976f6a31.png

 

Looks like some P/M stuff that shouldn't be there. Does anybody else experience this? Emulator only or even real machine?

 

It is really amazing that this was part of the initial Atari program lineup.

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28 minutes ago, slx said:

It is really amazing that this was part of the initial Atari program lineup.

Well, it was an APX (Atari Program Exchange) title, one of Chris Crawford's many hobby projects. One of his others, EASTERN FRONT:1941 also started out as an APX cassette title before getting a formal official Atari release. I owned both APX versions as a kid and loved them 

Edited by DrVenkman
typo
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3 hours ago, slx said:

According to the manual it just needs more RAM when loading with DOS present. 

 

After watching the Chernobyl mini-series I decided to try my hand at nuclear power generation but whatever version of Scram I load, Atari800MacX shows garbled text in the left part of the text window:

image.thumb.png.11a2313a34834bca4b504efc976f6a31.png

 

Looks like some P/M stuff that shouldn't be there. Does anybody else experience this? Emulator only or even real machine?

 

It is really amazing that this was part of the initial Atari program lineup.

I'm running Atari800MacX v4.4.0 on OSX 10.6.8 and I don't see those artifacts.

 

Yes it is an impressive work. At PDI, I borrowed some of its effects in a demo done for a petroleum cracking plant operator training program.

Edited by ClausB
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5 hours ago, ClausB said:

I'm running Atari800MacX v4.4.0 on OSX 10.6.8 and I don't see those artifacts.

It's Atari800MacX 6.0.0 here and the file from your post #8. Very interesting. Need to set up a machine and try from original tape.

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No need to dump the tape again and again. Here is Scram as a (PC) .CAS version, recorded side A (16k version) and side B (24k/32k version).

 

And I also did several disk images of it: One image contains only the (Basic) data and uses DOS 2 format (and as said, only the Data, there is no DOS on that image). The other image is a bootable disk created with CasDis (boot it with Basic enabled). CasDis looks like a bootdisk, but I know it stores its information (of up to 8 tape parts) somewhere, it's just not DOS 2 compatible.

 

If you want to have the program on a DOS 2.x disk, either download the version above (post #8) or use my data versions and copy them onto a DOS 2.0, DOS 2.5, DOS2XL, MyDOS, uDOS, LiteDOS, etc. diskette and make it bootable. Do not forget then to change CLOAD or RUN"C:" into e.g. RUN"D:SCRAM.PTx" (where x is 1, 2 or 3 depending on the part you want to load)...

 

Scram_16k_and_32k_CAS.zip Scram_Boot.zip Scram_Data.zip

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1 hour ago, CharlieChaplin said:

No need to dump the tape again and again.

It´s not about dumping, from time to time I just like to load stuff from cassettes. And as I never played Scram, this will be my next nostalgia evening. ;)

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Inspired by nostalgia, I decided to load the 24K .CAS file I’ve had around here forever. Since I have at least three 410’s, all of which need new belts, I decided to use my FujiNet. 
 

Here’s an interesting use quirk. Even though this FujiNet board implementation uses a pull-down resistor on the motor control line, apparently due to the quirk of SCRAM having been written in BASIC and using a two stage loading process, I could not get the file to load initially. I then used the web UI to change the FujiNet to use a B-button press to start playback. This allowed me to type RUN and manually get the program to load the second main stage of the program. 

 

EDIT: I power-cycled everything and tried the pull-down resistor setting again. This time, the second stage load began properly "automagically" although I got a loading error. Tried a third time and it worked properly. Ah, the joys of cassette files, even in the digital media age.

 

C8CF0615-9B98-4412-8FE9-6278DEA06282.jpeg

 

A61E3008-32E2-4752-A316-0C9F85D19ED4.jpeg

 

13B23935-3ABB-4B67-9788-D98857A87FD6.jpeg

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