mcs@cbscc.UUCP (12/07/83)
Does anyone have or know of information on
buliding an adapter that will allow one
to use a normal cassette recorder as a data recorder
for the commodore 64? I`m not up to shelling out
the bucks to buy Commodore`s. Any help on this
would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Mark S.porter@inuxd.UUCP (12/08/83)
This is the second time that someone has posted a desire to adapt a conventional audio tape recorder to a C64 and I think my comments deserve consideration for anyone who thinks they can get away with this, no hitches. The Commodore cassette is a digital cassette drive that uses direct head saturation. There is no kludged audio circuitry, no volume or tone controls to play with. The Commdore cassette is extremely reliable for this reason. Talk to any of your apple, TRS80, or TI friends and ask them about the problems with cassettes - they will all tell you they are a pain in the ***. They all use conventional tape recorders and every time they go to use them, they get load errors nearly every time. Now talk to someone with a commodore cassette drive and ask them how many load errors they have - the response maybe one or two a YEAR!! Conclucion: Shell out the bucks for the real thing. Don't waste your time with kludging up an audio recorder - it just isn't the same. There are a couple of other advantages: 1. The commodore cassette gets its power from the computer - one easy connection - no cable-idis. 2. The computer senses when you press "PLAY". 3. And of course, you can selectively load files by their 16 letter file name (as opposed to other computers that have no file name scheme with their cassettes. 4. Of course there is a tape counter for convience. 5. The motor on/off is software controllable. If you are still insistant on inflicting pain upon yourself, I can give references of articles in magazines of people who have done this kludging in the past. Jeff Porter (inuxd!porter) AT&T Consumer Products Indianapolis
pvl@houxh.UUCP (12/08/83)
I bad-mouth the TI 99/4a often enough that I must come to the defense of the one thing that was done *right* on it. The article to which this refers implied that the cassette interface isn't reliable. That had not been my experience. I have *never* had *any* trouble with the cassette interface to my TI. I use a standard Panasonic recorder and have been using the two together for over a year now. Pete LaMaster NJ (201)949-0040 ihnp4!houxh!pvl
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (12/09/83)
Hmm. Digital, eh? We just made some copies of Commodore software cassette tapes using an audio tape-tape copy. Since the computer itself is packed up for Christmas, we haven't tested the tapes. Are they going to work, or should we redo them digitally? (No, it wasn't copyrighted software.) While I have the attention of this newsgroup (and the ARPANET INFO-MICRO mailing list, apparently) I'd like to thank all the people who have replied to my previous queries. I got lots of info on printers, from many people with many different printers. The one printer mentioned more than once was the Star Micronics Gemini 10X, highly recommended 3 times. Cost is $295 or so plus $100 or so for an interface to a Centronics port. I have heard the claim that by reading Popular Computing I can find it for $229, with a $50 interface. Haven't checked that out yet. Let me shoot out a few more random questions. The Commodore monitor costs $25 and seems to have pretty good quality. But for $174 or so I can go to Sun TV and get a 13 inch color TV set that can also get TV. Since the Commodore monitor still leaves me with 40 columns, is there any reason to get the Commodore monitor? Substantially better picture? Some hope of an 80 column card someday? Also, any advice on speech synthesizers and/or recognizers? Finally, where do we get the programmers reference manual? Computer store? Mail order? Toy store? Thanks in advance. Mark Horton cbosgd!mark mark@Berkeley.ARPA
barnes@mprvaxa (12/11/83)
I second Jeff's opinion about getting a datasette. Mine works perfectly, and by the time you buy the interface and non-commodore cassette machine, you haven't saved any money anyway. Even if you already have a cassette machine, you still won't save much with the price of the interfaces I've seen. It isn't worth the headache. -- Michael Barnes Microtel Pacific Research ..!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!barnes
porter@inuxd.UUCP (J Porter) (12/12/83)
Tape-to-tape audio dubs are ok for the 64 and VIC if you are able to control the record level. An even better way is to do a digital dub, hooking the read line of one to the write line of the other. The computer is only needed to power up the circuitry. Just hook it up and go. I know people that have hacked at cheap color TVs to turn them into monitors, but this does take some expertise, and would not recommend it to just anybody. The Commodore monitor does give avery nice picture especially when used with the rear chroma and lumininse connections. Jeff Porter (inuxd!porter) AT&T Consumer Products Indianapolis