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Using a Generic Tape Recorder as an Atari Cassette Drive?
JoeShmoe950 asks: "I recently got my hands on an Atari 65XE. It didn't come with a floppy or a cassette drive. I started programming when I realized there was no way to save my program. I wanted to ask you people if there is any way to wire up a normal cassette recorder to an Atari. What I need is the description for what part of a tape recorder(record, mic, speaker, etc) to each pin. I want to create an alternative to buying an Atari Cassette Drive from eBay."
The AtariAge 8-bit forum.
"I started programming when I realized there was no way to save my program."
What a strange time to start programming.
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i'm more of an ST guy, but searching on google has found some info - it appears that the 65 tape drives are more akin to a modem than the Sinclair / Oric etc way of loading data, so it might not be that straightforward....
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Cassette!!! I mean, come on, I had to use cassette 20 years ago (I still have some tapes)
they degrade faster than floppies
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Atari used a weird serial interface on their computer peripherals, partly to meet FCC regulations on RF emissions. Sort of like a prehistoric version of USB. I don't know if they ever published a description of the pinout, voltages and protocol. Making a controller for a cassette recorder would be a major development project.
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Good luck with whatever you decide, and welcome to the world of Atari.
Speaking of which, I haven't played Atari today. Need to get it out and rectify that
Not what you're asking for ... but you should also pick yourself up an SIO2PC cable. It acts as a connector between your Atari and a PC. Running software on the PC like APE (Atari Peripheral Emulator) allows you to save and load disk images from the PC as if they were real disks on the Atari.
... and 5.25 floppies aren't as easy to come by these days)
... but there's some interesting stuff about how the Atari stores info on the tape in the book De Re Atari
This makes for better backups (as you can fit a lot of disk images on 1 CD
Also:
It doesn't include the pinouts
- gave away as in gave to the trash man during our annual cleanup day. And then last night I saw one in Terminator 3. Doh! And mine had the cassette drive too.
Skip trying to hack yourself a tape drive interface, and try to find yourself an ATR8000.
The ATR8000 is a interace box that I used to have on my 800XL. Had drive controllers, ran CP/M, lots of neat stuff. Find an old 8" or 5.25" floppy drive, plug it in, and go, cause the damn thing ran just about any tape drive you could find. On top of which, it will give you the ability to learn a little CP/M if you're so inclined.
I remember, when my dad first picked it up, playing DOnkey Kong Jr., from 8" floppies, on the ATR. It was pretty cool :)
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I would suggest using either a 1050 floppy drive, probably around $20 or so on ebay, or connecting to a PC and using it for storage via SIO2PC cable.
You didn't state what language you were programming in either. The Atari cassette drive did not really play well with the newer models: 65XE, 130XE. If you were going to be using a compiled program instead of something written with BASIC, you had to hold down the option button on the computer to disable the built in BASIC for the entire time it took to load the program via cassette tape. The cassette drive was really designed for the older Atari 400/800 series that had BASIC on a cartridge. I remember the old Action! language for the Atari, as well as Deep Blue C. Even small compiled programs written with those languages required you to hold the option button in for up to 2 minutes while the program was loading with the cassette.
> I want to create an alternative to buying
> an Atari Cassette Drive from eBay.
Why? Are they expensive?
Unless you would rather have the satisfaction of doing it yourself, it might be cheaper to just buy one, when you consider the hours you will probably put into it, and the possibility that the conversion might fail anyway.
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Perhaps it would be easier to send it out through a joystick port. You could easily wire one of those to the parallel port on a more modern computer and write some software to read it in. There are many schematics and bits of code on the net which could be adapted to such a purpose.
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I would stay far away from anything atari based and tape recorders. Having used them in the early 80s, they were extremely unreliable (I would spend 60-70 minutes loading a copy of zaxxon only to have it hit some audio blip along the way, finish loading and crash). The data stored is not in any redundant form, so any degredation or damage will mean it is forever lost.
:)
Try eBay for atari 1050 or similar floppy disk drive then store 65K per floppy (or 130K if you use a hole puncher and make them 2-sided)
As another outlet, you can download an atari emulator (stella and similar) and store your files on a PC file system (not sure if a linux atari emulator exists).
In 1985 i built an interface for my C64 to connect it to a normal cassette recorder. It worked quite well.
I dont know if the atari has similar signals on its cassette port. If the atari has one bit to switch the cassette motor on/off, and one output bit for record, and one input bit for play, my schematic should work for atari.
I could scan the schematic and email it or put is on a website.
Before a power outage destroys his program!
Long answer:
A complete circuit is in the January 1984 issue of "Computers & Electronics". I built a "DeLuxe" version of that circuit for myself which included motor control and some sound routing so that I could monitor the sounds and override the automatic motor control to allow fast forward/rewind with my Sony TC-205 tape deck.
Etched a PCB and put it in a nice box with shielded audio cables and such. It still works, but Atari tape storage is S-L-O-W and not too reliable. You're better off with a disk drive solution.
The Atari 400/800/XL/XE...'s all had the ability to generate FSK serial modulation with the sound/serial communications chip that's hooked to the SIO connector. Thus you can record via the "CSAVE" command the resulting cassette data output (with appropriate attenuation) on any recorder.
But, serial playback of the FSK data requires an FSK demodulator circuit to return the tape recorder's line output back to digital serial output. An XR2211 will do that just fine.
Thus, a 410/1010 has that FSK demodulator built-in, and additional motor control as well. You can get by without the motor control, but the FSK demodulator is mandatory.
You would be much happier with the SIO2PC form of data storage.
Knock yourself out. Have fun with that old 8-bit stuff.
1400XL or a 1450XLD run on Ebay these days? Those were da bomb like Phantoms...
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