| Posted By
Noro
on 2002-07-08
|  Best way to take a tap from a real tape?
Hi all,
I won the auctions for the rare (unknown) tapes
(GOLF / BOWLING; SURROUND / BALANCE / TRICKY DICES)
and Konami Coin-op hits, so I will get them the next days
(all together only EUR10.50 incl. shipping).
Although the unknown games are probably amateur and thus not
self-starting so it should not be too hard to make .prg files out of
them, I would like to try to make taps and of course make a tap
of Konami's Coin-op hits.
I have following equipment:
Plus/4 + datasette + 1551
C128D + datasette + int. 1571 + ext. 1570
XA1541 cable
a simple old walkman + sound card on PC 
So I think the best way would be original mtap on th 128 in 64 mode,
but can it correctly handle Plus4 tapes? Does it work with XA1541?
(I only read about X1541 and XE1541)
What about mtap port for Plus4 with XA1541? (I think I heard about that
- Lando do You make the taps that way? )
I also remember there was a page about making taps by Lando on the old
site, but I cannot find it anymore.
TIA for any help
P.S. sorry for all the bad C... words
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2002-07-08
| Tapes
Interesting finds, Norbert, I'd definitely like to see them. As fas as making tapes or even just connecting the PC and the Plus/4 I'm an amateur, so I'm not much of a help here. However, I would also like to know how this can be done  So advice, anyone?
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-08
 | ok...
Sorry Noro I don't know anything about your XA1541 cable 
I've just had a quick look on Minstrel's Commodore page and I think it will support it?? Big page about the cables on there.
Most normal saved and normal turbo agames eg.(Nova Load) will work from a C64. My first ones were done in that way. How ever there is a little program you need transfer and run on the c64 first to talk to the PC I can send you this on a cassette if you need it.
Also, Markus lives in Germany. I haven't heared from him in a long time, but could be worth getting in touch with him.
There is info on his site on how to make an X1531 cable so all you do is plug in your 1531 tape deck and press play to record. Mtap does all the work. There is also a C64 version of this cable aswell.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-08
| I have an EX1541 cable.
I have 2 options set up, the second rulez and a must have for any Plus4 users!
1. Use my 1541 with Starcommander.
2. Use my Plus4 and load/save with my PC harddrive using 64hdd. I've renamed it to 16HDD This makes your PC emulate a 1541, the Plus4 does'nt need any software. You can even load +4 software from CD!! and you don't even need to extract D64 images!
I've got it setup wicked on #8: Switch on Plus4, enter dos and type c16 and thats it My Plus4 has never had it so GOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-08
| Noro.
I'm gald you won the auction Rare indeed!!
If you need any help gives us a shout and see if we can think of something.
If we get stuck you could always save them onto another tape and send that to me.
regards,
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-08
| Wow I found Mike's page at long last!!!
Mike Dailly might of taken his old Plus/4 homepage down, but that won't stop us from looking at it. Here's his cool page all about making wav samples of your c16/plus4 tapes. I bought an old mono tape player like the old spectrum ones to make mine.... very hard. Setting up the recording level is easy, getting the volume level right on the tape player is the hard part. Also Ati (Yape) did make a wav sample to mtap format converter...
Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20010205162100/www.scotch.demon.co.uk/tape.htm
One you've made the sample, just rename it to .tap and you can use both Minus4 Dos and Yape to load them in.
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Posted By
Noro
on 2002-07-09
| Thanks for the tips
Hi,
good to hear that mtap on 64 should handle the Plussy tapes, it will be my first setup to try, hopefully it really will work with my cable. I also looked on the current page, and it indeed says mtap works with XA1541 ... maybe I should visit an optician 8-)
I have no problem transferring the 64 part of mtap to the 128(64) as I can do it via a floppy.
I did not try 64HDD with my XA1541 cable, I only tested an early version with standard
X1541 some time ago, but my current PC only works with XA154. The 64HDD docs do not mention XA1541 (I really read the docs ) I will give it a try...
As soon as the tapes come in I will try mtap on 128(64) first and hopefully it will work.
I would prefer not to have to build a X1531 cable solely for these 3 tapes ...
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-10
| Nice 1 Ati.
The question has been asked a couple of times since Mike took his scotch demon site down and I thought that page was lost for ever.
Cheers
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2002-07-10
| New version of MTAp is out...
BTW, I've just checked Markus Brenner's MTAP site recently and it says that a new version is out...! Not much plus/4 related changes were taken place, but still...
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-10
| 64/16HDD
Of course, we can all assume you meant XE1541 cable. My PC mb is an ASUS board which is very cranky with any of the xx1541 cables. Maybe you could try pulling one of my old Solitaire games or GraphicUtils from Funet, that were packed in those .SDA files and see if they dissolve/play properly on your setup. I think that those were all Ntsc/Pal corrected. That was one of the problems, back then, we never considered that Emus would be replacing the REAL machine. Without true 1541/1551 support, in our present Plussy Emus... many of the programs that use floppy drive routines will not run correctly
But that is the subject for another topic...
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Posted By
Noro
on 2002-07-11
| XA1541
No, I really mean the rare XA1541; it has basically X1541 pinout and _should_ be 100% compatible with X1541 programs,
and it works on ASUS boards and all the notebooks which do not work with X1541 and XE1541.
It was really hard to get (and not as cheap as the others).
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-11
| Noro, Jim was talking about me ;-)
It took much of the night to post those above rounding off at 2am Emucamp was playing up and I could'nt load many pages or I was waiting for ever (refresh) to get anything to load I spelt xe1541 as ex1541 hehehe.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2002-07-11
| Re: We never considered that Emus would be replacing the REAL machine.
A couple of years back I would of said the same thing, but in all honesty I would'nt be without my hardware even if I'm a RETRO gamer
Jim are all the card games your work? Sure I'd lov to test them, but any pointers on how to un-compress this SDA? My true knowledge and understanding is limited around the year 1986 AD and as you can guess I live in the land of Press Play On Tape, disk routines and stuff are a little over my head having only used the basic side of it.
regards,
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Posted By
Noro
on 2002-07-11
| Re Lando:
Ok, I didnt see your typo.
Maybe we should start to identify to which reply we replay if we reply to a reply and don't reply to the original post
PS: I really tried to use 'reply' more often in that sentence but it became absolute nonsence ... too hot here these days 
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-11
| Yeah, the XA1541
I remembered that the XA1541 cable was supposed to work with the ASUS boards and others that had either a non-standard parallel port or some of the Laptops. I even modified one of my X1541 cables, using the original 2N3904 transistors, that they specified in the beginning. Didn't work for me, but I know that they changed to that newer mini-surface mount type device later. I had a number of X1541 cables that I made up years ago, that I later changed into the XE1541 type. I only needed them, recently to archive my old Plus4 stuff to CDR... for James C and myself. I was pleased that I was able to read, virtually, all the old 1541/1551 floppies I had. Had no problems wirh the 1581 disks. I did use my son's PC to do this.
Yes Lando, those are mine. James C has a CD with a few thousand files and articles that I did, back in the "Good ol' Days" before burnout set in. I think I was one of the few, over here, that did any Pal to Ntsc conversions... too. So he has a lot of proggys from the other guys from the old Plus4 scene that I rewrote for use on our Ntsc machines. Most of what I cranked out, in later times, was compatable on both sides of the pond. The SDA files were for (Marko?) and his Funet site. They are Plus4 specific Self Dissolving Archives. It was silly, but I was kinda proud of that program. Crunched together all the files on the disk and stored them in the SDA. All you have to do is run the SDA on a Plussy and it will unpack the files back to disk. Was the natural evolution of the Lynx +4 program I did a L-o-n-g time ago.
James C says that he will wade through the trash and post the stuff on his website. There is quite a bit from '96-'97 that never got posted on Funet.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2002-07-11
| About Jim's CD
... it has a LOT of stuff on it. 427 megabytes, approximately. Some of the stuff is duplicates, like .d64 and .d81 versions of the same archives. The task is to copy everything over to a real diskette and run it on the original machine, and compare to the emulator, as some of this stuff isn't clearly marked as to whether it's NTSC, PAL, or both. There are also some things that are readily available on Funet, Lando's site, and my own, so there's no sense in eating up more website space duplicating those.
One thing I found on the CD is the .d64 of Micro Illustrator that I was looking for several months ago. Norbert was kind enough to supply a .prg version but the original Commodore diskette had three demo pictures on it that I've not seen anywhere else. This diskette also has C64 joystick and lightpen versions on it, for those who might have a lightpen and a 64 or 128.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-12
| Hmmm...
That much? Yeah a lot are programs that were sent to me from Europe, via Peter Hanson, Skoro sent some and just about all the guys at one time or other.
Don't forget that there are articles and diagrams for a number of project in there, for doing thimng like Rom, Xtal exchanges, interfacing lighpens, 12volt conversions, modem mods, etc. for the Plus4. I can't promise that the Micro Illustrator is going to work for you. You had to nibble it to like track 40 and create an intentional disk error. But, it might. if you need an original, let me know. MicroI was okay, but TedPaint and Botticelli were handier. I did some rewriting of those for Ntsc.
Much of the later stuff is ml routine things. I never caught the assembler fever, did line by line ML. Back when Fender and his wife bought out Loadstar, he was sniffing around for a C128 guy. I thought that, aw heck... what better way to sneak some Plussy stuff into circulation, then to just redo some of the progams with C128 mapping (the Plus4 had much easier memory banking). Jeff Jones seemed to object, so C64Alive!/Commodore Cee handled them.
Should keep you busy for a while, James...
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Posted By
indi
on 2002-07-18
| Making tapes....
For the record... you can find this info at the minus4 home page now
http://minus4.plus4.net/tape.htm
Mike
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Posted By
indi
on 2002-07-18
| Tapes...
Perhaps I should read the whole news thread before replying
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