| Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-02
|  Minus4w and TAP files
Hi,
this might be a stupid question, so please forgive me if it is  , but I'm an absolute newbie to TAP files and I haven't found anything on this topic.
At the moment I'm copying my original tapes to the PC, using a X1531 cable, the original datasette and mtap36. The first TAP file I created runs fine with Yape, but Minus4w does not load it. In the "history" of Minus4w Mike writes in the section "Known Bugs": "TAPE's don't work yet..." Since this is written below "Version 2.0": does it still apply to the newest version (2.5)?
And I have some additional questions regarding mtap36:
- What are "halfwaves"?
- Should I just execute "mtap36 xxxxxxxx.tap" or should I use additional parameters for C16/Plus4-tapes?
Many thanks in advance! 
Greetz,
Lord Voldemort
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-02
| Oops...
I guess it should be "mtap -c16pal xxxxxxxx.tap"?
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-02
 | Hi Lord Voldemort.
The TAP format that is created by mtap was not added to any of the Minus4 releases, at this time there are only 2 emulators available that support this format which are YAPE and Artifex, athought the beta of Vice Plus4 does too but as of yet has'nt been released to the public.
Minus4 DOS does support .wav samples. At the time when Mike added tape image support no one had used tape images before on a Plus4 emu so he used the .tap file type. These tape images which you may of seen can be found here: tapeimages.htm.
Halfwaves are a pain. Some games used a different way of recording data to tape which was unique the the C16/Plus4. I would say 10% of the TAP's we have here are halfwave and the question is how do you tell... 10% sounds high, but in the real world that percent would be more close to 3% of all commercial released software on tape.
Well, anything that was recorded with-out a Turbo isn't a halfwave. Anything that uses NOVALOAD isn't a halfwave and those two together acounts for much of the C16/Plus4 software on tape.
From memory here's a list of some of the halfwave taps I have made if I remember correct: Aardvark, ACE, ACE2, Airwolf2, Beach Head, Bongo, Bridgehaed +4, Demolition, Finders Keepers, Frank Brunos Boxing, Ikari Warriors, Legionnaire, Molecule Man, Paper Boy, Pharaohs Tomb, Sea Strike, Sky Hawk, Space Pilot, Steve davis Snooker, Strip Poker, Strip Poker 2, Summer Events, Task Force, Thrust, Tomcat, Who Dares Wins 2 and Winter Events. That should give you an idea in what your looking for in the way some of these Turbos look like to what you may have. Also note Bug Byte games (Aardvark and Sky Hawk) do look like NOVALOAD but they are not so....
Normal tap's you should be using the command line.
mtap -c16pal gamename.tap
Halfwaves are:
mtap -h -c16pal gamename.tap
If your unsure which games might be halfwave then create all games in the normal way. When they don't work, try side 2 and then try the -h halfwave. Also note some games (very rare) may not tap correct, these are normally multiloading halfwaves, like Terra Nova and International Karate. Although Tomcat and Task Force do work and are halfwave they are not 100% perfect I don't think.... Halfwave is a nightmare. If you need any help left me know what games you have as I may have them here and can try to look into it.
regards,
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-02
| Thanks! :)
Now that's a detailed explanation! :0 Thank you very much!
Yes, I've seen Mike's description how to record tapes to wave-files, but I didn't know that he meant _those_ by .tap.
By the way: do you know a tool that converts TAP files to wave?
Meanwhile I've successfully recorded 13 games.
I know most of them are here on this site already, many of them even in TAP-format, but I want to backup my old tapes nevertheless. Yeah, that's strange, I know...
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-03
| No problem.
I don't know of any TAP 2 WAV converters. There maybe something on the C64 side of things??? You could try asking over at http://www.lemon64.com.
Cool glad to here its working In all I have near on 300 originals, so I still have around 100 or so left to do. Most of these don't have turbos and it just finding the time to test everything aswell. What I tend to do is load everything on Plus4 first making sure the game that side of the tape will load and do it all again once the TAP is made Its not strange at all to want to make your own. Its unreal we are doing this years later which makes it all the more fun. We waiting along time for C16/Plus4 TAP support to come and are very pleased we've made it this far
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Posted By
Bacon
on 2003-02-03
| Here's a link for you
You can download 64TAPWAV from http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Platform/8224/ that converts TAP files to WAV. Don't know how well it works, though. Or whether it works with Plus/4 TAPs.
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