Making Cassette Tapes Obsolete for Obsolete Computers

July 7, 2024 5:04 PM

TZXDuino is a clever bit of circuitry to replace the cassette player that loads programs on old computers like the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64.
JamHamster is a guy that puts tech into cassettes for fun, so naturally he put the cassette deck replacement in a cassette that goes in the deck.
posted by WhackyparseThis (11 comments total)

Wow, that Twitter thread from JamHamster is something else. Love watching really talented people document their projects like this. Thanks for finding and sharing this, WhackyparseThis.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 6:14 PM on July 7

Threadreader link for non-x-account-havers, please? All we see is the first post.
posted by egypturnash at 6:26 PM on July 7 [4 favorites]

Ah, fond memories of waiting half an hour for some Commodore 64 games to load (before fastloaders were invented) and half the time it wouldn't work. Kids these days etc etc
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:34 AM on July 8

His website is a bit hard to parse, but I'm bookmarking this into my TRS-80 folder. Missing that 50 baud data transfer.
posted by neuron at 8:36 AM on July 8

→ Threadreader link for non-x-account-havers, please? All we see is the first post

I'm getting the Oops, we can't access this thread! error when trying to add that to Thread Reader
posted by scruss at 8:42 AM on July 8

Here's an Unroll link for the X-less.
posted by hanov3r at 9:30 AM on July 8 [2 favorites]

Looks cool, but ... can one not simply connect a 3.5mm cable from one's modern e-device (assuming one has an older modern e-device with the headphone jack or a USB adapter)? At least on the Apple ][ and ZX Spectrum the cassette port is just an audio input, no weird serial bus stuff like on the Atari/C-64.
posted by credulous at 10:35 AM on July 8

Here's an Unroll link

Thanks for this hanov3r. Thing is, JamHamster was at this for seven months and none of the unroll/summary tools seem to be able to put it all together. This one only covers the first few weeks. Threadreader seems to break due to API restrictions, so I blame Elon. I'm not sure there's a good solution for folks without Xitter logins. I wish we could get folks like this doing interesting creative work to document it somewhere else but I guess it'll take the total collapse of the platform to get everyone off it.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:23 AM on July 8

It's overdriven and the wave form is messed up but I found a blog that details the problem exactly.

A blog post I wrote.

And forgot about. 😂

Priceless!
posted by pulposus at 4:22 PM on July 8 [2 favorites]

Looks cool, but ...

One could also just load an emulator, but likewise that involves much less exploration and fun than this method.
posted by dumbland at 5:30 PM on July 8 [1 favorite]

I saved my first-ever code on cassette on my VIC-20.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:27 PM on July 10