Tapuino, the $20 C64 Tape Emulator

Description

Original tape and disk media are getting very old and unreliable, but luckily preservation attempts like http://tapes.c64.no/ are saving the contents of these media. While the tapes themselves are dying, the actual C64 hardware is still going strong. With this in mind I set out to build a modern, very low cost and easy to construct means of transmitting the tape to the C64 and the Tapuino was born.

The current build is fully featured in terms of TAP file playback and recording to TAP file works with both auto-generated and user filenames.

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Tapuino R2
Peter Edwards • 03/20/2015 at 14:47 • 0 comments

The Rev2 build instructions are now available on my blog:
http://sweetlilmre.blogspot.com/2015/03/building-tapuino-r2.html
Rev 2 is a simplification of the build and has fewer parts. Additionally the code is significantly more capable now.
I have also provided a schematic and board file for single layer home etching and in partnership with a great bloke from Spain who goes by the name of spcbm, provided a really nice dual layer board that includes muxing capability and a connector for a physical Commodore Datasette.
You can find code and layout files here: https://github.com/sweetlilmre/tapuino
With muxing you are able to use the Tapuino as a source / target for a real Datasette allowing you to archive tapes to .tap format and even restore .tap file to a physical tape! (pretty awesome, I had to find some tapes to try this out :))
If you want to buy a Tapuino, please support spcbm, he is selling kits and boards with my blessing. Currently he is out of stock (who knew this would be so popular!), but check the forum thread here, and perhaps PM him:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?70457-Tapuino-C64-Tape-Emulator-PCBs-kit-2nd-batch
You can follow the development thread here:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?63166-Tapuino-the-20-C64-Tape-Emulator

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Discussions

counter.culture wrote 12/23/2014 at 05:26

It is interesting how people cling to things from the past, not because it's better, just because it's from our past. I'm of two minds on this: some old things *are* really cool and were better than what's available today, on the flip side, time is the most precious commodity (if you love life) and it seems that dwelling in the past is counter-productive and doesn't move the ball further down the field.

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Peter Edwards wrote 01/10/2015 at 18:33

To be honest I find your comment really weird. If you "love life" I reckon its because you love what you are doing. I love hacking, inventing and creating. What I learned (and am still learning) by doing this project has extended my knowledge of electronics, design, software etc. significantly. I'd hardly call that counter productive and has certainly moved "the ball further down the field", at least as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps you need a hug?

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Peter Edwards wrote 08/12/2014 at 06:49

A LOT more code added to the firmware. You can now name files before recording, prev and next buttons have repeat detection (for scrolling through those huge game lists), many bug fixes and optimizations and more config. There is more to come with eeprom settings next (hopefully) and an 'inverted' mode that will allow you to record to and from a real datasette using an additional connector.

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Peter Edwards wrote 07/28/2014 at 17:24

An updated blog post can be found at:
http://sweetlilmre.blogspot.com/2014/07/tapuino-part-3-write-support-and-some.html
With a pin change for write support and some further details.

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Peter Edwards wrote 07/28/2014 at 09:47

I've recently added write support to the code and will post an update blog as soon as possible

Are you sure? yes | no

Tapuino, the $20 C64 Tape Emulator

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