Cassette interface

[Will Senn]

I hooked up the cassette interface and recorded the (very annoying) endless stream of sync characters. Which sounds to my ear like machine generated sound, so I think that much worked. Then I found Jeff Trantor's mos tape version of the VUTAPE utility. I ran it at 0000, but nothing appears on my display (supposed to show a random character). So, I'm stumped. Help :)!

Will

[Will Senn]

Well. I persisted and even though no 'random' character appeared, when I played back the tape, it definitely flickered wildly. Once I turned down the volume and adjusted the pot, I got it to settle down and remain steady with the proper segments. The volume on this player is off the charts (it's a classroom model), so a pretty low volume is loud enough. Off to trying some save restore stuff.

Will

[Will Senn]

Woohoo! I successfully stored and retrieved my first program on tape... well, sort of. Apparently, you have to choose the right starting and ending points of the program and I was off by one :). But, it did exactly what I asked it to do, so I pleased as punch.

What I found interesting was the amount of work involved:

1. Clear Decimal Mode

2. Set up an ID

3. Set the start and end addresses in LO, HIGH form.

4. Set the start of the Tape Store address (1800)

5. GO

6. Rewind tape

7. Press Record

8 Wait for the leader to go by.

9. Wait for Store to end displaying 0000 XX

10. Press Stop

1. Clear Decimal Mode

2. Set the same ID

3. Set the start of the Tape Load address (1873)

4. GO

5. Rewind tape

6. Press Play

7. Wait for Load to end displaying 0000 XX

8. Press Stop

That's a lot of work! And, that ID thing seems tricky...

Questions:

1. Is the starting location of the program saved on the tape or what?

2. What information did folks tend to store with the tape? (seems like ID, number of bytes, starting address are important)

3. Is this how folks did it back when or did they quickly move on to other utilities than the monitor SAVE/LOAD?

Later,

Will

[Will Senn]

Oh, and an era question - my cassette recorder says 2 X Counter... what does that mean - I tried looking all over the internet, but couldn't figure it out. Does it mean that my counter has half the resolution of a 1 X Counter or what?

[Will Senn]

Labeler to the rescue! After the 5th time I had to lookup which was which, I broke down and just put labels on those ports (you can't see the back side markings when the board's plugged into the motherboard. This is one sweet machine now - highly recommend getting all of the expansions.

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