Astrocade MAME Tape Support Now Officially Supported

[ballyalley]

I just tried the newest official release of the 64-bit version of MAME (0.208) for Windows 7. Tape support for "AstroBASIC" is now part of the official distribution! This is a major step in using the emulator. I think tape support for 300-baud and 2000-baud under expansion basics (i.e. Blue Ram BASIC) is supposed to work too, but I have not tried it yet.

You can download MAME, as always, here:

https://www.mamedev.org/release.html

A general video for setting up astrocade emulation with MAME is here:

 

The above video doesn't talk about how to load/save using the "tape interface" in MAME. I guess I'll make a video like that in the next couple of weeks.

One last thing, as always, the colors under astrocade emulation are off. When you press the red color key, the screen appears gold. When you press the blue key, the screen appears light purple. This can be a little confusing, especially since red acts as the red key should, but the screen is the completely wrong color.

Anyone care to give it a try? I'd love to hear from MAME users who use Linux or Mac computers.

Adam

[ballyalley]

I just tested MAME with Blue RAM BASIC. I was able to load an expansion RAM program by WaveMakers called "Outpost 19" without any trouble.

Support for 300-baud tapes is in-process; it does not work right now and is not even fully available.

For more complete details about what is currently working for tape support, see the thread called "$100 for Astrocade Tape Support" here:

https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=114841

I should also mention that BASIC doesn't run full-speed.

 

This is pretty darn cool!

Adam