Atari Tape Interface

[Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D]

I have some custom programs originally written for the Atari800 stored on tape. I recently found them and would like to load them into a real Atari and see if they still work.  I saw a shared project on pcbway called Atari tape interface.  
 

does anyone know anything about this and where I would find more information.  I ordered the pc boards and have the parts but not sure where I would wire in the sio plug and power requirements 

 

any help would be appreciated. 

[Rybags]

An easier way could be to just use utilities such as Wav2Cas to convert an digital copy of your tape to .cas files.

Then use an emulator to convert to .atr

Then use a PC to disk emulator interface to transfer to the real Atari.  The extra value there is the interface is useful into the future where a tape type one isn't so much that way.

[pirx]

a different solution would be sample the tapes, convert them to .cas format and then load using e.g. fujinet ;O

i never worked with these (bad tape memories :))), but maybe turgen is what you need? https://turgen.sourceforge.io

 

oh, 1 min late, see ^^^

Edited May 26 by pirx

[TZJB]

9 hours ago, Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D said:

I have some custom programs originally written for the Atari800 stored on tape. I recently found them and would like to load them into a real Atari and see if they still work.  I saw a shared project on pcbway called Atari tape interface.  
 

does anyone know anything about this and where I would find more information.  I ordered the pc boards and have the parts but not sure where I would wire in the sio plug and power requirements 

 

any help would be appreciated. 

 

Just had a look at Atari Tape Recorder Interface and it's a bit sketchy. It involves using a standard tape recorder to act as an Atari tape recorder.

 

I think the other members are suggesting that you use a standard tape recorder plugged into the audio in of a PC to convert the tapes into CD quality WAV files, then convert them to CAS files using the other tools available like WAV2CAS or Turgen.

 

You do not mention what Atari computer you own, but you wouldn't actually need one as one of the many Atari 800 emulators would be able to load your created files.

[Rybags]

Yes - and by testing in emulation you can then determine if the programs work and if or not they're already in an online archive somewhere.

[baktra]

19 hours ago, pirx said:

a different solution would be sample the tapes, convert them to .cas format and then load using e.g. fujinet ;O

i never worked with these (bad tape memories :))), but maybe turgen is what you need? https://turgen.sourceforge.io

 

oh, 1 min late, see ^^^

TURGEN is definitely not what @Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D needs. What is needed is either an Atari data recorder; standalone FSK demodulator; or an ordinary tape recorder, PC, and the a8cas toolkit.

Edited May 26 by baktra

[TZJB]

15 hours ago, baktra said:

TURGEN is definitely not what @Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D needs. What is needed is either an Atari data recorder; standalone FSK demodulator; or an ordinary tape recorder, PC, and the a8cas toolkit.

 

Thank you for the advice @baktra. You are certainly the Atari data cassette tape expert.

 

Did you take a look at the Atari Tape Recorder Interface on PCBWay? It looks like it may have been removed now as I cannot access it, so someone may have read my comment.

 

It was probably a FSK modem of some sort replicating an Atari data recorder, but probably a real Atari data recorder would be the way forward to recover tape data with a real Atari as you suggest.

 

Incidentally, as I have no experience using it, what is wrong with Turgen? Please explain your preference for a8cas. I am just curious.

[baktra]

1 hour ago, TZJB said:

 

Thank you for the advice @baktra. You are certainly the Atari data cassette tape expert.

 

Did you take a look at the Atari Tape Recorder Interface on PCBWay? It looks like it may have been removed now as I cannot access it, so someone may have read my comment.

 

It was probably a FSK modem of some sort replicating an Atari data recorder, but probably a real Atari data recorder would be the way forward to recover tape data with a real Atari as you suggest.

 

Incidentally, as I have no experience using it, what is wrong with Turgen? Please explain your preference for a8cas. I am just curious.

I cannot say anything about the interface from PCBWay. I am not too much into hardware.

 

The task on hand is rescuing data from old cassettes. TURGEN doesn't provide any functions to support this use case. TURGEN is a tool that does exactly the opposite - records software on new cassettes.

On the other hand, a8cas provides powerful functions to rescue data from cassettes.

[TZJB]

18 minutes ago, baktra said:

I cannot say anything about the interface from PCBWay. I am not too much into hardware.

 

The task on hand is rescuing data from old cassettes. TURGEN doesn't provide any functions to support this use case. TURGEN is a tool that does exactly the opposite - records software on new cassettes.

On the other hand, a8cas provides powerful functions to rescue data from cassettes.

 

I can appreciate that hardware is not an interest for many people.

 

Thanks for the clarification regarding Turgen software. I though that maybe Turgen could take a WAV file and make it into a CAS file, but that's not what it does. Maybe it could though, or would that be feature creap? 🙂

[baktra]

34 minutes ago, TZJB said:

 Maybe it could though, or would that be feature creap? 🙂

Yes, it would a total feature creap. 

[Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D]

I wanted to share an update and thank everyone for their responses

i posed a question to the author of the tape interface board on what was his source for the design. As someone pointed out he removed the design from pcbway. However being the curious person I did order 5 boards before he removed it 

thinking of building the circuit to see if it would actually work

 

these programs were not games it was programs I wrote to help me with my college work. 
 

i will probably end up getting an Atari tape drive off eBay at some point. I did see a tape recorder on Amazon that converts audio cassettes to mp3 files.  I might try that route as well.  Either way I would still need to purchase a tape drive. 
 

best to everyone.  

[baktra]

1 hour ago, Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D said:

 I did see a tape recorder on Amazon that converts audio cassettes to mp3 files. 

Think twice before purchasing such a device. The tape mechanism is typically bad, and the bitrate of the converted MP3s tends to be suboptimal. Besides, MP3 is a lossy compression, therefore there is a fidelity loss. On the other hand, MP3s with bitrate of 256 kbps or higher are enough for Atari standard tape records.

 

In my opinion...

1. The best option for rescuing data from tapes is the Atari data recorder (provided it is in a good shape or repaired), combined with a floppy disk drive or a modern disk drive replacement device.  Getting and repairing a data recorder requires certain budget or soldering skills. We are speaking of equipment that is at least 31 years old.
2. The second-best option (and not bad) is digitizing the tape using an ordinary cassette recorder connected to a PC/Mac. Digitizing of the signal can be tricky for people not familiar with the process. There is also a problem of finding a decent, ordinary cassette recorder. The current new models are not great. Perhaps you can borrow some. One advantage of this approach is that you have an option to easily share the digitized signal with a greater community and get some help.

Having some idea on what is the nature of the data on tapes is also helpful, because the nature of the data determines the way it can be copied to disk. If you know these are ATARI BASIC programs, then the copying is easy, all you would need is a disk with some fully featured DOS (e.g. Atari DOS II).

 

[scm2000]

12 hours ago, Dr. Glenn Hann Ph.D said:

I wanted to share an update and thank everyone for their responses

i posed a question to the author of the tape interface board on what was his source for the design. As someone pointed out he removed the design from pcbway. However being the curious person I did order 5 boards before he removed it 

thinking of building the circuit to see if it would actually work

 

these programs were not games it was programs I wrote to help me with my college work. 
 

i will probably end up getting an Atari tape drive off eBay at some point. I did see a tape recorder on Amazon that converts audio cassettes to mp3 files.  I might try that route as well.  Either way I would still need to purchase a tape drive. 
 

best to everyone.  

i recently bought a 1976 cassette tape original of altair basic. as someone pointed out, mp3 is not a good choice, but amazon does sell a shoebox cassette tape recorder that will copy a tape direct to a .wav file on an inserted thumb drive.  sure the device is not top audiophile quality, but we’re talking about a real low bandwidth FSK recording with relatively low frequency tones.

in my case i was able to get a binary dump of the tape contents using a software fsk modem called minimodem.  in the altair case, the packet format was simple, and i wrote my own code to make a bin file out of it

 

in your case it looks like one responder said theres software to take the wav file to a standard file format