ArduiTape/CASDuino/TZXDuino - The cassette player replacements

Whilst it may seem there han't been much going on in recent months we have been working behind the scenes on improving and adding more options to the various firmwares and trying to improve the hardware. The main difference with these firmwares is that OLED 1306 screens are now fully working on all of them and that the PCD8544 has added as a screen option. I will go into the hardware changes needed for that at a later date. ArduiTape 1.5 What's New Added support for the PCD7544. Download from here. CASDuino 1.15 What's New Improved support for CoCo and Dragon Added support for OLED1306 and PCD8544. Download from here. TZXDuino 1.8 What's New Added ID2A Added support for PCD8544 Download from here. TZXDuino 1.8.1 What's New TSX support for MSX TSX files added by Natalia Pujol. Not officially supported and any bugs should be reported to her. Download from here.

It's been a while since I've updated CASDuino but I've been trying to bring the firmware in line with TZXDuino and ArduiTape to make possible integration of the three firmwares at some future date. The major problem had being getting it to work with the OLED 1306 screen which has now been solved. Included in this firmware update is a 3rd screen option which is for the PCD8544 which I have also been working on and am now almost ready to share instructions on. What's New:- OLED1306 Support PCD8544 Support Improved Dragon compatibility Improved CoCo compatibility (auto run on CoCo games has not been fixed yet but we are working on it.) You can download the firmware from here. There are also reports of improved compatibility with the Phillips VG 8020 MSX however as far as I know any incompatibilities were due to a difference in the hardware chipset so how this has happened is a complete mystery but a win I will take.

After mentioning that I had gotten a CPC and attached a DIN to it so that I could connect it to the TZXDuino I have had a few requests on how to do it so I thought I'd try a guide. You will need to purchase 180 degree 5 pin female din that is chassis mountable. This is the type that I purchased except mine also had a mounting plate too. The standard 6128 cassette connector is wired like this. Each pin is numbered on the back so that you know which one you are connecting it too so don't worry if the pins are in different positions as it depends on whether you are looking from the connection side or the soldering side. I would use different coloured wiring for each type of connection. I used the following Ground - Black Data Input - White Data Output - Pink Remote Control - Brown At this point I added 4 male pins to the end of my wiring so that I could build a connector so that I could easily disconnect the DIN should I need to work on the cassette drive. N...

Now that I have my CPC464 all set I've been testing .CDT files and have noticed a few issues. The first is that when I altered the code that sped up things for the Spectrum I messed things up for the CPC so that has been rolled back. The second is that with the CPC the motor control and pause after blocks is very important and TZXDuino isn't calculating a long enough pause for some games which causes them to fail. This seems to be a limit to the TimerOne library of 8,191 milliseconds (1F FF). This obviously is a big issue that needs more investigation. Changes: *Fixed the garbled text bug (thanks to Rafael Malins Chesserot for that one) *Rolled back an update that made files load faster on the Spectrum but broke files on the CPC. *Added a 2.25 second delay on playback after a motor control pause to fix issues with compacted multiload games from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cpc_lzx.htm ToDo * There is a discrepancy between length of time of pause after block and what the ...

I've finally managed to get hold of a CPC464 so I can see what compatibility is like with TZXDuino. One of the first things I did was add a DIN so that I could connect the TZXDuino to it. Rather than the normal 5-pin DIN that the CPC664/6128 use I decided that as I already have the cable for the MSX I would add an 8 pin DIN. After some testing I found the best places to solder the connections and now it is up and running with full motor control. As there are no TOSEC like downloads for CDT files I have been using both CPCRulez and CPCPower for the downloads. TZXDuino compatibility is quite good with CDT files although there are a few that use the ID15 block which currently is not compatible but I did notice some issues. Some games seemed to have insufficient pause blocks and whilst they worked on emulators they did not with either TZXDuino or WinTZX playback. These were quite easily fixed by adding a pause block to the CDT file (Aliens, Ghouls and Ghosts, Turbo Outrun). Others howe...

TZXDuino user and Luca Forattini has added the ability to load AY files with Spec AY on any Spectrum with an AY chip to TZX. First you load LOADER.TAP from SpecAY . Once that is loaded just select the .AY file you want to load and away you go. You can download version 1.5 of the firmware from Here. You can download Luca's original version of the firmware which is for an Arduino Mega with LCD and buttons shield from Here. Interestingly Luca has added a filesize counter with his firmware so that you can see how large the file currently selected is. You can watch a video of Luca's TZXDuino at work here.

It's been a while since I've published anything on my progress on converting things to the Maple Mini so I thought I'd keep you up to date. I have converted TZXDuino to the Maple Mini and it is working but not properly. For some reason, even though it is using the same values as the Nano the frequency of the output is higher. So much so that fastloaders cannot be recognised and TAP and simple TZX cannot all register with the Spectrum. Oddly this would indicate that a microsecond for the Maple Mini is different to the microsecond for the Arduino Nano, yet the files play for a similar length of time. It's all highly confusing and I've put the project on the back burner for a while so I can concentrate on working any errors out of the CAS/TZXDuino Shield PCB. The good news being that when I was trying to figure out what was going wrong I noticed that TZX2WAV which we had been using as a benchmark to test our coding actually has a typo in it a decodes slower than the TZ...

Tales of Popolon is a new MSX homebrew game that is still under development but a ROM has been released so people can play. I've used CASLink3 to convert it to a CAS file and tested it on my Toshiba HX-10 with CASDuino and it works beautifully. Here is a link to the games Github page. Here is the CAS file to download. Enjoy!!

I've managed to get the CASDuino firmware up and running on the Maple Leaf Mini. It's not perfect, there are issues with 3600 baudrate and it cannot store your baudrate selection as of yet as the Maple Mini does not have an EEPROM to store your selection but it is now working. Sadly whilst .CAS files on the MSX work, the ones for the Dragon have been broken TZXDuino is proving particularly stubborn at the moment, it is at least playing sound but is very stuttery and that also causes ID errors after the main loader.

One of my desires when I first thought about this project was to have something for everyone and for users to just be able to put their files onto an SD card and go but to remain cheap. The Arduino Nano was the perfect starting place for that but it quickly showed it's limitations, so now we're trying to port the firmwares over to the Maple Leaf Mini using the STM32Duino add on to the Arduino IDE. It's still very much a work in progress and there has been a slight hardware change, the original SD card readers we used are not compatible with the Maple Mini, but we have managed to get the Maple Mini version of ArduiTape working and playing .WAV files. Unlike ArduiTape you are not restricted to the frequency of .WAVs you can play and you also do not require a low pass filter to play the .WAVs What you need. Maple Leaf Mini 1602 I2C LCD   TF Micro SD Card Module Mini SD Card Module Memory Module LM386 Amplifier Module 5 button button board (See earlier blogs for instructions...

Inspired by Piotr Bugaj and his TZXDuino Shield I thought I'd take his PCB design and add the 2.5mm socket and some right angle buttons and get it so it will fit into a PP9 case. This is a whole new thing for me as I have never designed a PCB in my life or used Diptrace before. Luckily it's quite an intuitive piece of software that's easy to use. After adding a design for a PCB mounted 2.5mm and also the buttons I managed to design a PCB that should work. Now however it's finding a reasonably priced manufacturer for a couple of prototypes before maybe a production run. If you're interested in looking at the Diptrace and gerber file you can download them from here.

Following from yesterdays CASDuino update I've now added the same function to Arduitape. Rather than needing a file called ROOT to get to the root of your SD card just press Stop when nothing is being played. Everything else stays the same. You can download the update from here.

A minor update to the CASDuino firmware negating the need for a ROOT file in every folder. Now if you press the stop button when nothing is playing it will go to the root directory. You can download the latest firmware from here. Work on Dragon compatibility is still ongoing but due to work pressures it may take a while. Sorry.

One of the things we've wanted from this project is for people to go out and build their own versions and show us pictures. Well Piotr Bugaj not only has built his own but 3D printed his own case and designed a Shield for the Nano.    SMD version.    Non SMD version   Pi otr has also released the schematic, pcb, and gerber files. They can be downloaded from here.

TZXDuino has moved out of Beta and is in it's first release version. Little has changed from v0.8beta3 except extra motor control for Amstrad CPC .CDT files. TZXDuino v1.0 The files can also be found on GitHub

Andrew has made a huge leap forward with this update with almost every TZX I've tried working (one fail out of 100s) on the Spectrum and reports of similar compatibility with Amstrad files too. TAP files are also working with no fails too. With over 5,000 TZX games for Spectrum it's still a beta release but probably the last beta for a while before a final release. TZXDuino v0.8b3

Onward and upward. CASDuino is now on v1.11. The MSX side is working normally but there has been an update to the Dragon/ Tandy side. It's still not working properly but getting closer. TZXDuino is now of 0.7beta2. This update has improved the compatibility by getting Speedlock games to work but has broken some of the normal TZX games. V0.5Beta is working on the more regular TZX files so I've included this as well but it doesn't work with TAP files.We are working on these issues. CASDuino v1.11 TZXDuino v0.5Beta TZXDuino v0.7Beta2

A Giant Leap For Nerd Kind. I'm not usually one for silliness but Andrew Beer has been working hard in the background trying to programme the Arduino to play ZX Spectrum .TZX files without the need to convert to a .WAV. Today he has managed to do that with some .TZX files but also with .TAP files as well. The code is still very much in the early stages so the compatibility with.TZX files is still relatively low but in theory all .TAP files should work. I only have 5,246 to test. What's even better is that the code will work on both the Arduitape and the CASDuino hardware by just uploading the programme to the Nano. Simply download this file, unzip and load in the Arduino IDE.

Just a minor update. Andrew and I are working on a TZX version of Casduino. Much more complex than loading .cas files but if it works it will open up more possibilities. We have also added Dragon/Tandy .cas files to the Casduino but without one of the computers ourselves it's very much at an alpha stage and may well require the volume control mod to the amp. Also there is now a Facebook page where you can read latest development, ask questions, and even order a prebuilt PP9 version. The Facebook page can be found here.

How to use the Arduitape with the ZX Spectrum. Sorry I've been a little quiet recently but I've managed to get my grubby little mitts on a ZX Spectrum + 48k and have been testing it with the Arduitape. Unlike the MSX and other 8-bits the only limitations on frequency of the .WAV files is no higher than 22050 Hz due to the limitations of the software used. I was expecting to have all the difficulties of the MSX but I've tested lots of files at different frequencies and they all work fine. I've been using TZX2WAV to do the conversions. Open a command window. Type  tzx2wav -f [desired frequency] [filename].tzx [filename].wav   and that's it. I have been trying to experiment with a programme called OTLA which can output various formats of Spectrum, ZX81, Amstrad, and MSX files that playback at a higher rate and essentially turn a 5 minute loading game in to a 30 second loading game however it outputs at either 44100Hz or 48000Hz which is too high for the Ardui...