ArduiTape/CASDuino/TZXDuino - The cassette player replacements

 When Andrew Beer and I came up with this idea the intention was for people to build their own and many people have but once in a while someone comes up with something so amazing it really needs to be shared. JamHamster came up with the idea of fitting a TZXDuino in a cassette. Originally it was powered by USB and had a 3.5mm Ear socket but it looked amazing. Then he added a battery so that it was self powered. Then he added a head from a CD to cassette adapter. Then he added a switch under that head so that when you press play on the Cassette Recorder it plays the file you've selected. And the TZXCassette was born Because he is a great guy he's also uploaded the instructions on how to build one to Github and you can download the instructions and build your own. Now at the moment there is no REM control it may not work as well with a CPC 464 as it does with with a Spectrum +2 but it is a stunning piece of electrical engineering and a work of art in my opinion.

Update for TZXDuino. Lots of little things changed for this update but the biggest is ID15/Direct Recording has been added. The code has been adapted and fixed from the MAXDuino firmware. On the Amstrad CPC this means that Music Loaders do work as do many other games that use the ID15/Direct Recording Block type however the following Musical Loaders are temperemental but this is due to hardware rather than firmware. Harvey Headbanger Helichopper Rasputin Runestone Spiky Harold Thrust I've also removed DigitalWrite in favour of a quicker process as suggested by Ken Forster and this means that some MSX games work better at higher TSX baudrates. Elite and Aliens will now load at 2400 baudrate. There were two Gremlin Graphics games for the Amstrad CPC that had copy protection that required a reversal of high and low signals. Samurai Trilogy and Footballer Of The Year II. I have added an option to the menu to fix this issue. You can download the new firmware from he...

Thanks to the work of Kernel Crash we have added uncompressed UEF playback to TZXDuino. This means that Acorn machines can be added to the list of computers that can use TZXDuino. There is standard mode and a Turbo mode that can be switched on in the menu. The turbo mode loads at 1500 baud and does improve the loading time on an Acorn Electron. There is also a 1550 and 1600 option in the TZXDuino.h file but not all Electrons can handle the faster speed. You can read Kernel Crash's blog here. You can download the TZXDuino 1.11 from here.

Thanks to the help of Rafael Molina Chasserot some new features have been added to the TZXDuino and CASDuino firmwares which has freed up some memory as well, which may lead to more features being added in the future. A percentage counter and a timer counter have been added to all screens so that you know how much is left of a file to play and how long it has taken to load. The OLED1306 and PCD8544 use completely new routines for the firmwares saving a lot of memory. Folder navigation is now different. Rather than using the Menu button on TZXDuino or the Stop button on CASDuino to return to the ROOT directory, if you press the stop button when no file is playing you will go up one folder only making it easier to navigate. TZXDuino The TZXDuino has had a menu added so that MSX users can set the Baud rate of TSX files so that they can load faster than normal. A few more emulator only IDs have been fixed so that they are skipped by TZXDuino. CASDuino CASduino has had a Baud Rate of 3...

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.

TZXDuino 1.7 This fixes issues with pause lengths that we never noticed before. It should fix games like Top Gun and Street Hawk for the Spectrum and make CDT files behave as they should for the Amstrad CPC. Changes. *Maximum pause length of 8.3 seconds due to the TimerOne library has been worked around. *ID20 Pause Block fixed. *Temporary fix for pause after motor control removed. https://mega.nz/#!aEt1VJKZ!ZFw-fP3bkNTtiPlbG_IllmR94Xni3KvIGUn6Jggfof8

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 updated the CASDuino firmware so that it will load some games with Xroar but there has been no luck on an real Dragon. Can you please give it a test and let me know the results? Thank you. Download

ZX81 P and O filetypes have been added to TZXDuino. There is also a minor speed update that shaves a few seconds off previous load times. https://mega.nz/#!Ldkn3Q7L!hOjJVTZZQcRulmDdmVB19HxA04mFa9oAKAsEmrDD2qk We were hoping to have an update to CASDuino with working Dragon CAS files but unfortunately whilst we can get Chucky Egg to work we still can't get others to work. We are still working on it though.

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

The Arduino IDE has updated several of it's Library files but I haven't posted the latest updates of the on here for a long time so unrar this file and put it in the c://Users/[Name]/Documents/Arduino/Libraries/ folder.