archive.worldofdragon.org

That somebody was Prime - I have the latest code for his prototype here - and it works well for loading CAS images (works with most of the invalid images too as it copes with the truncated sync bytes). He is adding write support and a few other things.

Hopefully he will popup here soon and update us on his plans - wonder if he will do a production run or release the design?

That would be awesome!

Making the pcb's shouldn't be expensive at all. A couple of friends and I ordered pcb's for the disk controller based on Jose Leandro's design and got them for 3€ a piece.

Cool!

I have a design for one but really wasn't looking forward to getting it working and having to write all the supporting code. Would much rather put my support/enthusiasm behind someone else's efforts on this one.

Rink wrote:Always wanted one of those emulators - but can never justify the expense.

Well, the emulator in the deluxe-version with housing ships for 102,99€. Back in the day we paid more for real floppy drives. The Commodore 1541 was sold for about 700 DM in Germany back in 1983. That was considerably more . You could buy two standard bicycles for that amount of money.
The price is somewhat higher than the prices of multicarts for other systems (Harmony, Atari Age carts ...), but on the other hand, it can be used for different computers. And, most important, it is ready. That saves a lot of time.
So, a real SD-card based multicart probably would be cooler and cheaper, but a lot of work, too.

But, true, I needed about four weeks to make up my mind and to finally throw the money in and buy the emulator.

Alastair wrote:Did you keep a list of the problematic wave files and if so will you post that list?

Hmmm, not really. I should have done so... Anyway, I've just converted a limited number of programs, yet.
There is a short signal dropout in "Dragon Data Ltd - Lunar Rover Patrol [exec].wav" at 1:58 that produces a tape input error.
Of course, I had problems with splitted files, since audacity doesn't stop playing back, when DUPLIDISK stops the cassette player motor. So I recorded some of the files on a real cassette: Backgammon, BeamRider, BoulderCrash, Caverns of Chaos, CuBer, Dark Star, Donkey King, Drag Composer, Frogger, Galagon, Golf, Happy Birthday Dragon, Hunchback, Ice Castles.
I could convert three or four of those.The bigger files crash DUPLIDISK on my small computer. Concerning the other files, it is necessary to try out the four conversion options of DUPLIDISK. One or two had a small loader that tried to access the tape drive for loading the code. Leaving out the loader and just converting and renaming the "real" codefile helped.

Rolo wrote:Back in the day we paid more for real floppy drives.

That's true.

The price is somewhat higher than the prices of multicarts for other systems (Harmony, Atari Age carts ...),

Oh I dunno - I've seen a fair few multicarts etc. approaching (even exceeding) that sort of money. But yeah, if you need one for more than one system then it's gets pricey buying them all vs. one floppy emulator... assuming you don't want them all active at the same time.