Hello everybody,
Today I'll talk about a new hardware device for our old computers : a tape-reader emulator, the SD-LEP. This project was created by a french guy initially for the Thomson french serie of computers, but the project works with a wide variety of computers. I tried it with my Dragon 32, it works great.
The concept is to emulate a tape reader (no recording... yet). The data is stored on a simple SD card, but not in the WAV format (too heavy), but in a new coding format : we record the time between two logical states of the sound signal, the result is a very light file that can be analyzed in a very simple way by the arduino (the core of the board).
Features :
-TTL sound output (C64...)
-line sound output with adjustable level (Dragon, TRS 80...)
-the board can handle the motor drive signal from the machine
-the board can be powered with a mobile phone back-up battery
-file selection with a dip switch
You can build the project on a simple prototype board, I also designed a PCB. Here is the schematic :
Nothing hard, the core is a arduino mini pro and a SD reader board. Here is the main project website (in french, sorry) :
http://dcmoto.free.fr/bricolage/sdlep-reader/index.html
To use it with the Dragon, you have to convert the WAV files to the LEP format with a small tool utility (available here).
You can also use WAV files converted from CAS files with the DC-WIN utility.
Here is a picture of my prototype with my Dragon :
With the SpaceWar game :