Back in the day we had little computer shops and they could install a small led light next to the head alignment hole and we used to adjust the head according to the brightness of the led light. I'm sure you could come up with some basic set up like that with todays technology. I still have my c64 and that datasette unit in my parents house but haven't used it for 35 years, i hope it still works 😅

We got used to that sound on the Spectrum.

Thanks for this very informative Video Chuck! I've linked this one in the description of my very short video on this subject.

Nice work I picked up a 3khz test tape I used to set head aliment and speed it works good. But I opened the data set and got the single off the first amp befor it was converted to digital squarewave.. There was a test point for it on mine.

Wasn't aware of the oscilloscope method before so huge thanks for highlighting that. I'll be giving that one a try very soon.

@Ikrananka

2 жыл бұрын

@@HutchCA I'll be receiving one of those 1980's alignment tape kits soon so hoping that the tape in that will still be working and accurate enough. I tried the C64 program and had reasonably good results apart from one game tape that 9 times out of 10 fails to load (it's a multi-part turbo load affair) while all others work. Hoping that the oscilloscope method might at least allow me to get that game working as well. I'm also putting in new drive belts.

Very informative and enjoyable video as always. I have a black C2N in my collection that's sadly had an azimuth hole drilled through the badge, which is a bummer because it's in perfect shape otherwise. I always adjust my datasettes the "quick and dirty" way like you did as a kid. It's worked well for me in the past, but seeing it being done the proper way is certainly nice!

Thanks Chuck. I don't really use my tape player for tapes much (I just don't have any really), but I found this very interesting. I did use that same program you had running when I did the Audio Input mod on my dataset.

Awesome. Will be trying the oscilloscope methods tonight!

@HutchCA

2 жыл бұрын

How did it turn out? Did you ever get that datasette to load reliably?

@jim_64s8-bitprojects5

2 жыл бұрын

@@HutchCA I did get the oscilloscope hooked up and I was able to fine tune the adjustment, but seems the voltages are too high. Still does not work right. I am going to compare it to another working datasette to see if I can identify what's different.

Very nice

Datasette's read/write head azimuth can be adjusted with screwdriver. Oxidized computer monitor's V-sync potentiometer can be adjusted with screwdriver, too.

If memory serves me well, back in the olden days I read about attaching a resistor (470 Ohm?) between pin 1 (SRQ) of the serial port and pin 5 (Audio in) of the A/V port and poke 54296,15 to be able to hear the cassette audio of the datasette through the Commodore 64. Can you confirm this?

An advantage of the scope is that if you know roughly what the ideal output is, and your deck is producing the right level, you don't need to do "trial and error" adjusting of the azimuth. Would using a tape with a single frequency tone, say 1000 hz, be easier to interpret when looking at the output? Is the azimuth often incorrect on these datasette units?

So what's UNIT9QUIZ?