Happy new year everyone! It's starting off well. Got bit by Prosecco last night, am a little fuzzy headed and the cistern has decided to try and pull a great escape off of the wall. I'm actually looking forward to fixing it. ☺️

Still lots of unpacking to do but I'm going to have a bash at setting this up. It arrived just before the move and I've been itching to have a play. ☺️

Merry Christmas one and all, I've been so busy moving I've done eff all. I'm not going to go without a tree here's a bent bandsaw blade and COB LEDs! 😂

New house shenanigans! Went to plug the washing machine in which I assured Sam should be straightforward only to be greeted by a seized valve on the cold and the other is furred to oblivion. I changed the cold infil but it was tense as I've never done any plumbing before. ☺️

Move day is tomorrow so it's the final boxing up. See you in the new place Super Printendo! ☺️

Throwback post - The CrawlerBot is responsible for some of the most dramatically tense footage I have ever recorded. ☺️

The garage is nearly all moved and we spent the weekend cleaning the new place. Fun fact, you can steam out furniture marks with a towel, clothes iron and a brush. ☺️

Gave the new place a look over and set up dehumidifiers etc. The internet is all set up now too. It is... Faster... ☺️ There were some interesting bits left in the loft and the garage even came with a set of screwdrivers! 🥳🎉

I'd nearly finished the garage when the light decided to up and fail. Thought I'd make the best of it. 😂

RIP Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. He was in so many amazing things. I named my Arduino programmer after Shang Tsung a couple of years ago (because it can lift and drop souls.) and the guy was a legend.

Power washed the tanks in preparation for the move. Which is a completely normal thing to do. 😂

My MiSTer Multisystem2 Analogue arrived (at an alternative address) and with the move and everything I should be able to get to play with it some time in March! 😂

I've got as far as I can with an analogue output on the Bluetooth cassette. There's too much variation in tape images/hardware and I can't get a one size fits all. I'm going to try a Schmitt trigger setup which should add some consistency. i'll assemble a board and see what it can do. 🙂

It looked bigger on the web site... 😂

If everything works out, I should be able to start work on the largest project I have ever done soon, it's as big as a house! (Because it's a house!) 🙂

It's been a while but I'm over the lurgy hump. Normal service will resume soon! ☺️

I'm going for a battle of the amps with a set of hot swap coils. I need one that has the right dynamic range for the decks at really low amplitudes and also has enough 'torque' to give a reliable zero crossing. I have a sliding scale of 'stuff' in my head and I'll spend some time feeling it out.🙂

The amp isn't agile enough to do a snappy rising and falling edge at low volume so I'm playing with dual wound coils. I have a 100/600 turn setup at the moment and a switch at the side to choose but it's rubbish so I'll try two separates. 🙂

I've been using a .tzx of StrangeLoop to test loading games from a Bluetooth cassette but it has always been weird. I have an original copy and the game loading speed is about 8-10 seconds faster than the .tzx. it's not the deck speed, that's been checked. I might try and rip my copy. 🤔

Got a cheapie Bluetooth Cassette Adapter to play with. I have an idea that ought to be interesting and I'll pop it open tonight and take a look. ☺️

Oh yeah, about that pause detection. The full Arduino is overkill but the attiny doesn't have hardware serial which is needed for snappy pause response from the Bluetooth module. Luckily there's a gpio pin on the module that pauses if you short it to ground. I'll need a PCB for this. 🤔

Hello!! I'm working on a tape loader device type thing and I want to give it something tricky to chew on. What are the trickiest loaders fo the C64 and Speccy? I'm currently loading StrangeLoop and Sanxion without issue and I'm after a challenge. Suggestions gratefully received! 🙂

I have a plan to put this loading business to bed once and for all. If I'm right, it should 'just' be a case of matching the coil to the Bluetooth amp to get a wide enough frequency range with no distortion. There is also HF noise on the output that triggers a double edge detection.

Popped round my local shop and found this highly amusing. 'Superman - The strongest Avenger.' 😂

A new Pi 500 was released today, the Pi500+. The keyboard is pretty nice and goes rather well with FatScreen #3. ☺️

I am speed. 😂

Found an old video of the time I was testing out resonance speakers. I'll use them for something one day but not this. 😂

I've been playing with an XY-SP5W this morning and it has instantly become my favourite amp module. It has all sorts of protections and built in filtering, it's switchable between class A/B and D and has enough power to drive a coil hard enough for a near square wave. It's tiny wee and 80p! 😍

Help!! My cassette advanture has hit a sticking point. No matter how clean the sighal is, the C64 deck will pick up pretty much any noise on the upswing of the wave. I'm looking for a simple circuit/method that'll turn a narrrow band sine into a wide band sine to add some noise. Does this exist?

I thought I'd give chatgpt a go to help with some formulas and stuff with the cassette build and it didn't go well. The last thing I saw was 'thinking for 58 seconds' and it seemed to have pooped its pants and gave up. 😂

I've been referencing the original cassette specs for a project and I'm really drawn to the blueprints. So much so that I've got a printed t-shirt on the way. ☺️

I've received a whole swathe of Delrin sheets in various thicknesses. As materials go, Delrin is in my top 3. ☺️

If you see this post a chef

Cassette testing has temporarily come to a halt thanks to a rather sickly C64. I'll take a look tonight. 🤔

Now the platform is rock solid, I've noticed something odd about tape images and loading through a deck. I've had some games that are really fussy but it turns out that the tape images will work fine on an emulator, but not in the 'real world'. A different capture of the same tap works fine. ☺️

Now I have some extra room and a reliable platform I'm going to add more gubbins. I'll need to do some experimentation to see what I can detect and how I can use it but the idea is to get it to react to a motor pause command and do 'something'. 🤔

I've been shuffling bits about to free up some space (which I'll need for V2) but I think this'll do it. I used an iron core for the coil, I was using steel which is apparently a terrible thing to do. I expect it to be too loud now but I can fix that. 🙂

Accidental Hitcher. 🙂

I will never get tired of watching the Laser-Goose work. ☺️

2 Men, a Drum Machine and a Cornet.

The lm386 modules are great but needed a bunch of tweaks to work with the coils and they take up a lot of space. I'm going to try to roll up the fixes into a 'coil driver' PCB and will get a basic version up and running first, then tune the output stage. 🙂

Couldn't resist. 😂

I've been after a Shadow of the Beast t-shirt for ever (Wore one until it pretty much fell off back in the day). I'm going to cheat, found an image online, upscaled and tidied it up and have a custom printed t-shirt arriving soon. 😁

+2 Rabbit hole side quest! Apparently, the Datacorder in the +2 issue 1 has always been problematic. The one I'm using is in terrible shape too so to give it a fair shake I'm going to give it a once over, then poke at it with a scope. 🤔

Using tape heads for transmission is fraught with issues so I'm going to do some experiments with coils. I'll start by with a bt401 Bluetooth module on usb power, then tweak volumes and distances. If this works as well as I hope, I have some more complex builds in mind. Rabbit hole alert.. 🙂

For some bizarre reason (probably a dream) I woke up convinced that it was Monday today. I mean fully 'double take at my watch and asking a highly amused partner if it really is Sunday or is my watch broken' convinced. I'm still discombobulated an hour later - weird. 😂

Made a new coil with 3d printed mounts. 250 turns seems to be the sweet spot, it comes out at 4.6Ohms which should be easy to drive with an amp. I've gone with a long coil to help with lateral head alignment and it gives loads of wiggle room. I might try a Bluetooth cassette. 🤔

I thought I'd see if I can simplify loading via a cassette head. 'Nailed' it first go. 😂

Solved the FatScreen high angle issue! I still have some shell fitment to tweak but I'm a happy old Hector. ☺️

I'm going to work on the bottom shell. It's leaking light all over the shop and I want a cleaner, crisp neon line rather than a glow. I'll tidy the wires when I'm done with that and after a final fettle, can close it up. 🙂