Denial

Ah, an X1531 cable and a Datasette directly to the PC.

Yes, which is the way I do it

There's a program called FinalTAP that you can use to attempt to extract .PRG files from .TAP files.

http://www.coder.myby.co.uk/

You know how much I hate Star Commander. I just had a frustrating day trying to get my brand new XA1541 to work. I changed every possible setting. No luck. I read "Drive not present" about 500 times today.

Does the 1541II require different settings from other 1541s?

I think the emulator community has slowed down the desire for a reliable transfer program. I feel like the XA1541 cable is a waste. As for now, my programs will remain on real commodore computers...

It's likely to not be the cable, but the BIOS and parallel port settings on your PC. Have you looked into those? Are you running StarCom in DOS or through Windows?

I am having a bit of trouble using the mtap program.

I use a x1531 cable and i connect my black commodore 1531 tape drive.
I tested it, and put a tape in, it rewound and stopped, etc.
When I went to convert it; type in: "mtap filename.tap"

I get the message:

"Recording from the C64S interface
Please <STOP> the tape."

It doesn't give me a chance to press play and record it. Can somebody please help?

I've got a Catweasel now, so I'm happy.

idrougge wrote:I've got a Catweasel now, so I'm happy.

Please to explain...

Catweasel (for the Amiga or PC ISA/PCI) is an expansion card with its own floppy controller, which means you can connect a floppy, either 3.5" or 5.25" to the card. The good part is that this controller is more programmable and flexible than e.g. a regular PC floppy controller, so on a PC it would be possible to read and write 1541 disks (or 3.5" Amiga disks if you have that need).

The latest PC version is Mk 4, which has two Atari/Commodore style joystick ports, connector for Amiga keyboard, two slots for C64 SID chips (in stereo!) and of course floppy drive connectors. There has been reported issues with some models of 5.25" floppy drives that would not operate anyway, so one would still have to carefully choose which hardware to combine.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardw ... ARDID=1579

Since you have a laptop, I'm afraid it is nothing for you anyway.

Did you get the chance to try your XA cable with another PC, perhaps a desktop or tower model? Maybe your laptop is one of the few ones which has a parallel port totally incompatible with the standard, or it simply is some configuration that was overlooked.

Has anyone here used VICCAS?

http://scott.saskatoon.com/code/viccas.html

Are you telling me you haven't tried 64HDD? It turns my old 486 into a huge disk-drive. I couldn't live without it. It uses the X1541 cable and works with both C64 and VIC (the documentations clames that you should set a different speed for the VIC, but I haven't bothered and it works anyway.)

The only drawback is that it doesn't support those fancy fastloaders, but then I use Star Commander to make a real disk from the D64 image.

mercifier wrote:Are you telling me you haven't tried 64HDD?

I'm a big fan of 64HDD too. It's perfect for the VIC, since fastloaders, etc. aren't an issue.

mercifier wrote:It turns my old 486 into a huge disk-drive.

Plus you can use the CD ROM, PC Floppy, real-time-clock, print spooling...
I think one of my favorite features is that 64HDD can read and write directly to D64 and D81 disk images.

I've read somewhere that the VIC's serial interface is slightly faster than that of the C64. Have you seen a noticeable difference if you set 64HDD to VIC speed?

I think I did, but it was a long time ago since I used 64HDD...

Btw, check this out:
http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/datormuseum/vicmenu.html
(it has 64HDD support)

I use a DC2N for all my dumping needs (vic20, c64 and c16).
http://c64tapes.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dc2n