#465 Real Tape Emulation

[Samuel Neil Mansell]

I would like to ask for a feature that allows loading from original cassette tape. This would allow the ageing hardware of the c64 to be kept whilst using the emulator with the real nostalgic tapes being loaded into vice. yes yes, we can load t64 files but theres nothing like loading from original tape libraries.

It would be nice to emulate the tape (such as Greaseweasel does for Amiga Disk Drive) then look for this option (tape drive) in Vice, so tapes can be loaded.

[Ingo Korb]

A real C64 can control the datasette's motor and can sense if any button has been pressed (though not which one), so correct emulation would require the same level of control over an external tape drive. Is there any easily-sourced, preferably still-in-production tape drive that allows this level of control and that is compatible with at least Linux, macOS and current versions of Windows?

If not, any such support in the emulator would be strictly worse than capturing the original tape to a TAP file with one of the many tools and using that file in the emulator, which is already possible.

[gpz]

For this you can use .tap images (not .t64), which will then behave exactly like the original datasette. Using an actual tape would require at least an interface to the original c2n (to have motor control), and that would have to work in hard real time (which is a bit of a problem with modern PCs and especially with Windows).

[Samuel Neil Mansell]

I'm not after doing it virtually, but to load the real tape from deck straight into PC, much like Greaseweasle does with Amiga Disks straight as input into WinUAE? Isnt that possible?
(I have a USB device 1530 that allows tape deck functionaility (rewind, etc) powered, just need to allow Vice to accept as input and then press play on tape (even if this part is manual so no tape control intervention required in Vice))

[gpz]

As said, the following things are absolutely required:
a) a tape deck that that offers motor control and a sense line (to detect PLAY)
b) an interface for this tape deck
c) everything must then work in hard realtime, which in all moder OSs would at least require writing a kernel driver - if it is possible at all (we need max 1µs response time here)

I don't know how greaseweasle works in that setup, but its entirely possible that it simply reads and buffers an entire track every time it steps to next track - which remove the realtime requirement, and will probably even work about an interface with relatively high latency.

[Marco van den Heuvel]

As far as we know the hardware needed for your feature request does NOT exist.

So, either make the hardware, drivers for windows/linux/macos, api for using the hardware yourself or have someone else make it,. and then come back to this feature request after the needed hardware is generally available.