Making Tapes

With the PET finally running, it was time to get some software onto it. Unfamiliar with the PRG format in which all the software I could find was recorded, I had to figure out how exactly I'd get this software onto the PET. With only a C2N tape unit, the process would be to convert the PRG to a WAV sound file, copy this to an audio cassette through a PC sound card, then load the tape in the PET. Luckily, the local big chain electronics store had a small selection of blank audio cassettes in stock and I still had a "proper" computer data recorder which I'd used with my Sinclair machines before.

C2N tape unit cleaned up nicely.

The process of writing the PRG files to tape involves creating a tape image (TAP file) using an emulator like VICE . VICE doesn't however deal with raw PRG files, so I used the D64 Editor utility to write the programs to a D64 disk image. The disk image can be attached in VICE and the program loaded using:

LOAD "FILENAME",8

The "8" signifying the first disk drive device. The program can then be saved to a TAP image using:

SAVE "FILENAME"

As the tape drive is the default device, there's no need to specify a number. The tape image can now be converted to a WAV file suitable for recording to tape using the audiotap program. Depending on your sound card, you may need to use the "Invert waveform" option to get a working tape. Recording to a real tape is just a matter of hooking up the sound card output to the tape deck, hitting record, and playing the WAV file.

Although it took a few tries (mainly due to the inverted waveform option needing to be checked for my set-up), I finally got the software loaded onto the PET with a simple "LOAD" command, without arguments. Another thing to play with, if your tapes don't want to work, is the volume level. I got good writes through the headphone socket of my external speakers with the volume dial about half-way round.

Although I managed to load a few programs using this technique, I did eventually hit a problem - sometimes the PET would seem to hang. RUN/STOP wouldn't break out of the LOAD sequence, which should normally work, and occasionally the tape would also stop running. After one such occasion, the PET started typing random characters to the screen and, after a hard reset, I ended up with that old blank screen again...

Next: Return of the Blank Screen >>