Hi,
So, I have my apple1 working. With a 14" cctv, a franklin ace 1000 keyboard, and a panasonic rq-2102, it looks very cool.
And almost everything work, except, I can't load any program from the ACI.
The jumpers are like this: Y-F Z-D R-C W-E X-0 and the 2 RAM banks are populated.
The ACI PROMs comes from Macintosh_Nik. The ACI 0.01uF capacitor is replaced with a 0.1uF.
I've tried loading from an iPhone, from an old mp3 player, and from the panasonic cassette player. The LED only lights on with the cassette player, so I thought this was the path to take.
First I cleaned the panasonic r/w head with a qtip and some ipa.
I recorded the BASIC program from my computer onto a brand new cassette with the mono jack cable I use later on the Apple-1 (I have 2 versions of the file, one with sin waves and the other with square waves for emulators, tried everything with both).
When nothing plugged in the player, I can read the cassette and hear the program through the embeded speaker. It also works with a headset plugged in, so the socket works.
I plugged the mono jack cable between the EAR socket of the player and the FROM TAPE socket of the ACI.
Clear screen, Reset
C100R (hit return, it displays C100: A9*)
E000.EFFFR
hit play on the cassette player
hit return
I found that with the volume set between 5 and 4 the ACI led flickers during read.
But it never loads. I'm stuck with the blinking @, no / appears, even 10 seconds after the end of the recorded file.
I tried with the volume set from 7 to 2 with the same "nothingness".
I've read a lot that the ACI is kind of unrelyable but that much???
Any help would be much appreciated at this point as I don't really know what I can try next. I also tried with the APPLE30TH program, and nothing neither.
- Ben
In my experience, a flickering LED means the volume isn't high enough.
And some programs I have downloaded seem to have been saved missing the last bit that drops the machine back into monitor (start the next file and see if it drops to monitor)
Ultimatley you can stick a scope on and check that your getting a data stream.
Happy New Year!
Try downloading these files from your desktop/laptop with the free VLC player program. There's also a text file with the addresses. Try 90%, 100% and 110% sound level in the player settings. Don't look at the LED, it has a life of its own.
Apple-1 Soft
This utility may prove useful for you, it is code and a test audio packet stream to test the ACI decoding.
https://github.com/nippur72/apple1-videocard-lib/tree/main/demos/tapemon
... and the "volume indicator LED" does not do what it is supposed to do. It may have worked with the cassette recorder Woz had but it does not actually show any proof that the comparator itself works.
Too low a volume and too large a volume both don't work and how can you tell ?
I've analyzed a fixed all the ACI problems. See my "improved ACI" threads here on Applefritter. There is a lot of background info in these threads what works and what does not work and why.
- Uncle Bernie
If I understand correctly, for TAPEMON to work you need to load the file tapemon.0280.bin on the SD card, so it is unlikely to help our friend...
There are other ways to get it loaded, though having a replica 1 plus helps because I previously converted the program to flat text and sent it over a serial connection. It could be loaded over tape/audio too, if their ACI can be happy enough for a moment. Or keyed in if you are of "determination level: Woz" ;)
Also my P-Lab SD card isn't even in the same R1+ as my cassette interface; I don't use bus extenders. So I have never needed the SD card to use Tapemon, nor is it recommended to use bus extenders with the SD expansion anyway.
I'm hoping to be able to use ACI with my vintage Realistic CTR-19. I found I had to replace the belt in it since it hadn't been used in years and the original one was hard. I found I could get them on eBay though.
That's a lot of help, thanks.
I was reading through a lot of stuff in UncleBernie's improved apple 1 cassette interface thread and other related topics, and dicided to have a look at my ACI's LM311, more precisely at pin 7, with my oscilloscope. And I was not able to get anything out of it beside some garbage. So I decided to switch the chip with another one I had in stock. And now at least the E000.EFFFR ends when needed. I can still not execute basic (when I type E000R it responds with E000:6c and that's it).
So now I think it's just a matter of finding the good volume to record the tape and then play it reliably.
I'll keep you updated.
...
I use an old iPhone SE to upload the software via the ACI and in the beginning I always turned everything up to full blast, and the iPhone very often complained that what I was doing "is harmful to my health". But after I checked the output of the comparator with the oscilloscope, I noticed that it also delivers plausible signals even at a significantly reduced volume and lo and behold, the software still loads correctly with that.The LED on the ACI has never lit up for me at all. Oh yes, when I fed the ACI with a sine signal from the function generator. The Darlington transistor only starts to switch on very slowly at a level of approx. 1100+ mV (peak). An iPhone never makes so much boom in life, absolutely maximum 750mV can be gotten out of it. But when I measure it, I can even load the software (and it runs) with just over 300mV audio level, but nothing goes below that.
ACI.input_.jpg
I used the APPLE30TH for this test, which I downloaded somewhere as a WAV. However, I took a look at it with Audacity and was wondered that it was relatively low leveled, so I normalized that WAV to 0dB. And so I can load it with the iphone without any problems.
I haven't tried my old RQ-309S cassette recorder yet, I'll check that out in a few days. And I'm still looking for some (good) tapes...
IMG_2874.JPG
Good luck with your troubleshooting...
- Pete
I was able to find good new unopened package casette tapes on Amazon. Maxell 60 minute normal bias. You don't want high bias Cr02 or "Metal" tapes. I also got some cheap Certron brand tapes off eBay, also new and unopened. Certron was a lot of what I used for computer use back in the day because they were the cheapest. If I remember right I bought them at K-Mart. The Radio Shack Realistc CTR-19 tape recorder I have is one my dad probably bought around 1974.
I was able to find good new unopened package casette tapes on Amazon. Maxell 60 minute normal bias. You don't want high bias Cr02 or "Metal" tapes. I also got some cheap Certron brand tapes off eBay, also new and unopened. Certron was a lot of what I used for computer use back in the day because they were the cheapest. If I remember right I bought them at K-Mart. The Radio Shack Realistc CTR-19 tape recorder I have is one my dad probably bought around 1974.
This morning I decided to try again with my mp3 player.
First I hooked my oscilloscope to the lm311 pin 7.
Then I turned on the apple1 and played the basic file from the mp3 player to the ACI. I started with volume at 0% and slowly turned it up until I was able to see something on pin 7. It's actually only when volume is 100% on the mp3 player.
Then I tried loading it (C100r, etc... ) and IT WORKED.
Tried again with the 30th anniversary program, success again on first try.
Thanks everyone for all the help and documentation. I now have a fully working apple 1 !!!