Using an iPod as a giant tape drive...

[DeputyMoniker]

I just found this article on Hack a Day (http://ipod.hackaday.com/2005/11/21/amstrad-ipod-shuffle-tape-drive/). Very cool.




http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/DeputyMoniker/Amstrad.jpg

[sbeam] was really excited about his latest acquisition: an Amstrad CPC 464 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC). This model has a tape deck instead of a floppy drive. sbeam had no way of transferring software on his computer to the Amstrad. He looked around and found the PlayTZX (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/utilities.html#tzxtools) tool. PlayTZX reads a .tzx tape backup and generates a WAV file. sbeam dumped these conversions onto his iPod Shuffle and used a car cassette adapter to play them in the Amstrad's deck. Nice new school solution for old hardware.

[Poofta!]

that is so awesome... thanks for that. brought a smile to my face, remembering the old old days and an interesting connection to today =[]

[sickdrummer420]

damn that kicks ass! will that work on say old commodore tape drives ya think?

[Ze_ro]

Pretty neat, although I think it would be a little more impressive if the iPod itself actually ran PlayTZX natively and converted the images on the fly rather than storing them as sound files... I suppose efficiency isn't a HUGE issue here, and you'd get the same results, but it would get more geek points in my opinion :P

In fact, something like that could very easily be done on a system like the GP32 or GP2X, since they're all open source and stuff... It would also be cool to see a port of PlayBin for those Atari users with SuperChargers or Cuttle Carts...

--Zero

[Pantechnicon]

I've thought about doing a similar thing with my 20GB Rio Karma mp3 player and my old Timex-Sinclair 1000. They even have similar color schemes.

Now that I think about it...(/looks at 16k expansion module, thinks this mod could be even cooler than originally planned :?).

[DeputyMoniker]

damn that kicks ass! will that work on say old commodore tape drives ya think?

Did you ever try it? I'd like to know if it works. Thinking about picking up a C64 soon. (I've always thought about it, actually...)