Amstrad CPC 464 - Tape Deck enhancement & RGBtoHDMI adapter

After watching a great video from Noel's Retro Labs - and watching until the end to find out the "proper" pin to connect to! I decided to solder up a connection for me to plug my, now not used, "old" mobile phone, that is perfectly okay, but no need for a SIM.  It's an Android phone that connects to the wifi perfectly fine - so I downloaded the 'PlayZX' app, yes, I appreciate that it is for the Spectrum, but it works just fine for the Amstrad too, just so long as you change the file extension from .cdt to .tzx - the actual files themselves are in the same format internally.  So, after writing a couple of python scripts (yes, it sometimes does have its uses) to extract a zip file that created 1000s of folders that internally had .cdt files - the files were all moved into a single folder and then renamed to .tzx.  Then I copied them all to the phone SD card - they used up a massive 300MB or something. 

I did order a TZXDuino from eBay, which is taking its time to be delivered - when it does arrive I will be able to switch over from the phone, it's also nice to have a dedicated device that I can re-use between the Amstrad & the Spectrum devices I have.

Right, so I have 2 x CPC 464 machines, one that is a newer machine (smaller mother board) that has a working-ish tape-drive, even after attempting to "fix" it as per the videos that show how to get the right-hand tape spooler thing to not stick, it still does.  I also believe the little round tape puller thingy on the bottom right has a "bump" defect on it, I've cleaned it up and also filed it down, it still seems to jam up the tape or just stop completely.  As I'm not too interested in using real tape media, it would be "nice", but not essential, I chose to do the digital modification as shown below.

I chose to "experiment" with loading 10th Frame (the 10-pin bowling game), why? cos it was at the top of the list of games! no other reason.  it also gave me the opportunity to see the loading screen load and then it was a pretty quick loading time for the whole game - and it runs a demo too.

I did cheat a little bit and used a 3.5mm to 3.5mm tape connector - the end tip is +ve and the top part is -ve, so it's an easy test to just clip like the above and see if it works.

Right, that's all proven to work well - even makes the sounds still.  I soldered proper wires to the 3.5mm connector - I did cut up an existing one, but it didn't work very well, so I've ordered some "proper" jack connectors and when they arrive I'll look to fit it to the top of the casing and then I'll have a "professional" looking job... but for now...

all cleaned up, plugged in and re-testing...

yep - all works as it should.  If I didn't have a TZXDuino on the way, I would look at potential ways to fit the phone into the casing too - as I don't use it for anything else.  You'll also note that you still need to have a working tape deck and still need to press the [PLAY] key for the audio to load.

As the young'ens would say, "if there is no video, it didn't happen"...so...

This then led me to wonder.... how about CPC machine number two?  Now, with that machine, some foolish person (cough cough) took a pair of snippers and cut all the wires on the tape deck because it wasn't working and chose to bypass it - which worked well.... and the Dandanator works well to have 7-10 games that can be loaded.  This works a treat...however, y'know, I have the soldering iron out and well, the machine is just there.... so...

Someone made a real mess of this ;-)  however, they didn't cut the wires too close to any boards - apart from a few at the top/back... a little bit of experimenting by looking at the little bit of wire colours left on the solder and I'm able to connect the bare-minimum that I think I need...

Hmmm.... I didn't get any sounds like I did on the other machine - I soldered a few more wires together.

ah ha...and then I connected the GND to the big GND connector on the actual board itself - this gave me noises that sounded right.

Hmmm... whilst it did make all the right noises and it did load the loader file, when it came to drawing the loading screen lines, it didn't do it... it made the noises, but didn't output the right image... it also didn't load the actual game data either, it reached the end of the "tape" and just did nothing.

I fiddled around a bit more and it turns out there is a lot of background noise going on in the audio for the tape deck itself, I did see there were 4 more wires that were not connected, maybe they were the issue? or I have a soldered wire in the wrong place (I don't believe so as I used machine one to check against).  I'll give it a bit more of a fiddle around when the "proper" jacks arrive from China and the TZXDuino arrives.... update in a week or two's time.

RGBtoHDMI

In the meantime.... I decided to setup the RGBtoHDMI connector that I purchased for the eye-watering price of £75.... I borrowed the RPi-zeroW from the "Aloe-vera" project, read through the Get Started Guide and downloaded the zip file, copied it over to a 1GB sd-card, slotted it into the casing and connected it to the small 5" HDMI screen that I have.  This was my original idea of making a "portable CPC"

After a little bit of settings tweaking, it worked REALLY WELL!  It is just a shame that my camera is so CR@P at taking a photo of this type of screen - it looks blurry in the images, it is not - it is crystal clear and really sharp, this 1st image shows it blurry, the 2nd shows it is better - if I can get the video on here, you'll see it is much better than that.

Now, there's the idea for the "portable CPC"... there is a big empty space from the right of the [P] key over to the tape-deck, so more than enough room to fit the RGBtoHDMI device "inside" the CPC, along with a 10000ma powerbank with a couple of 5v outputs and the HDMI cable itself is a small one - just need to figure out how to "fit it" to the CPC.  was thinking where the tape deck lid currently fits, however, am now thinking of a HINGE&BRACKET style flip-up in the top center where the [CPC 464] lettering is.... hmmm.... well, I do have a 3D-printer....

pressing the button on the device pops up the overlay menu where extra settings can be tweaked - I originally had it where the screen had a border all the way around it - I stretched this out so it only has top & bottom, it makes it look a bit better.

As I say, ignore the "blur", but I reckon that might be mission accomplished.. well, sort of.

...and of course, there was a video showing the loading of 10th Frame outputting to that screen, but it was 300+Mb and there is a limit of 100Mb... oh I wonder if I can squish it down... brb....

why not upload to YouTube? and then insert link down below?...

and here's a nice blurry screened video showing the game which actually looks nice on this screen:

and I've just found some PCB boards on PCBWay website that allow me to "make my own" (well, in so much as I can purchase the PCB board and solder myself!), but it does include the PCB board files, so I can look to modify to suit my needs once I've figured out the software...and then I can look to make a custom fit board to go inside the CPC 464.... why?  well.... why not?..... what else you gonna do on a rainy afternoon / evening in the UK when you don't drink alcohol anymore (and you've watched the whole of netflix)?