Amstrad CPC 464 tape-deck re-furb (and an Ulifac II device)

A little while back, (gosh! was it that far back, wow! those months really do start to fly by, don't they), I added a 3.5mm phono-jack to one of the Amstrad CPC 464 machines...and well, kinda knackered the second machine as explained in the middle of THIS ARTICLE.

I managed to acquire another Amstrad CPC 464 machine that has a faulty motherboard (one for me to send over to Rob for him to diagnose, fix & keep/sell/whatever), but the tape-deck "looked" okay. I did a direct swap as it's simple enough...however, the tape deck was not playing ball either. sigh. So I left the two machines under a desk & got on and did some other things. Well... I decided to give these two a look again and see if I can Frankenstein monster something useful out of them.

I had actually just watched a YTube video about connecting a Bluetooth adapter, so that was my initial thinking, if I cannot get it to work as-is, I'll just bluetooth it, I have enough old skool BLE adaptors knocking around. I also, kinda wanted to get at least one CPC 464 working with a genuine tape-player, I know it does the same thing using a phone plugged in and streaming the CDT file audio, but y'know, it's kind of nice to actually use / feel / touch the media, actually use/have the cassette tape. anyway.

I decided that I would "extend" some of the wiring as it was all a bit minimal / tight - having two tape decks really helped here:

I originally thought that the motor was duff, or that a couple of capacitors had exploded (but then noticed same two caps, were covered in the same yellow goo - so, unless they'd both blown, it was a factory thing?), turns out the motors were fine. However, that did take a bit of debugging.

Turns out the controller board on the "newer" CPC was okay, but the actual metal tape deck unit was faulty.... okay, well, that's convenient-ish, I'll just swap everything over... hence the, having to cut and replace/extend the wiring from one tape deck to the other one.

Oh look, I "can" do nice and tidy wiring management :-)

Almost looks like a professional job. Whilst it might all look nice and fits wonderfully - does it actually work?

Well.....I had a dig around and it turns out I only have 3 x CPC 464 actual tapes to test with, Scrabble, Xenon and Xevious. For obvious reasons, Xevious is not being used as a tester, Scrabble has no case, so that will go in first.

Well..... it "was" looking so good, all the right noises were being made, the new wiring seems to be doing the job properly, basically read that as: "I had not knackered the tape audio read wiring extension cables as they were very fiddly"...

Ah, the blissful sights & sounds of a real tape loading...in real-time....oh, what?! WTF?! it just borked?

After a little bit of head-scratching, I decided NOT to touch anything, I would assume that the Scrabble tape itself was faulty and I would try a different tape. So, in went XENON:

...and wouldn't you know! worked like a charm. I did pause in the middle so you didn't get the full 15min loading time (or whatever it was), but I've left enough for you to "get the experience" - y'know in todays society of "instant and want-it-now" mindset, it is kind of nice to have to wait for your reward.

And wait I did...and rewarded was I. oh yes! works well, didn't need any alignment modifications, read the tape okay, audio sound it good - I just have no idea what XENON is or how to play it - as you can tell, the tape was sent "free" with a Dandanator that I purchased.

SWEET. Right, well, there's that... I best start taking a look on fbook marketplace / ebay for a cheap bundle package of 35-50 Amstrad CPC tapes going cheap :-)

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Well.... I couldn't leave it there could I? I previously purchased an Ulifac II hardware device that allows you to connect a USB drive to an Amstrad CPC, it also allows for WiFi and BLE too.... I'd previously used it briefly on the Amstrad CPC 6128, but I wondered... could I use it on the 464?

Well...yes, yes you can.

Here it is on the 6128:

Oh, looksie - the old Arduino WiFi adaptor fits in just about there:

Even though I had the manual, I had no idea how to actually "use" the WiFi module.... It did connect to the WiFi, I could see it on the network, so that's 1/2 the battle - now have to figure out what I can actually do with it.

I then wondered if I could connect the Amstrad CPC 464 to this device and spoof being a 6128 and load the old "SCARAB.DSK" game that I wrote back in 2014-ish.

By default, notice the screens shows that the device is detected but we are still recognised as an "Amstrad 64K", which is the Amstrad CPC 464:

Let's do something about that, switching to 6128 mode and there we go "Amstrad 128K" - why do this? well, in order to read the .DSK file you have to emulate a floppy disc drive and well, the 464 didn't have one, it had the tape deck, so you switch to 6128 mode to be able to read the .DSK file and mount it: