tapDancer

Got a Commodore 64 and an Android-powered device? Check out our first Android utility, tapDancer, a free Google Play download.

tapDancer allows you to use your Android-powered device to render and play back .TAP archive files of Commodore tape images to your real Commodore computer (VIC20 / C64 / C128 etc.) All you need is a common ‘CD to Cassette’ adapter, your Commodore and a Datasette.

Simply copy your .TAP archive files (of tapes you own, of course!) to your Android device’s SDCard, connect your Android device to the mini-jack leading from the ‘CD to Cassette’ adapter placed inside your Datasette, press ‘Play’ on the Datasette, power on your Commodore, press Shift-Run/Stop, press the ‘Eject’ button inside tapDancer, navigate to and choose your desired .TAP file.

After the audio renders (anywhere up to two minutes, longer on slower devices), press the ‘Play’ button. Adjust your volume to around 10 (for starters). With luck, in a few moments your C64 will recognise the file, press SPACE on your C64 as soon as it says ‘FOUND *GAME*’. If it doesn’t, try adjusting the volume up or down, press ‘Stop’ in tapDancer to reset the audio playback, reset your C64, press Shift-Run/Stop and try again.

Unfortunately, not all Android devices provide audio output at a quality necessary for your computer to read it, but in our tests the majority of devices did successfully load games. Also, tapDancer doesn’t know when the tape motor is stopped, so loading so-called ‘multi-load’ games can be tricky. Try to find ‘single-load’ versions of games, where the entire game loads at once. As with most things, your mileage may vary.

For more detailed usage information and a user forum, see the tapDancer website a thttp://tapDancer.info or by tapping the WWW icon on the main tapDancer application screen.

Later versions plan to add support for Acorn, Sinclair, MSX and Atari.