Tapuino Part 2: Building the $20 C64 Tape Emulator

Hi,

(please note, most recent build instructions are now here: http://sweetlilmre.blogspot.com/2015/03/building-tapuino-r2.html)

Having detailed the Tapuino in my last post, its now time to get down to the specifics of how to build one. In keeping with the low-cost requirement I developed the initial prototype on a breadboard and then moved that design onto strip or vero board. The vero board based construction will eventually live in a nice neat project box (when I finally get there).

DISCLAIMER: If you build this and it blows up your C64, sets your house on fire, kidnaps your dog or any other negative occurrence, I take no responsibility or liability whatsoever. That said I will do my best to help troubleshoot any builds.

So lets get started. Firstly a bill of materials:

Major components:

• Arduino Nano V3
• 16x2 LCD Display with I2C backpack
• SD Card module with built-in level conversion
• 40 wire Dupont female-female 'ribbon'

I got all of this from TxHang Electronics on eBay. They are cheap and ship relatively quickly, so are worth it in my book. Here is an example shopping list:

Addition components:

• Piece of vero board. The one I got was 100mm wide x 200mm long. This is also known as strip board and must be the kind with strips of copper (as opposed to individual 'cells')
• 32 pin (16x2) WIDE dip socket (this is what the Nano will plug into)
• 6 pin (3x2) dip socket (for the opto-coupler)
• A strip of male pin headers
• A strip of male right-angle pin headers
• A strip of female pin headers (sockets)
• 5x 10K Ohm resistors
• 1x 430 Ohm resistor
• 4x Tactile switches (6x6)
• 1x 4N25 Opto-coupler
• Some jumper wire (I use single core wire from a piece of telephone cable)

Here are examples of the headers:

So lets build the main board first. You'll want to put it together like this:

Top view of the main board

Note the minimum dimensions of the board: 26x15. You may wish to make the board larger to allow for mounting holes.

R1 = 10K Ohm
R2 = 430 Ohm
Green blocks = straight header pins.

Break the header pins into appropriate size groups:
3x3 pins
1x1 pin
1x6 pins
and cut the female pin headers to size (mine were 40 pin, so cut down to 19 pins)

Bottom view of the main board

The lighter yellow bits are where the vero board has been cut. It is essential that you check that these tracks are cut properly. Use a multimeter to test for continuity between the tracks once cut. To cut the tracks on my prototype I used a small sharp drill bit that was luckily a perfect fit.
Please take note of the cut track between the two pins of R2.

I would suggest that you solder in this order:

1. 32 pin wide dip
2. 6 pin dip
3. 2x3 pin header group next to the 6 pin dip
4. Remaining pin headers
5. Jumper wires

Feel free to extend the pin headers to access additional pins on the Nano if you like, I just wanted to keep it simple for wire-up later and expose only the pins necessary.

Next up is the button board:

Top view of the button board

Note the minimum dimensions of the board: 22 x 21. You may wish to make the board larger to allow for mounting holes.

R1, R2, R3, R4 are all 10K Ohm
Green pin headers are right angle.
The pinouts of the green pin headers, left to right are as follows: GND, PWR, BTN1, BTN2, BTN3, BTN4

Bottom view of the button board

Take careful note of the tracks to cut:

• There is a cut between each end of each resistor
• Between the poles of the switches
• On the 6th track (from the left) to isolate button 3 from button 1

Also note that the jumper wires for the power and ground lines are soldered through to multiple points. I achieved this by cutting the wires into individual sections:

• power line (top most line) there are 4 jumper wires of 3, 6, 6, 6 tracks in length.
• ground line (under the switches) there are 4 jumper wires of 4, 6, 6, 6 tracks in length.

Now lets install the components and connect it all up.
Firstly install the 4N25 opto-coupler into the 6 pin socket:

Installing the 4N25 opto-coupler

Note the small dot on the chip, this indicates pin 1. The chip should be oriented such that pin 1 connects through to the 440 Ohm resistor (R2).

Next the Nano:

Installing the Nano

As the Nano has 2x15 pins and the socket 2x16 pins, care must be taken to place the Nano correctly. The Nano must be aligned so that the empty socket pins are on the right most pins of the socket as per the image above i.e. the Nano is mounted as close as possible to the opto-coupler.

If you trace out the circuit you will observe that the 2x3 pin headers between the opto and the Nano expose a ground and power rail (left is GND, right is PWR). You will use these rails to provide power to the LCD, SD Card and Button breakout boards.

Connect in the following manner:

LCD:

• Power and Ground go to the rails described above
• Nano A5 goes to SCL
• Nano A4 goes to SDA

SD Card:

• Power and Ground go to the rails described above
• Nano D13 goes to SCK
• Nano D12 goes to MISO
• Nano D11 goes to MOSI
• Nano D10 goes to SS

Button Board:

• Power and Ground go to the rails described above
• Nano A3 goes to BTN1
• Nano A2 goes to BTN2
• Nano A1 goes to BTN3
• Nano A0 goes to BTN4

Finally the pinout for the C2N connector to the board:

You will need to break out 15 pins from a pin header i.e. have 15 continous pins.
Solder the C2N connector to the pins in the follow manner:

• MOTOR to PIN 1
• GND to PIN 4
• PWR to PIN 5
• WRITE to PIN 12
• READ to PIN 13
• SENSE to PIN 15

Remove all other non-connected pins: e,g, pins 2, 3 6-11 and 14. I recommend you heat-shrink the pins as above.

Your connector should look like the one above, the colour to pin map in my case is:

• Red (MOTOR) to PIN 1
• Black (GND) to PIN 4
• Green (PWR) to PIN 5
• Brown (WRITE) to PIN 12
• White (READ) to PIN 13
• Blue (SENSE) to PIN 15

Final assembly should look something like this:

Final Assembly! YES! :)

NOTE:

PIN 1 (RED/MOTOR) is connected to the left-most pin of the female pin header.

Now all that is left to do is flash the sketch to the Nano, disconnect it from USB, insert an SD Card with TAP files, connect the Tapuino to the C64 and enjoy!

The UI is controlled as follows:

BTN 1 is SELECT
BTN 2 is ABORT (during a load) or BACK one directory if browsing
BTN 3 is PREVIOUS
BTN 4 is NEXT

If you have directories on your SD card they will be indicated by an arrow in the right-most column of the LCD where the filename is displayed. Currently only 8.3 format names are supported. I will look into LFN names at a later date.


Caution: Do not connect the Nano to both the C64 and PC. Also check all soldering very carefully for shorts before wiring up to your beloved machine!

Hope you enjoyed this, it was a helluva post to write!

-(e)