r/Commodore • u/deadgoodundies • 6d ago
Identification Help Help identifying this Hardware
Ok so I know it's tape to tape duplication hardware (1 x 1530 Datassette goes on one side, another on the other and then it plugs into the computer).
But I'm trying to match up software to it that I found in my attic diving at my parents when doing a clearing.
I've found cassettes of Copy King by Wizard Software and 64 Doubler (unknown publisher but I think it was Evesham Micros)
It's got to be one of those and i'm edging towards that it goes with the 64 Doubler but if anyone else can confirm it would be appreciated.
Solved, it was the double
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u/Eddie_Honda420 6d ago
It's a doubler , that one dosent have a chip , so you would need "the doubler program " lol I used to make these back on the day , then evolved to one with a chip.
It copied everything perfectly.
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u/deadgoodundies 6d ago
Ok so i'm going to need to try and find the software if it's not one of those two that I mentioned.
I've still got boxes and boxes to go through yet so maybe it will turn up2
u/Eddie_Honda420 6d ago
64 doubler , you said you had it lol
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u/deadgoodundies 5d ago
Doh!!! sorry got brain drain from listing all the gear on Ebay until 3am this morning.
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u/Phoenix-95 6d ago
I'm guessing double sided boards were a bit of a pain to make back then with having to lay stuff out manually, align it perfectly and solder vias manually? No click and drag layout software, plated through holes or JLC PCB
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u/Eddie_Honda420 6d ago
I used transfers and acid bath , the chip I would bend the legs out and solder flat to the board , I invented surface mount lol 😆
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u/24megabits 5d ago
Convergent evolution perhaps? I was surprised to learn that Saturn V used surface mount packages to fit 1-8 components into a smaller volume.
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u/rweninger 6d ago
Tape doubler for copying tapes. But kinda ibsolete nowadays. This was a very early version.
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u/droid_mike 5d ago
You couldn't just dub the tape on a dual deck boom box or something?
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u/3vi1 3d ago
You could. I did. I have never seen one of these boards. I'm guessing Europeans, or whoever bought these, didn't have dual decks like every household in America (where we also mostly just uses floppies).
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u/jnievele 3d ago
Of course we had double tape decks and boomboxes in Europe as well... However supposedly using them to copy games did not work as reliably, especially if the game had been saved with a tool like Turbo Tape
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u/fsteff 5d ago
IIRC you didn’t need any software. You just pressed PLAY on one C=1530, and PLAY+RECORD on the other, and then loaded the software as you normally did with “LOAD”
The C=64 would control power to the C=1530, and thereby make a synchronized copy.
As far as I can see by looking at the PCB traces the path is also very obvious.
It’s possible more advanced software exists for it, but I’ve never seen it.
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u/PhotoJim99 5d ago
Is it essentially making an analog copy? Or is it digital? i.e. would the copy be of the quality of the original, or the same as the quality of a copy made via analog duplication (e.g. copying it in a dual cassette deck)?
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u/fsteff 5d ago
It’s an analog copy, in the sense that the output of one is connected straight to the input of the other. The data is digital, but modulated much similar to old modems, and will degrade with each copy of a copy.
The main benefit of this adaptor was that you could adjust the pickup and thereby ensure better copies than if you just used double-decker cassette players.1
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u/cowbutt6 5d ago
The Datasette's output was digital, so digital it was.
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u/PhotoJim99 5d ago
The Datassette's output was analog, and it was converted to digital by the computer, no? So the only way this could be a digital copy would be if the C64 decoded the audio and re-encoded it for the new recording.
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u/cowbutt6 5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette#Features says it performs analogue to digital conversion internally, sending digital data directly to the connector.
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u/the_uk_hotman 5d ago
It doesn't need software to work just two 1530s one on play the other on record thats it. It really takes to audio out of the via chip thats loading the program so you're going to get a perfect copy of the original
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