Hi there,

I just bought back my 1st MSX
Canon V20 (Japan keyb and Japanese BASIC user manual unfortunately!)

Where can I find a V20-compatible tape drive? Is there a list of compatible drives?
Thanks,
-Roms

Any normal audio cassette player will do just fine, as long as you've got the correct audio cable. The only thing you'll miss compared to a real MSX tape drive is the ability to control (start/stop) the tape drive from the MSX; you'll have to start the tape manually.

Here is a description of the cassette port pin-out.

Happy MSX-ing

You can use ANY sound replayer, such as a CD player, an MP3 player, a notebook, etc.

Canon V20 are very nice machines indeed! Simple yet perfect. I fixed one of them (french version) in the end of the 90's, that was in very bad condition, now it looks like new. I am then back to the force!

You should consider using a very good piece of PC software that convert ROM files into WAV files (ie: as Pitpan said, can be transfered into Audio CD, tapes, mp3 players or from audio output of modern computers):

WAVer (version 2) (by Robsy: http://www.robsy.net/)

Most of the ROMs up to 32Ko will be converted like a charm and loadable from any audio device at incredible speed. I personally stuffed nearly 20 waved pieces of software in one audio CD (among them many of the MSXDev' new MSX1 games): easy, reliable, fast and convenient (ie: track selection)... It can really give life back to your MSX1.

Sin

Nice. Did anyone consider writing a piece of software on the PC that emulates MSX tape drives?
With a MSX "cassette" DIN cable going to both the PC's sound card and PC's serial port, it would be possible to emulate start/stop as well... maybe even listing the virtual tape's directory !?

-Roms

Except for the motor control, it's almost identical to play a WAV recording on your PC, with the MSX on your sound out.

using the parallel port of any PC can be inputed the MOTOR ON/OFF easily just 2 wires, signal and ground. (using the pin of "Ready signal"

Ok, today was the first major step: Getting the tape cable.
I've to admit I spent some time finding some device in the closet with a 8-pin DIN cable attached to it, and eventually cut some old power supply cable.
It seems I can now load data from the PC (wav) to the MSX tested with those files [url: http://www.geocities.com/wierzbowsky/]

But I didn't manage to save data to the PC yet... Is there a magic frequency to use??? (I'm now using 44kHz)
Maybe the recording volume is not exactly right (tried at 50% 65% and 100%).
I'm wondering....

Hint: try to visit http://www.robsy.net/romconv.htm

Enjoy

Update -
Finally after tweaking the volume, it finally saved my files... So I guess I can call it a success!
It seems the 2400bps mode doesn't work (maybe my soldering skills aren't that good after all).

I sucessfully converted and loaded some ROMs (using CasLink) but I'm a bit puzzled to see some making my dear MSX crash! (Konami Valley for instance kills it after the intro screen). I thought this behaviour was specific to M$ XP. ;D

Don't think so. If you use WAVeR v.2 it has a CRC (Checksum control) that checks if the loaded game is the same as the original game. So? It can tell you if you have a loading problem and some bytes aren't loaded correctly. Changing the volume usually works. In my PC, I set it to 70-80%.