I decided to publish my PC version of the PRG to TAP conversion tool as it might come handy to somebody else too.
You can grab the executable for Windows (32/64 bits) at this link.
The one feature worth underlying is the ability to provide a hex string for the CBM ROM file name so that interesting effects can be achieved by using PETSCII control codes such as $93 to clear the screen, $05 to change the text color to white, etc.
An example.prg file is provided within the archive at the above download link. For an interesting use of PETSCII control codes you might want to try the following:
prg2tap.exe -h "930548454c4c4f20574f524c4421" example.prg helloworld.tap
See what happens when you load the resulting TAP file 🙂
Here’s the output on usage from the tool itself, for reference:
PRG to TAP version 1 generator V1.1 - (C) 2016 Luigi Di Fraia Converts a PRG file into a TAP file using the CBM ROM loader Usage: prg2tap.exe [options] "<PRG filename>" "<TAP filename>" Options: -n "<ASCII name>": sets the CBM ROM filename to <name> -h "<hex string>": sets the CBM ROM filename to <hex string> Examples: prg2tap.exe -n "HELLO WORLD!" example.prg helloworld.tap prg2tap.exe -h "930548454c4c4f20574f524c4421" example.prg helloworld.tap Notes: PETSCII codes can be part of the <hex string> for advanced uses The resulting CBM ROM file will be non-relocatable (type 3) PETSCII codes of interest (full listing at http://sta.c64.org/cbm64pet.html): 05: white 08: disable shift+C= 0e: switch charset to lo/up 12: reverse on 13: home 1c: red 1e: green 1f: blue 81: orange 8e: switch charset to up/gfx 90: black 92: reverse off 93: clear 95: brown 96: pink 97: dark grey 98: grey 99: light green 9a: light blue 9b: light grey 9c: purple 9e: yellow 9f: cyan
Nice little tool. Now it needs a fast loader, optionally with a bitmap loaded first and you have a nice tool for making tapes. 🙂 – I have previously used enthusi’s tapgen v0.1 python script for this which also has a cool little progress bar as well as music playing while loading. 🙂
Heh. I will get a tool for turbo tape 64 going as part of my testing of a PRG to TAP data approach to use with DC2N5, but I don’t expect to go through the creation of a mastering tool. Not in the short term anyway 🙂
The tool is coming along nicely. I still use the tool you made called MakeTape to convert my Prg files into Trilogic Fast loading Tap files. Are they any plans to incorporate that into this ?
The tool you are using is possibly based on my libtap library or maybe the later libtapf one. Example applications for libtap/libtapf come in 4 different flavors:
– conversion of PRG files to TAP using the CBM ROM loader for programs
– conversion of ASCII files to TAP using the CBM ROM loader for SEQuential files
– conversion of PRG files to TAP using Turbo Tape 64 (a.k.a. TT250)
– conversion of PRG files to TAP using Trilogic V3.2
The difference between such tools based on libtap/libtapf and my latest development is that the former ones are NOT generating TAP data on-the-fly, which is not so important when either code runs on a PC with huge amounts of RAM and almost unlimited disk storage. However, my new approach provides a viable alternative for embedded systems with limited resources by implementing a tiny footprint solution.
That said, you’d expect the applications based on libtap/libtapf to provide a much wider set of options but that’s not the case as they are just example applications. Even the field application I coded to leverage libtapf has a quite simple functionality. From its usage output:
Usage: prg2tapcbm.exe “input file” “output file” “CBM filename”
At the time I coded such tool (2014) I probably did not think I was going to be in need of anything more flexible than that. With my new development flexibility seemed paramount so I made the tool as flexible as it can possibly be without offering superfluous features.
Quite literally my new code would fit on Tiny C2N Monitor (that is a tiny system indeed!) and could be used to e.g. load the main Turbo Tape 64 (TT250) application into the C64 using the CBM ROM loader prior to loading files from tape that were saved using the same application. The same could be done for DC2N5: one of the options along with “Playback a TAP file from the SD Card” could be “Playback the Turbo Tape 64 tool”, which would have to be loaded using the CBM ROM loader into the C64 prior to loading files mastered with the same tool.
Finally, to answer your question: Yes, I plan to implement Turbo Tape 64 (TT250) and Trilogic v3.2 tools using the new approach, in order to use them in DC2N5.
Thanks for the detailed reply. Looking forward to seeing this feature implemented in the future. I also recall seeing a front end for libtap, but I don’t think it was made public. Any plans to release this ?
@Paul: I’ve actually implemented the Turbo Tape masterer and it’s under testing. A preview executable is available here: http://www.luigidifraia.com/c64/taptools/prg2tap-1.5-preview-win32.zip
See my latest blog post for the usage text.
@Paul: A GUI tool based on libtap, TapeMaker, exists but was never made public. I do understand the need for a more friendly GUI interface and I shall say that you might be positively impressed some time soon. Not by my work though 🙂