6128 Cassette Loading Problems

[Tim]

Hi there,


I am an old CPC user that has recently come back after about 20 years using other machines, i have a 6128 & have a cassette player hooked up to it, but when i start to load from cassette i get load error b or something come up, any ideas??


I have tried a different cassette player that i know works as i used it with the wifes Spectrum & i get the same problem.


Help!

[Gryzor]

Hello and welcome - after 20 years!

I'd say your cassette is probably um, old and kind of busted?

[Bryce]

Hmm Gryzor, that's some seriously technical support you give there.

Hi Tim, the CPC can be pretty fussy about the volume of the tape output, so experimenting with this might solve the problem. If not, the tape head may not be properly aligned and might need some adjustment, I won't go into to detail here on how to do that, there's enough web pages out there describing what you need to do, just do a search for Azimuth adjustment or similar.

Bryce.

[TomEtJerry]

Hello,

If you experience "error B", most common problems comes from the volume level of the tape recorder. Original tapes are usually reliable (more than disks in fact ) but I have already seen damaged tapes. Have you tried to load other tapes ?

T&J/GPA

[ssg]

Someone else in the forum had better luck with an older cassette player due to lack of filters making signal clearer. You might as well try that.

[Gryzor]

Hmm Gryzor, that's some seriously technical support you give there.

Bryce.

Man, I was dead serious. You have a tape aged maybe 25 years old. And you're trying to load digital data from it. What is more likely, that your tape recorded is wrong, something else in hardware, or that you simply have a bad tape?

[Bryce]

Ok Gryzor, I'll let you have this one, but normally when someone reports a problem like this, I usually assume they've tried a few tapes before they posted

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Heh Sorry mate, not to question your supremacy in all things hardware-related, but I also expect, when someone describes a problem, to also include all the steps they have tried to troubleshoot it. So when I don't see something obvious, I ask

[emuola]

Someone  else in the forum had better luck with an older cassette player due to  lack of filters making signal clearer. You might as well try that.                                                                                                                                                              

That may have been me... I definitely had serious trouble with the "all-the-bells-and-whistles" -Luxman deck. As soon as I changed to a Philips datadorder (from ~1985) the errors were cut to almost zero per tape Lesson: no hi-fi with Amstrad

[Gryzor]

Maybe use an actual Astrad Hifi?