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SiriusHardware · 26th Mar 2021, 6:55 pm

As far as testing the cassette interface is concerned any Laptop or PC of a certain age will have proper audio inputs and outputs which you can use in conjunction with something as simple as Windows 'Sound Recorder' or something a bit more full featured (but free) like 'Audacity' to record the audio output from the MK14 Cassette Interface and play it back into it.

Once you have an MK14 program saved as an audio file you can play it back into the MK14 using almost anything, I successfully used both an old Win XP netbook and a little Creative Technology MP3 player to play MK14 tape files back into the machine when I was testing the hex-to-audio conversion software by twostickes (see his recent thread).

The main thing, if you are using anything which has stereo audio output to play files back in, is to use only one audio output channel, either left or right, don't join them both together to connect to the mono input of the cassette interface. I have a lead made up which has a stereo plug at the laptop / MP3 / Smartphone end and a mono plug at the MK14 interface end. In the stereo plug, only the left channel audio output is connected through to audio-in at the 'mono' MK14 end.

26th Mar 2021, 6:55 pm	#245
SiriusHardware Dekatron Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK. Posts: 11,556	Re: I found it! A very sorry looking MK14. As far as testing the cassette interface is concerned any Laptop or PC of a certain age will have proper audio inputs and outputs which you can use in conjunction with something as simple as Windows 'Sound Recorder' or something a bit more full featured (but free) like 'Audacity' to record the audio output from the MK14 Cassette Interface and play it back into it. Once you have an MK14 program saved as an audio file you can play it back into the MK14 using almost anything, I successfully used both an old Win XP netbook and a little Creative Technology MP3 player to play MK14 tape files back into the machine when I was testing the hex-to-audio conversion software by twostickes (see his recent thread). The main thing, if you are using anything which has stereo audio output to play files back in, is to use only one audio output channel, either left or right, don't join them both together to connect to the mono input of the cassette interface. I have a lead made up which has a stereo plug at the laptop / MP3 / Smartphone end and a mono plug at the MK14 interface end. In the stereo plug, only the left channel audio output is connected through to audio-in at the 'mono' MK14 end.