C2N232 Cassette-to-RS232 Converter

[airship]

Another cool-sounding project - an adapter and drivers to turn the cassette port into an RS232 port, at 38Kbits no less!

Apparently they sold these for awhile for $20. Does anyone have one? Apparently it was used for file transfer only, i.e. no IEC device connection or communications connections ever got working.

Still sounds pretty neat for $20. If I could find one (without having to make my own) I might be tempted to add it to my 64HDD setup. Just for kicks.

http://www.ktverkko.fi/~msmakela/8bit/c2n232/index.en.html

[RobertB]

Apparently they sold these for awhile for $20. Does anyone have one?

Larry Anderson of the Silicon Realms BBS has one.  He demonstrated it at CommVEx v2 last year.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

[airship]

Robert, did you see the demo? What did you think of it?

[RobertB]

Robert, did you see the demo?

Memory fuzzy.  Must review videotape/DVD.  :-)

What did you think of it?

Well, because I had no need for it, I stored the idea in the back of the brain.  In other words, no opinion.  :-)

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

[bacon]

I've had one a couple of weeks now. I wouldn't say it turns the cassette port into an RS232 port; it's more like it turns your PC (and by PC I mean Linux, Windows, MacOS, Amiga, or Unix machine) into a datassette. You can use a couple of programs on the PC side to transfer files to the C= computer using the the normal cassette routines. No saving though, only loading AFAIK. the c2nload program on the PC side first transfers a fastloader and then transfers the program you want to load. On my C64 a 40K program took ~10 seconds to transfer. Pretty impressive for the cassette port

There's also a server program you can load into your Commodore machine which lets your PC control your IEC devices over the C2N232 interface.

[airship]

I'm sure it's not very practical, but it IS a great hack! (I love great hacks.)

Where did you get yours, Bacon? Is someone still selling them?

[bacon]

Oh, it's very practical, especially for cross-developing and testing. From the Commodore side, the interface looks like a datassette, so you just issue the normal LOAD (or press Shift-Run/Stop) and then on the PC side you run the command line program c2nload, specifying the file to transfer. The file is then loaded in seconds.

I got it from the guy you linked to, Marko Mäkelä. He built a few of the new version, the C2N232I this summer. I contacted him to buy one; one thing led to another and another Swede named Anders Carlsson ended up ordering all of the devices and distributed them to me and a few other people in Sweden. I think Marko still have some in kit form though.