Buddy Mahon (Maghon?) at AMTS is up about 4 hours from me in Lawrenceville and has the masters online. You can download and then upload with a PC somehow, but I have never tried it. I was going to try out the MasterCAM post back before my master wiped out.
Wow, yeah that is it for sure... Hurco numbers and all...
Ok since it is so old, you probably will have a different problem that I had with a different tape, but will be the same problem. What I would do is try to find a set of micro cassette players, play the tape with one and record with the other. What I had problems with was the tape is so old "1980's" that the glue holding everything on gave way. So I had one shot at playing the tape. I got most of it, but at the end the tape was clogging up the head. It will literally come off as brown chunks and leave behind clear tape on the cassette. So when I took the cassette tape apart, the wound up tape was completely clear and the head of the tape player was all gunked up with the brown part of the tape.
I would watch the tape and see if it starts to do what I am talking about so that you can salvage it if possible. I am stunned the master tape was in there. That is awesome.
Yes connecting the tape emulator was something I was going to check into back a few years ago, but never did investigate because of how my setup was. The AMTS board that Buddy built had a DB9 connector so that you could hook directly to a PC COM port. I simply drip fed from the DB9.
I believe there will be 2 routes possible here, but not positive of this.
First way)
On the back of the machine should the round 8 or 9 pin Amphenol type connector and you should be able to hook up here. I will upload a schematic of the connectors.
Second way)
I think we bought one years ago, but never used this, don't even know if we have it still. It's called a BTR and stands for Behind The Tape Reader. So this was a device to wire in downstream of the tape reader to "emulate" the tape and feed to the machine directly from the PC. This was huge back in the day for "Drip Feeding" from the PC so you didn't have to break big programs into smaller programs that the machine memory could handle. We had one little machine that only took 999 lines of code, not a big deal for small stuff, but anything elaborate was a problem.
So, with that said I would think a BTR in today's age would be ultra cheap. They were only big for about a 10-20 year span until controls gained more memory.
The rear connector may be the easiest route, but I never did use mine. The schematic is below. EDIT: Yeah after looking at the schematic the connectors are tied right to the MPU board, so that is going to be the cheapest easiest way to do it. Should only need 3 or 4 wires for data transfer.
EDIT #2: I can't remember if it's a male or female connector, but I would not spend the money on the connector. Unless you have one, they are pretty expensive and I keep any I come across. If its a female connector, just skin the wires and push into the female pin, if it's male, then use a red or blue barrel connected to the wire and then slide it over the pin for a temporary connection. This is obviously not a long term way, but will do for a cheap fix to upload the master.
