Loading via tape

[Dark]

Had my Spectrum Next a few weeks and completely failed to laod any of the games, I excitedly bought from ebay, via tape recorder.

Each one sort of does the red/blue then green/blue loading borders, but only briefly, never tells me what program I'm loading and nowhere near a loading screen.

I'm using this lead purchased from eBay - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPECTRUM-3-T ... 4aacf00ec4

Along with this tape recorder purchased from Argos - https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740413

Anyone got any ideas?

[Swainy]

I had the same issue, this Jack from eBay fixed the problem: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 0861911048

Plug it in at the cassette player end.

Also, have you tried pulling the lead out slightly at the Spectrum end? Mine would load that way without the jack.

[Dark]

Thanks, will try that adaptor.

I have tried pulling the lead out at both Next end and the tape recorder end, but to no avail.

[Dark]

Well I got the adaptor, but still no luck. Put it on both ends of the lead, but unfortunately nothing happens when try to load tape.

[R-Tape]

I'm having problems here too. I've tried tapes that I know work at various volumes but the screen stays red, no tone recognition at all. I don't have the adapter Swainy mentioned, but I am using a stereo/mono jack that has worked from tape to laptop in the past.

I don't plan to load many games this way, but it'd be nice to have the option. Is this a common problem, or is the majority managing this with ease?

[Magic Knight]

I have spent the last few weeks trying to load all of my games, and have uploaded details of 520 of them on my website here.

I started by trying to load from the 128K personality, and found that about 66% would load ok. Then I tried the Net personality, and found that loading with the Next/+3 option in the tape loader is the most reliable. If that did not work, I tried the 128K or 48K modes from within the Next personality.

As things stand, I have 33 cassettes which will not load, and 487 which will. I have tested all 33 of those that will not load on a toastrack using the same cassette recorder, and all 33 load without difficulty.

I'm using the +3 cassette cable from Retro Shack, which seems to be identical to that sold by Coolnovelties. My cassette recorder is a Sanyo DR201, which does not have a volume control.

[Magic Knight]

I have spent the last few weeks trying to load all of my games, and have uploaded details of 520 of them on my website here.

I started by trying to load from the 128K personality, and found that about 66% would load ok. Then I tried the Net personality, and found that loading with the Next/+3 option in the tape loader is the most reliable. If that did not work, I tried the 128K or 48K modes from within the Next personality.

As things stand, I have 33 cassettes which will not load, and 487 which will. I have tested all 33 of those that will not load on a toastrack using the same cassette recorder, and all 33 load without difficulty.

I'm using the +3 cassette cable from Retro Shack, which seems to be identical to that sold by Coolnovelties. My cassette recorder is a Sanyo DR201, which does not have a volume control.

I have gone through a large number of my games again, and I've updated the results for about 550 or so.
For quite a number, I have more than one copy or more than one release of the same game.

Some of the updates to the Next seem to have improved the ability for the machine to load games. For instance, I have four copies of the original release of Robocop. Previously, none would load, but now three do. On the other hand, some games still won't load regardless of what I try.

[desUBIKado]

Had my Spectrum Next a few weeks and completely failed to laod any of the games, I excitedly bought from ebay, via tape recorder.

Each one sort of does the red/blue then green/blue loading borders, but only briefly, never tells me what program I'm loading and nowhere near a loading screen.

I'm using this lead purchased from eBay - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPECTRUM-3-T ... 4aacf00ec4

Along with this tape recorder purchased from Argos - https://www.argos.co.uk/product/5740413

Anyone got any ideas?

Obviously I understand that you are using a cable like the ones used for the Spectrum +3. I bought a similar cassette on Amazon a few months ago, but not the same model as yours. It did not load any tape. In the end the problem is that the charger was putting in a lot of electrical noise and it was transmitted through the sound cable. The solution was to remove the charger and use batteries with the cassette. Now by adjusting the volume I can load the tapes.

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

Once you've got a proper tape cable (+3) and you take care of the possibility that your tape deck puts out stereo audio instead of mono as they should (the new ones do this), it is down to tape volume. The ear circuit in the Next is less sensitive than most of the original machines which means you need louder volumes to load successfully. Things like tzxduinos are reliable as are many older tape decks because they generate high volumes. The new decks tend to perform badly unfortunately and tend to have poor volume control.

It's important to have the Next in the correct hardware configuration when loading software. Being in 48K / 128K / USR 0 / Pentagon mode will affect whether a minor subset of programs will load successfully (exactly like the original machines and how they behave as some will detect model to load a larger game, eg) but even more important is making sure extra peripherals are disabled. Many programmers didn't use defined port numbers when accessing hardware or touched on ports for their own private debugging hardware or rare hardware that conflicts with peripherals in the Next. This can cause crashes as these things will inadvertently hit on some unintended hardware device. This is why everything in the Next can be disabled and the easiest way to have that done for you is to use the Tape Loader from the browser menu of NextZXOS. This will set up the hardware for you as a 48K / 128K / USR 0 / Pentagon before loading from tape. Next/+3 for tape loading is actually the *least* compatible way to run legacy software because it leaves all the Next hardware enabled, has +3 port decoding and has new roms in place when running.

The ear circuit is being redone for KS2 machines to solve this problem. This will probably come out as a DIY mod for KS1 machines for those who are able. Otherwise, it's the use of an inline amplifier or a louder tape deck that will improve the situation. Now that I think about it, the new ear circuit could probably be inlined into a cable to improve the loading on KS1 machines -- that might be an idea to explore.