Santa left a C64 Music Maker under the tree for me this year! Thanks Santa!
In theory I should have just been able to plonk the keyboard over the C64, load the tape, and make music, but of course nothing’s ever that simple.
After my tape drive refused to work, I realised that JiffyDOS (a ROM replacement I’m using) kills the tape functionality stone cold. I’d been using the ROM overlay functionality of my 1541UII to load JiffyDOS and that can be turned on / off reasonably easily via the 1541UII’s on screen interface, but I thought it better to do it properly. So I de-soldered the ROM chip from the C64’s motherboard, installed a socket, and dropped in a JiffyDOS replacement ROM chip, which included a switch for flipping b/w JiffyDOS and the original C64 ROM (which of course includes the Datasette functionality).
I didn’t want to drill a hole in the C64’s case for the switch, but fortunately there existed a hole which accommodates an RF channel switch in some models. Mine didn’t have that switch and there was just enough room inside the RF box to fit the JiffyDOS switch, so I snuck it in there:
While I had the soldering iron out I decided to replace the mechanical bits of my tape drive, which were looking a little worse for wear and causing tape loads to be unreliable. Years ago I stashed away another tape drive which looked pristine, but which seemed to have a dodgy head, so I combined the electronics from my drive (PCB, heads, etc) and the mechanical bits from the second drive. After tuning the heads with the very excellent ‘Azimuth Head Alignment’ software, it works like a charm:
With that all done the Music Maker installed and loaded as advertised. No-one’s doing any serious composing on this thing of course but it works well and is fun to play. I was rocking a plausible rendition of ‘When I’m sixty-four’ within 15 mins and the kids gave it their seal of approval:
Life? Don't talk to me about life.