The Apple 1 Cassette Interface

The Apple Cassette Interface (ACI) was the only accessory sold for the Apple 1 computer. It allowed saving and loading programs from cassette tape using an inexpensive tape recorder.

Vince Briel  recently made a batch of replica ACI boards both as kits or pre-assembled. The board is similar to the original except using a more easily obtainable EEPROM chip rather than the ROM chips on the original design. I got one of the first batch of kits and assembled it.

ACI parts and manual ready to be assembled

I have a couple of tape recorders from that era. I have a GE model that I bought around 1980 and used with my Ohio Scientific Superboard computer for tape storage. I also recently picked up a Panasonic model from the 1970s or 1980s at a thrift store.  I don't the Panasonic RQ-2102 model that Apple originally recommended (amazingly it is still be manufactured and available).

GE Cassette Recorder circa 1980

Panasonic Recorder picked up a thrift shop

Panasonic RQ-2102 Recommended by Apple

The original Apple Cassette Interface manual is available on-line. The software is on-board the ACI and consists of only 256 bytes of code written by Woz. It is primitive and has no error detection. The later Apple II had a similar cassette interface circuit built into the motherboard (in models up to the Apple 2c). The Apple II used a similar storage scheme but added a checksum verification to detect errors.

Assembled ACI Replica

I haven't got mine to work reliably yet. I am working with some other kit builders to track down why. It is known to be tricky to get working. As well as a tape recorder I've been using my computer's sound card and an oscilloscope to debug it. I'll report more here on my progress toward getting it to work reliably. 

ACI Installed in the Replica 1

First Raspberry Pi Hardware Hacking

I did a little hardware hacking with the Raspberry Pi board.  It has some GPIO pins on a connector that can be used for hardware expansion. I bought two low cost kits from AdaFruit that make it easier to use the GPIO port.

The Pi Cobbler kit  provides a connector to the GPIO port and a ribbon cable that goes to a small breakout board that can plug into a solderless breadboard. It has all the pins nicely labelled. Below are a couple of pictures of my assembled board connected to a Raspberry Pi.

Pi Cobbler Plugged in to a mini Solderless Breadboard

Pi Cobbler Connected to Raspberry Pi Driving an LED

The Prototyping Pi Plate kit is a board which plugs onto the Raspberry Pi, similar to an Arduino Shield, that provides access to the GPIO pins via terminal blocks and provides a prototyping area for circuitry. I also purchased a mini solderless breadboard which can fit on the Pi Plate. A couple of pictures are shown below.

Pi Plate Mounted on Raspberry Pi

Driving an LED

Both kits went together easily in about 15 to 20 minutes with a little soldering. So far I have only had time to run simple programs to flash an LED driven by one of the GPIO lines (both shell script and C language versions). You can find lots of documentation and programming examples at this link.

I'm still waiting to receive my Gertboard, which is a more sophisticated input/output board for the Raspberry Pi that provides buffered input and output circuity and analog to digital and digital to analog converters. It also has an Arduino compatible chip on it.