It's time to let go of the last of the C16 oddities, i.e. the Mini-DIN-7 Datassette connector. While 1531 Datassettes are not that rare nor that expensive, I found some good reasons for replacing it with the C64-style edge connector:
- It's one less connector, you save at least a couple of bucks (OK, OK, I'm joking, but you'll agree it's not the most common connector on the market, at least).
- It's very easy to make an adapter, there's even an official one by Commodore around (and I will make my own).
- Anybody interested in LittleSixteen probably has a 1530 Datassette already.
- Those who don't can easily find one for cheeeeeap.
- Again, we are trying to beam the C16 into the future, which means we want to be able to build new C16s from scratch. That will require a case and C16-style cases are no longer in production. C64C-style ones still are though, even in C16 color (check out Retro Black)! Now that we have all C64-style connectors (except for the cartridge port, but that isn't too far off!) we can fit these perfectly!
So here we go:
Ideally, I would have liked to allow both connectors on the same board, but that turned out to be impossible.
Something else that turned out impossible was keeping the internal SD2IEC/Tapuino port that I had just added to the board, as the edge connector takes quite a bit of space on the board and makes routing all the required tracks impossible. This is less of a concern, anyway, now that we can use any non-C16-specialized SD2IEC and Tapuino.
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