Commodore CASSIOPEI, User Manual

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1.3 Speaker
The Cassiopei has a build in speaker, this is a very small and discrete speaker. It doesn't make a lot
of noise, but it does produce sufficient volume in a quit room to hear exactly what you need to hear.
The speaker outputs it's sound through the holes of the backside of the Cassiopei, it is a very simple
piezo-type speaker. This means that is has a very limited frequency range, so don't expect hearing
hifi sounds when playing back your audio cassette of Queen in your connected datasette. This
however is a thing that's impossible anyway because the datasette itself already digitizes the sounds
with it's build-in 1-bit digitizer. Meaning that analog audio will sound very limited and clipped no
matter what kind of speaker amplifier you connect to it.
The switch on the front of the Cassiopei has 2 positions, the text next to the switch is a bit difficult
to read. Therefore it is easier to refer to the upper or lower position instead of the 'W' or 'R'
position. To make a long story short, if the Cassiopei produces noises that you don't want to hear,
just flip the switch.
Upper position of the switch is called 'W'
When the switch is in this position the speaker will produce the sound coming from the Cassiopei
going into the CBM and the external datasette.
This means that if you want to playback a .TAP file and want to listen to it's sounds, then you must
set the switch in this position.
If you want to record a TAP file onto a real tape (by using a real datasette connected to the
Cassiopei's datasette connector) AND want to listen to it's progress, so that you know when to stop
the recording, then you must set the switch in this position.
Lower position of the switch is called 'R'
When the switch is in this position the speaker will produce the sound coming from the tape being
played by the real datasette connected to the Cassiopei's datasette connector. This may be of use
when you want to digitize a real tap (convert it into a .TAP file).
You also place the switch in this position when you don't want the Cassiopei's loading sounds.
Note for PET users:
The PET series 20XX and 30XX do not have an internal speaker. Therefore games make no sound.
Originally this wasn't a problem, but users soon figured out that they could create sound by
attaching an amplified speaker to the CB2 signal of the userport. This rumor quickly spread around
and some games started to utilize this possibillity. Eventually Commodore realized that adding a
simple speaker to their design, utilizing the CB2 signal, had a positive effect on the userbase. Not
only would games with sound run without problem on new and standard hardware. Programmers
already knew how to use it. And the beauty of it all is that it didn't require any difficult or
expensive parts to the design of the new PET series.
HOWEVER… the CB2 sound method had a little side effect, it seemed that the #2 cassetteport
(which is the internal cassetteport on all PET's without an integrated datasette) was affected in it's
functionality. This was caused by a problem in the 6522 VIA chip. In other words, cassette didn't
work when sound was made. This however, wasn't a big problem. Just turn off sound before
starting to work with tape and nobody will ever notice that there is a problem. But the Cassiopei,
2019-10-27 Page 7 of 76 CASSIOPEI v2.0