commodore64 breadbin help

Hi guys,
i know this isn’t amiga related but just wondered if you could help me. I just got my Commodre 64 breadbins out of the garage and cant believe they still work. I have well over 200 games on tapes. Is there a way of getting the data onto my PC and vice versa, or to protect them am i going to have to pay the kids to make tape to tape back ups of everything?
Any advice or a poke in the right direction is appreciated.
Cheers
\pz
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I believe there is a way to stream the contents of a tape via a serial cable between the C64 and PC to an imagefile on the PC, or something like that. But I never looked into it. Images of C64 tapes do exist(called .TAP or .T64) and are supported by emulators, so there is definitely a way to do it.

Had a quick look around and found a tool called mtap that'll do the job. However it requires that you make a special cable for connecting the C64 to the PC, or get a special adapter for connecting the C64's tape reader directly to the PC. Hope that helps. If not I'm sure there are more applications/solutions out there.
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ok cheers i will look into it

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You could also try to either buy a CF to C64 device or try making one. I've put links to them in another thread I just can't remember it at the moment. When I find it I'll post it on here.
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thanx matey. one breadbin has just died and just gives me different coloured screens. the other is working but rf modulation is very poor, looks like its going to be a hatchet job. add to that all five of my data tape players have failed in the last hour

they have all ground to a halt
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If your C64 tapes and disks are of commercial games and software, then you can legally download image files of the software and use them on your PC with emulators like Vice. Have a look at http://planetemu.net/ for an extensive collection.
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O.k. These are the C64 CF/IDE adapters I can find at the moment.
IDE64
Ultimate1541
MMC Replay

Individual Computers are also working on a Flicker Fixer type product for the C64.
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If you feel like going completely mad then you could always boost your C64 to have a SuperCPU operating at 20MHz with 16MB RAM. Go here for more information.
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I used an XE1541 cable which works perfectly and isn't expensive either. If you manage to find a schematic you can even build one yourself, it's not that tough. Although you have to use Starcommander to copy files, and that is a DOS shell, thus not running under Windows. You can find info about the cable at the Starcommander site here.

The cable is connected from the 1541 floppy serial port to the PC parallel port.

Don't get an XM1541 or a XA1541 though, because I read many reports that they're not working flawlessly.

Now I'm of course using my Catweasel MkIV to do this, works faster and is also easier. Only thing is, that the Catweasel can only write/read d64 files, so only disk images. Starcommander can handle any single other format as t64, prg, p00...
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