There's no reason why a Walkman shouldn't work. It's what I use.
If you have a phone or laptop with a 3.5mm jack you could try playing a signal from that, e.g. using PlayUEF-fixed*:
https://beebstuff.uk/w/acorn/PlayUEF-fixed/
If this doesn't work, then there may be a hardware fault. The good news is that it can be fixed.
EDIT: if you type *MOTOR 1, does the cassette motor light switch on? If so the ULA is probably fine, and the finger of suspicion points at either the LM324 (known to fail sometimes), or maybe one of the capacitors.
* (Yes, I finally got so frustrated that the leader bug in PlayUEF was never fixed that I incorporated Sazhen86's fix and re-uploaded PlayUEF to my own site)
If you have a phone or laptop with a 3.5mm jack you could try playing a signal from that, e.g. using PlayUEF-fixed*:
https://beebstuff.uk/w/acorn/PlayUEF-fixed/
If this doesn't work, then there may be a hardware fault. The good news is that it can be fixed.
EDIT: if you type *MOTOR 1, does the cassette motor light switch on? If so the ULA is probably fine, and the finger of suspicion points at either the LM324 (known to fail sometimes), or maybe one of the capacitors.
* (Yes, I finally got so frustrated that the leader bug in PlayUEF was never fixed that I incorporated Sazhen86's fix and re-uploaded PlayUEF to my own site)
Statistics: Posted by Diminished — Sat Feb 14, 2026 7:51 am