Watching these videos just makes me want to pop over to Robin's place for a cup of tea and a bout of gaming. But then I remember I live in Europe and Robin doesn't know me.
I did that once but he burst into the kitchen, screamed "WHO ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE HOW DID YOU GET IN IT'S THREE IN THE MORNING IS THAT MY TEA!?!?" and called the police.
Awesome video. Just to answer some of the people here; Bob Yannes, the creator of the VICII chip for the C64, said himself that colours differ from C64 to C64 because of the different tolerances in the chips, Chroma and Luma saturation, and so on. So, there is NO 'official' perfect colour saturation for the C64. I myself still remember different looks among the machines my friends and I had. I won't even go into how different even SID chips from the same serial number machines sounded, let along earlier and later variants of C64s. Then you have each seperate Monitor/TV looking slightly different to each other. Then you have PAL/NTSC...the way electronics were made back then, perhaps even the weather affected it!
I stumbled upon your video and 8 bit guy on the C64 and boy does this take me back to my childhood and for years wanting to fire up my original on modern televisions. I'm in the UK and started with a ZX81 before a VIC 20 but never had the original C64 so this is also a childhood dream and blast from the past. Thankyou for covering this on UA-cam and on the back of this I have ordered one in the UK. Now I just have to visit my parents and go through all my childhood stuff from the 1980s to get all the old manuals and magazines :) Keep up the good work
I can still remember the smell of the c64 my friend got in 1983 when we were 9 years old. It was the best thing I had ever seen and smelled. Luckily my family got one a few months later. The floppy disks also had a really specific smell when we got a 1541.
That's a really sweet system! I loved watching GEOS draw the screen. :) I miss the C64 days, they were such a blast. I used to amaze people who never seen one back then at what it could do, especially the sound out of it.
I have just recently added a Commodore 64 to my Console Collection. I find these videos very informative, and help me understand the basics of this machine.
Re: TED and PET emulation, I think the keyboard situation could be sort of over come if they allows you to plug in a USB keyboard. My TheVIC20 only came out of its box once as i have real VIC,64 and +4, I do like it but I love the real thing(s) more. Thank you Robin, you youtubes often inspire me,
See it is a MICRO computer made for the average user. You didn't need to know much to operate it just basic loading commands or if you have the hard drive skip that all together which is what we did. It booted into BASIC and you could program right away or run something. Commodore was for the power of the people and insanely cheap compared to it's competitors the IBM and Apple II I believe it was.
Comomdore offered a lot of fun educational opportunities compared to even the IBM or PC and especially the NES which was in no way educational. The few educational titles it had were CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!
It's an awesome thing, I have a 3 metre HDMI connected to my bedroom tv and a 5 mtr one in the lounge room. Because all the games load from a usb it's so much more portable than an original one with a disk drive.
C64 reborn! wow! i never had it, i had the Vic20, and then jumped to the C128, nice little game you wrote for the V20! -- this new one is not available here in sweden, not yet anyway, i have to think about it! - i am afraid i will be totally "lost in space" if i get it though! lol! - thanks for nice demo, Levi
Great video, Robin. Thanks for all the exploration of the VIC-20 mode. I suspect that enabling an REU mode on the C64 will become standard in the future, as it seems that the system can handle it just fine. Now if they just enable 1351 Mouse mode that would make a really useful GEOS machine!
VIC SPLATFORM - Sprites by Vanja UTNE ! - I love the work of VANJA/Mermaid. Her new comic book "GROK & GROK part 2" is brilliant! I used to speak with her lots.
Great video. And thanks for creating the boot program on the Vic configured disks, saves that unpleasant error. Hopefully a future firmware update will give us a menu to set the default memory configuration to use if the flags are absent or not used.
I love those classic "command line hacks" you do. Could you make a video on just those? For us simple folk that bought a C64 to catch up on their technical skills after 35 years? I wanna impress my friends from back in the day who knew some of those. They impressed me with magic tricks on the C64 when I was 15, now I'm 50 and I wanna impress them. Exploring the inner workings of the C64 with _'poke'_ and _'sys'_ commands is fascinating! I'd also kill for a video explaining how that GUI OS version worked back in the day (one needed an expansion cart? or a hard disk?) and how to get it working on the C64 Full Size with a cart image.
The only thing I would have liked extra to see on this machine, would have been a daughter board inside to hook up original peripherals and cartriges. So it literally could substitute for a C64 even if it is emulated.
I keep one of these in the living room hooked up to a big LCD TV for on-the-couch playing, but about 100% of the time I use the one hooked up to a CRT in the spare room. Everything just looks so much nicer. I tried selling it off due to not seeing much use but Facebook Marketplace tagged it as an illegal streaming device so vOv
I got mine here in Denmark, and I FREAKING love it... DAmn its good to be back at the C64. I sold the original in the days, so I could buy an Amiga 500.. TheC64 cost me around $149
Not only should they use an original-ish box design for the North American release, but for extra authenticity they should make some machines with the orange-ish function keys. ;)
Speaking of SYS 64738 (11:18), I recently found out about a similar command SYS 64760 which does an instant reset instead of the 1 to 2 second reset. If you haven’t talked about that one before, could you cover it in a future video?
Hey, that's cool!!.... Watching the demo at the end with them side by side creates a 3D effect when you train your eyes to meld them into one.... Stereoscopic 3D!! :)
Forgot to ask, does TheC64 support a USB keyboard? If so, that could help it support C128 and PET mode. I modded a PC keyboard with C64 decals for the purpose of using Vice, so someone wanting a C128 or PET keyboard could do something similar.
Great video! I like the comparison at the end of the Vid. The real 64 looks much more colorful. And oh the emulated SID needs a bit of tweaking. It would be nice if they added some flags for the SID, IE for 8580 and 6581, etc.
In my experience, you don't have to add _J1J2. Joysticks are getting assigned when the mounted medium changes. So if you go into file browser and mount an empty disc and leave the media access dialog, the joystick with which you do this gets port 2, the other gets port 1. If you access the media access dialog, unmount and leave the dialog, the same. Only if you change the medium to the same like before being in that dialog, nothing gets reassigned (like unmounting and remounting the same image without leaving the dialog in between). I did lots of tests concerning this topic. If you attach a third joystick, things get really complicated until reboot of TheC64 :-) Edit: _J1 or _J2 just state which port gets assigned to the joystick changing the media (defaults to port 2 like said above). With _J1 its the other way around.
Yes I think you are correct. Autostart a d64 with the nr 2 button on thec64 joystick makes that stick port 2, however mounting just by using thec64 keyboard (B) seems to mess things up, making thec64 joystick still mandatory to use. I have tested with 1 thec64 joystick and 1 speedlink competition pro. This is all when using Basic which is my preferred "retro" choice over the carousel. Hope they'll fix that in an upcoming firmware.
TheC64 is a really good piece of kit. It's a great way to do C64 Development work without having to stress your older hardware such as disk drives. You can tell the engineers and programmers behind this are actual fans of the real Commodore 64. I look forward to what the future holds for this machine. Not just from the manufacturer, but also the community. I would definitely love to see a software update, or perhaps even hardware expansion that make most USB peripherals compatible, including floppy drives, mice, keyboards and the like.
Wow, that whole disk-mount-tag thing seems really cumbersome. It's nice that they let you make the options persistent in some way but why didn't they just provide a menu for selecting the joystick options and then adding metadata to the end of the disk image or whatever? That's a shame about the lack of 1351 emulation but hopefully they'll add that at some point, as well as improving the UX around joystick stuff. I also understand the audio latency is still a bit high - not terrible, but could still be improved a bit.
I guess they didn't want to make "*.pif" files mistake again ;). Flags are for user supplied files, maybe there is some kind of licensing limitation that they couldn't overcome? Like... "Ok, let users play their files but do it to look like side effect"
That trick of using the filename for configuration really seems accomodating. Not only compared to Vice, but for example compared to WinUAE with it's super horrible, confusing configuration split in multiple parts, that no one knows how they seperate and go together.
I ordered one from Amazon Germany and just got my shipping notification. I'm thinking a week or so I should have one in the US. $121 us dollars isn't too bad.
Thank you very much! I was a former happy C64 kid and now I'm a happy new owner of TheC64 Maxi and I really appreciate your videos, especially the TMP assembler bits for lazy people ;-). A question that came into my mind very quickly is: may I be able to communicate with my Arduino or my RaspberryPi? This would bring together my old and new worlds...! I just can't think of an easy way to do it, perhaps over RS-232 port 2 on the commodore side and Serial interface on the Arduino or Raspberry side, i.e. just with an USB cable? Maybe you have an idea about this? Thank again!!
I didn't like the concept of the mini and I swore that I wasn't going to get the maxi either. Now I have both... take a wild guess who changed my mind 🙄
this was a great video. I have a question.I know you mentioned you worked on the plug and play which is one of the most awesome plug-and-plays I own by the way. where can I get those secret mini games that were built into the plug and play commodore? you were playing one of them on your video the game with the smiley that was bouncing around. I remember there being a cliff diving game in a few others.
Hi Robin, your videos are refreshing in their detail (they're SO informative), complemented by your warm, welcoming narrative presence. A question, are the SIMONS BASIC commands faithfully replicated on TheC64, when this cartridge image is loaded?
Yeah the killer function for the next firmware update would have to be USB network adapter support where it provides ssh access (ssh and sftp) and local utilities for reading and writing disk image files (and others? tape? Cartridge?). And CX-Basic would just be amazing.
Between this and what The 8-Bit Guy said, this is way more up my alley than the mini version, especially since it has more than I wanted. Shame that, as of writing this, there's no known release date for the U.S.
seems to me if the price is the same for original hardware or The C64, I would chose original hardware. Mainly because there are emulators already for PC which can give you an 'enhanced' experience in using the original system (ie. emulating additional expensive/theoretical hardware/peripherals, savestates,etc), but there are some situations where you really cannot beat owning the actual official and original hardware.
Thanks for your coverage of TheC64 "Maxi". I'm very curious on your thoughts about the Commodore 64 (and variants) FPGA core provided as part of the MiSTer Project running on the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA SBC. The Commodore 8-bit platform is one of more than 100 FPGA "cores" freely available from the Mister Project. I'm not sure if the Commodore "core" is cycle-accurate or not but it should be more accurate than software-based emulators. I'm wondering how the FPGA Commodore recreation compares to the software-based emulation products.
I find the FPGA projects interesting and would review one if it showed up at my door someday, but I mainly just focus on the vintage hardware and occasionally software emulation when it suits.
Lots of comments about the difference between PAL and NTSC color. But in the demo at the end, both the real unit and "TheC64" are set to PAL, so their colors should be the same. But TheC64 has washed out colors. Is that because the video options are set to emulate scan lines? Can this be overridden and would that make the colors the same?
I'm in the UK, and have a 'The C64' that I got just before Christmas (I was lucky - most places had sold out!!). The examples of the demo running at the end are Not representative of one set to PAL running through a PAL TV. With mine, the 'classic' mode screen is just as blue/purple vibrant as the O/G 64 was, and running games, it's not in the slightest subdued or washed-out looking. It looks identical to the original PAL CBM64's that I used back in the early 80's (the optional scan-line emulator is actually pretty effective with this device as it's subtle, and doesn't 'dim/darken' the picture!). Maybe a capture card problem in the video that wasn't getting all the colour information properly as the capture card would be set natively for American NTSC output? Don't know.... but the genuine UK item, set to PAL, running on a PAL TV is every bit as colourful as the original CBM64 - and a lot sharper being upscaled to 720p.... And of course, for the most part of the video, showing the different features, you could see how good the colour was, and how vibrant it looked... the end 'demo' section of the video was not a good representation of the system - that was a technical issue on his part, not the 'The C64' console's part... ;-)
You can use the INT() function like A=INT(A) to truncate or A=INT(A + 0.5) to round to the nearest whole value, for example. You can also assign the value to an integer variable, like A%=A to truncate. Note that integer variables are only signed 16-bit so the maximum value they can hold is 32767. Also, A% is a distinct variable from A.
1:33 You might need to jump into a time machine and smell an original C64 when it was new. 3:20 How long does the original C64 take to boot to BASIC? 9:00 Does VICE emulate the 1351 mouse? 12:25 Can you do things like change the standard ROM to make the default cursor color white? 15:58 If I enter 0 POKEV,A:POKEV,.:GOTO ⏎ 10 V=36878:A=15:GOTO ⏎ on the NTSC VIC-20 in VICE, I get 246 Hz, since the VIC-I chip doesn't steal clock cycles from the processor. 33:19 The aspect ratio of each C64 display is about 1.5 instead of the standard 1.33. 37:47 The lyrics are seeming a little bit "copyrighted".
An original C64 takes slightly over 2 seconds to boot, mostly because of the RAM check that's done. Some common utility cartridges skip it, and so the boot is nearly instant. Yes, VICE emulates the 1351, it's something that can be toggled on and off. So likely TheC64 could implement it if they can provide a fairly universal mouse driver. I don't know of any way of changing the KERNAL/BASIC ROMs on TheC64, but I could probably customize a Fast Load or Super Snapshot cartridge image to change the default cursor colour. It's funny how fast the VIC-20 can seem compared to the C64. No bad lines gives a bit of a CPU boost, and then having way fewer bytes to shuffle around on screen makes some games run very fast. Of course, if a VIC-20 game needs smooth scrolling or to simulate smooth sprite movement, then it needs all the help it can get.
I mainly got TheC64 for the VIC-20 mode and I love it. Has anyone had any success in getting the Scott Adams Adventure cartridges to run. I load the .crt images and then type SYS 32592 but nothing happens. Any ideas?
I added a link in the description to 5 Scott Adams VIC-20 games in a .zip file, with the proper config flags set. Launch any of those, then SYS 32592 and you should be set. Also, I updated the Splatform download with the correct flags too, so it should launch fine now. Thanks for letting me know!
@@8_Bit Thank you, thank you, thank you. They work really well. I'm really happy with this thing. And I really enjoy your channel, very informative. One thing I forgot to ask: are there onscreen tape controls for saving game progress onto tape images? I created some blank tape images and can mount them (the C64 tries to load a program straight away instead of waiting. It would be better if it waited for a load command). But when playing an adventure game and I type "save game", I can't find any option to press play/record. I don't want to use save states as I would like to do it the original way (I understand that obviously this is emulation anyway but still want the experience). If there aren't any controls, what is the best way to submit a suggestion about having them added. Thanks again for your help. :)
@@8_Bit Thanks Robin. Using banks 2 and 3 was helpful and worked. The manual would would suggest you added banks incrementaly, which wasn't helpful to us uneducated...even though I owned a Vic20 back in 1983...
@@seank8489 As far as I know, there aren't any tape controls; that would be a great feature to be added. I suppose that game is hard-coded to save only to cassette, rather than disk? For suggesting features, I'd try either (or both?) the Retro Games contact form: retrogames.biz/contact and also starting a thread in the main TheC64 group on Facebook and seeing how many other people want it added.
Unless I'm mistaken, there's sadly still no solution from RGL to the REU problem on the VIC20 emulation. What I'd love to see is the Boot mode menu offer the different memory configs (Classic, Classic + 3k, Classic + 8k, Classic + Super Expander, etc.), or the ability to plug in virtual REU memory CARTRIDGES in the Media Access menu as we all did back in the day with real hardware. I want to be able to expand the memory and then read in my own programs off disk images created via ZoomFloppy. Currently, that doesn't seem to be possible.
I noticed you said something about using other USB devices like a mouse that didn't work. While that is true, if the device you are plugging in is recognized like a flash drive it will work with them. I tried this after watching Retro Recipes 1541 mini for theC64 using a USB 3.5 floppy. This sparked me to investigate if I could do the same with an old Iomega USB Zip Drive. I was able to find my old USB Zip Drive... it was in a box with 2 old Iomega Jaz SCSI drives and an old Parallel Zip drive!! Found a box of fifteen 100mb zip disks in a different box. Plugged it into a Win 10 machine and it recognized right of way it was a USB Zip drive. Stuck a disk into it and it spun up (forgot how loud these were). The disk was already formatted as FAT, so I formatted it again to clean the crap I had on the disk off and then copied some D64 images over to it. Turned theC64 Maxi on and then plugged the Zip drive in and waited about 10 seconds and it did show up like it was a flash drive. Loaded a couple games and they all worked. Why would you use a USB Zip drive instead of a flash drive you may ask... No reason other than just to see if you can!!!
it would be really cool to use a usb cd rom drive. then u can modify an old 1541 drive and put the cd rom drive in it. You could put all your roms on a cd.....that would be neat! If its possible i'm going to do it.
If I can ask a question. You provided vic 20 disk images with the memory expansions already loaded; is there any way the memory expander could be a virtual cartridge? The c64 maxi has problems loading multiple disk images in the disk drive and I found this really cool 'software' for the vic 20 that needs a 16kb expansion. I'm just getting started learning all things commodore, and am not well versed at Basic yet (I plan to change that if the world doesn't end). Love your videos by the way, been going through them as I teach myself basic.
It actually looks more accurate, at least on my pc monitor, the one on the left seems oversaturated (don't know if that's the capture card or what). 64 was never known for having vibrant colours
1 Hi Robin, enjoying your videos very much and trying to learn assembly language now too! I've followed the instructions for the REU hack various times and once I was able to see the ram expansion but other times I tried it for some reason it now shows 0k and the test program wont run from $c000. Not sure if I messed up the machine or something. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Looking forward to more videos on assembly language for both the VIC20 and the C64!!
As of firmware version 1.6.1 mouse emulation has been added, but I've not really tried it out because I don't have GEOS on my unit, though I may try and download it if I can. I have messed about a bit with GEOS on an original C64C.
Hi there Robin, It's now possible to press the "freeze" button of a cartridge, just like in Vice. So you can use a REU (via your trick), TMP and your beloved Action Replay cartridge! One has to change the emulator that The C64 uses by one made by the community. This can *BRICK* your The C64 if you do not do that right. 1. Download the so called "Project Carousel USB" (PCU) from this forum post: thec64community.online/thread/501/project-carousel-usb . 2. Extract the following file from that zip file: '/Carousel_Games/Options/Emulators/c64emu-pcu.rgl'. Copy it to a USB stick. 3. Delete the PCU zip file, you don't need it anymore. 4. Download the so called "X-Windows Mod" (XWM) from this forum post: thec64community.online/thread/487/thec64-windows-mod . 5. Extract its contents to the root of the USB stick and start The C64 (with this USB stick in it). 6. Do a "fake firmware update" to start The C64 with Linux (i.e. XWM). In The C64 do: "Options > Device settings > System information > Apply firmware update". This will NOT update your fw, it'll just restart your The C64 with Linux. 7. Backup the following file from The C64's NAND rootfs (it's the emulator): '/usr/lib/c64emu.rgl'. This is the part that can *brick* your The C64! 8. Delete the original 'c64emu.rgl', copy 'c64emu-pcu.rgl' from your USB stick to '/usr/lib/' and rename it to 'c64emu.rgl'. 9. Reboot The C64 into classic mode. Press "Control + /" for a nice Help screen. Press "Control + F" to freeze a cartridge. FAQ: Q: Why not use PCU to start The C64 with XWM? A: Because then all the files on NAND memory are in use. This means that the emulator file can't be overwritten.
In the head-to-head demo starting at 33:18, why were the colors from TheC64 so unsaturated? The pale colors of TheC64 look pitiful when compared to those from the real Commodore 64!
They are NOT in reality..... I'm in the UK and have a 'TheC64'.... this must be a problem with the capture equipment used (perhaps it can't decode PAL properly?) My C64 on my PAL TV is vibrant, colourful, and not at all grey/muted looking from that video capture. It looks just as I remember the original CBM64 looking on a PAL TV back in the 80's.
Watching these videos just makes me want to pop over to Robin's place for a cup of tea and a bout of gaming. But then I remember I live in Europe and Robin doesn't know me.
I did that once but he burst into the kitchen, screamed "WHO ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE HOW DID YOU GET IN IT'S THREE IN THE MORNING IS THAT MY TEA!?!?" and called the police.
Imagine if that Demo at the end of the video had been playing on the C64s in the shops in '82 when it first came out.
You're the Splatform guy! My brother and I are writing a c64 games guide for 1990 - 2010
Neat idea, so many undiscovered games from that middle era!
It's funny how many 5 number POKE codes you knew when you owned a C64 :D, like telephone numbers no one remembers nowadays :)
Awesome video.
Just to answer some of the people here; Bob Yannes, the creator of the VICII chip for the C64, said himself that colours differ from C64 to C64 because of the different tolerances in the chips, Chroma and Luma saturation, and so on. So, there is NO 'official' perfect colour saturation for the C64. I myself still remember different looks among the machines my friends and I had. I won't even go into how different even SID chips from the same serial number machines sounded, let along earlier and later variants of C64s.
Then you have each seperate Monitor/TV looking slightly different to each other. Then you have PAL/NTSC...the way electronics were made back then, perhaps even the weather affected it!
I stumbled upon your video and 8 bit guy on the C64 and boy does this take me back to my childhood and for years wanting to fire up my original on modern televisions. I'm in the UK and started with a ZX81 before a VIC 20 but never had the original C64 so this is also a childhood dream and blast from the past.
Thankyou for covering this on UA-cam and on the back of this I have ordered one in the UK.
Now I just have to visit my parents and go through all my childhood stuff from the 1980s to get all the old manuals and magazines :)
Keep up the good work
Did you get your C64 yet.
Thank you for the VIC RAM files! These will help when I finally receive my TheC64. Not many people covering the VIC-20 side. Much appreciated!
I could live a million life times and I’d never tire listening and learning from you.
You have a real gift. Thanks for sharing!
I can still remember the smell of the c64 my friend got in 1983 when we were 9 years old. It was the best thing I had ever seen and smelled. Luckily my family got one a few months later. The floppy disks also had a really specific smell when we got a 1541.
Ross2d-2 for me it’s the smell of the colecovision!
That's a really sweet system! I loved watching GEOS draw the screen. :) I miss the C64 days, they were such a blast. I used to amaze people who never seen one back then at what it could do, especially the sound out of it.
Demo starting at 33:17 is awesome.
I have just recently added a Commodore 64 to my Console Collection. I find these videos very informative, and help me understand the basics of this machine.
Re: TED and PET emulation, I think the keyboard situation could be sort of over come if they allows you to plug in a USB keyboard.
My TheVIC20 only came out of its box once as i have real VIC,64 and +4, I do like it but I love the real thing(s) more.
Thank you Robin, you youtubes often inspire me,
This looks like a solid option. The colour palette could use some tweaks anyways, as shown by the demo running on a real PAL Commodore.
See it is a MICRO computer made for the average user. You didn't need to know much to operate it just basic loading commands or if you have the hard drive skip that all together which is what we did. It booted into BASIC and you could program right away or run something. Commodore was for the power of the people and insanely cheap compared to it's competitors the IBM and Apple II I believe it was.
Comomdore offered a lot of fun educational opportunities compared to even the IBM or PC and especially the NES which was in no way educational. The few educational titles it had were CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!
Fascinating video. I was transfixed from start to finished.
I don't care what it takes, I'm getting this when it comes out in the USA!
It's an awesome thing, I have a 3 metre HDMI connected to my bedroom tv and a 5 mtr one in the lounge room. Because all the games load from a usb it's so much more portable than an original one with a disk drive.
Still isn't out in the USA. I got tired of waiting and just bought a mini instead.
@@maxxdahl6062 should have waited a tad longer. It's coming out November 5 in the US and is available for preorder on Amazon
@@cjallday1130plays Meh, more than 6 months. I'm good. lol
Ah, I see. Early column in the magazine. That article was for the VIC. Have to wait a couple months to get the Maxi
VIC-20 was awesome......
This was very helpful for me and my TheC64. Thank you very much - your channel is great! :-)
I think the scratchy sounds on The C64 sound more in fitting than the original 64! :)
25:18 I downloaded your little game "Splashform", and it is very cool and challenging. Nice job!
Super helpful video, as always, thank so much!
Very nice overview and demos. Thank you for sharing.
Your videos are extremely interesting and you know your stuff. Thank you Robin.
C64 reborn! wow! i never had it, i had the Vic20, and then jumped to the C128, nice little game you wrote for the V20! -- this new one is not available here in sweden, not yet anyway, i have to think about it! - i am afraid i will be totally "lost in space" if i get it though! lol! - thanks for nice demo, Levi
Great video, Robin. Thanks for all the exploration of the VIC-20 mode. I suspect that enabling an REU mode on the C64 will become standard in the future, as it seems that the system can handle it just fine. Now if they just enable 1351 Mouse mode that would make a really useful GEOS machine!
Nice video! And for the bit at the end, I would love it if they would use black plastic and new key caps and do a C16 with a Plus/4 mode in it.
VIC SPLATFORM - Sprites by Vanja UTNE ! - I love the work of VANJA/Mermaid. Her new comic book "GROK & GROK part 2" is brilliant! I used to speak with her lots.
Great video. And thanks for creating the boot program on the Vic configured disks, saves that unpleasant error. Hopefully a future firmware update will give us a menu to set the default memory configuration to use if the flags are absent or not used.
Another great video Robin, you continue to impress, keep them coming.
I love those classic "command line hacks" you do. Could you make a video on just those? For us simple folk that bought a C64 to catch up on their technical skills after 35 years? I wanna impress my friends from back in the day who knew some of those. They impressed me with magic tricks on the C64 when I was 15, now I'm 50 and I wanna impress them. Exploring the inner workings of the C64 with _'poke'_ and _'sys'_ commands is fascinating!
I'd also kill for a video explaining how that GUI OS version worked back in the day (one needed an expansion cart? or a hard disk?) and how to get it working on the C64 Full Size with a cart image.
Loving mine, been playing roms on it👌😊
roms only apply to CARTRIDGE images
I am loving your indices :-)
The only thing I would have liked extra to see on this machine, would have been a daughter board inside to hook up original peripherals and cartriges. So it literally could substitute for a C64 even if it is emulated.
0s boot time was the reason why I always missed my c64 when working on the pc.
Thank you for doing all of this!
I keep one of these in the living room hooked up to a big LCD TV for on-the-couch playing, but about 100% of the time I use the one hooked up to a CRT in the spare room. Everything just looks so much nicer. I tried selling it off due to not seeing much use but Facebook Marketplace tagged it as an illegal streaming device so vOv
thank you for the side by side demo comparison!
I bought one! It's arriving this Monday (3/22/2021)!
I got mine here in Denmark, and I FREAKING love it... DAmn its good to be back at the C64. I sold the original in the days, so I could buy an Amiga 500..
TheC64 cost me around $149
i order mine late October from Elgiganten, but i first got it a couple of days ago.
but at least i got it to a good price 599 Dkr :D
Those words at the end of the demo (to come up behind you again etc) are from 'Time' on Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' album.. Cool.
Not only should they use an original-ish box design for the North American release, but for extra authenticity they should make some machines with the orange-ish function keys. ;)
Speaking of SYS 64738 (11:18), I recently found out about a similar command SYS 64760 which does an instant reset instead of the 1 to 2 second reset. If you haven’t talked about that one before, could you cover it in a future video?
Hey, that's cool!!.... Watching the demo at the end with them side by side creates a 3D effect when you train your eyes to meld them into one.... Stereoscopic 3D!! :)
Great video again! The demo is amazing! Greetings and Happy New Year to all! Doc64!
If I had seen that demo back in the day, my mind would would have surely exploded! :)
Forgot to ask, does TheC64 support a USB keyboard? If so, that could help it support C128 and PET mode. I modded a PC keyboard with C64 decals for the purpose of using Vice, so someone wanting a C128 or PET keyboard could do something similar.
Cool.. I'm tempted to get this when it comes to "the states."
And we in Europe get TheVic20 by the time y'all get the TheC64 XD
Great video! I like the comparison at the end of the Vid. The real 64 looks much more colorful. And oh the emulated SID needs a bit of tweaking. It would be nice if they added some flags for the SID, IE for 8580 and 6581, etc.
In my experience, you don't have to add _J1J2. Joysticks are getting assigned when the mounted medium changes. So if you go into file browser and mount an empty disc and leave the media access dialog, the joystick with which you do this gets port 2, the other gets port 1. If you access the media access dialog, unmount and leave the dialog, the same. Only if you change the medium to the same like before being in that dialog, nothing gets reassigned (like unmounting and remounting the same image without leaving the dialog in between). I did lots of tests concerning this topic. If you attach a third joystick, things get really complicated until reboot of TheC64 :-) Edit: _J1 or _J2 just state which port gets assigned to the joystick changing the media (defaults to port 2 like said above). With _J1 its the other way around.
Yes I think you are correct. Autostart a d64 with the nr 2 button on thec64 joystick makes that stick port 2, however mounting just by using thec64 keyboard (B) seems to mess things up, making thec64 joystick still mandatory to use. I have tested with 1 thec64 joystick and 1 speedlink competition pro. This is all when using Basic which is my preferred "retro" choice over the carousel. Hope they'll fix that in an upcoming firmware.
Awesome in depth review. Thanks for sharing. Best wishes for the new year from your fans in the UK.
TheC64 is a really good piece of kit. It's a great way to do C64 Development work without having to stress your older hardware such as disk drives. You can tell the engineers and programmers behind this are actual fans of the real Commodore 64.
I look forward to what the future holds for this machine. Not just from the manufacturer, but also the community. I would definitely love to see a software update, or perhaps even hardware expansion that make most USB peripherals compatible, including floppy drives, mice, keyboards and the like.
Would be cool if they add MegaCart rom support for the VIC-20.
Wow, that whole disk-mount-tag thing seems really cumbersome. It's nice that they let you make the options persistent in some way but why didn't they just provide a menu for selecting the joystick options and then adding metadata to the end of the disk image or whatever?
That's a shame about the lack of 1351 emulation but hopefully they'll add that at some point, as well as improving the UX around joystick stuff. I also understand the audio latency is still a bit high - not terrible, but could still be improved a bit.
I guess they didn't want to make "*.pif" files mistake again ;). Flags are for user supplied files, maybe there is some kind of licensing limitation that they couldn't overcome? Like... "Ok, let users play their files but do it to look like side effect"
To correct you, it was over 6 MONTHS to get the MINI in USA retailers!
Great couple videos, really excellent. I’m going to have to get one I think
These videos are amazing. I can't wait to find a NA supplier for TheC64
Your game looks amazing, very impressive.
Late November 2020. I got mine from Amazon in Austin, TX last week.
Another excellent video. Thanks!
That trick of using the filename for configuration really seems accomodating. Not only compared to Vice, but for example compared to WinUAE with it's super horrible, confusing configuration split in multiple parts, that no one knows how they seperate and go together.
The wrong result of powers is because of floating point arithmetic. X^Y does EXP(Y*LOG(X)) which leads to rounding errors.
I'd be happy if they added printer support at least. Maybe some way to connect 2 of them together for playing games.
I ordered one from Amazon Germany and just got my shipping notification. I'm thinking a week or so I should have one in the US. $121 us dollars isn't too bad.
you still never peeled the plastic off the fire buttons. My OCD is going nuts!!! lol
It would be so cool with a TheC128 Maxi 👻
And a “max speed” option would make theC64 much more fun to play with.
Imagine a 6510 running at 5GHz !!!
Imagine emulating a 6510 at 5GHz on a 1.5GHz Rockchip.
Okurka - LOL. I was imagining a *real* 6510 @ 5GHz, made on a 5 nm process. The W65C816S would be even more fun.
It really is impressive, and that VIC-20 mode is an awesome extra.
This was awesome! Thanks for the video. Can't wait until this comes out in the USA.
Thank you very much! I was a former happy C64 kid and now I'm a happy new owner of TheC64 Maxi and I really appreciate your videos, especially the TMP assembler bits for lazy people ;-). A question that came into my mind very quickly is: may I be able to communicate with my Arduino or my RaspberryPi? This would bring together my old and new worlds...! I just can't think of an easy way to do it, perhaps over RS-232 port 2 on the commodore side and Serial interface on the Arduino or Raspberry side, i.e. just with an USB cable? Maybe you have an idea about this? Thank again!!
Looking forward to the MEGA65 if it ever arrives. The C64 Maxi sold out upon the N.A. release,
I didn't like the concept of the mini and I swore that I wasn't going to get the maxi either. Now I have both... take a wild guess who changed my mind 🙄
this was a great video. I have a question.I know you mentioned you worked on the plug and play which is one of the most awesome plug-and-plays I own by the way. where can I get those secret mini games that were built into the plug and play commodore? you were playing one of them on your video the game with the smiley that was bouncing around. I remember there being a cliff diving game in a few others.
Splatform: csdb.dk/release/?id=7183
Cliff Diving: csdb.dk/release/?id=7940
Minima Reloaded: csdb.dk/release/?id=159952
Tinyrinth: csdb.dk/release/?id=7949
Astrostorm: csdb.dk/release/?id=6516
dWCave: csdb.dk/release/?id=7947
I hope I remembered them all! :)
@@8_Bit Wow! Thank you so much!
Hi Robin, your videos are refreshing in their detail (they're SO informative), complemented by your warm, welcoming narrative presence. A question, are the SIMONS BASIC commands faithfully replicated on TheC64, when this cartridge image is loaded?
Anyone remember the Unix-like shell for the C64/C128 (Ace64/128)? Just noticed that author is one of the channel's Patreon supporters :)
Yeah the killer function for the next firmware update would have to be USB network adapter support where it provides ssh access (ssh and sftp) and local utilities for reading and writing disk image files (and others? tape? Cartridge?). And CX-Basic would just be amazing.
Between this and what The 8-Bit Guy said, this is way more up my alley than the mini version, especially since it has more than I wanted. Shame that, as of writing this, there's no known release date for the U.S.
seems to me if the price is the same for original hardware or The C64, I would chose original hardware. Mainly because there are emulators already for PC which can give you an 'enhanced' experience in using the original system (ie. emulating additional expensive/theoretical hardware/peripherals, savestates,etc), but there are some situations where you really cannot beat owning the actual official and original hardware.
Real C64 ports on this thing would be the best case scenario. Still, it seems to be a nice and well thought out system.
Thanks for your coverage of TheC64 "Maxi". I'm very curious on your thoughts about the Commodore 64 (and variants) FPGA core provided as part of the MiSTer Project running on the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA SBC. The Commodore 8-bit platform is one of more than 100 FPGA "cores" freely available from the Mister Project. I'm not sure if the Commodore "core" is cycle-accurate or not but it should be more accurate than software-based emulators. I'm wondering how the FPGA Commodore recreation compares to the software-based emulation products.
I find the FPGA projects interesting and would review one if it showed up at my door someday, but I mainly just focus on the vintage hardware and occasionally software emulation when it suits.
Lots of comments about the difference between PAL and NTSC color. But in the demo at the end, both the real unit and "TheC64" are set to PAL, so their colors should be the same. But TheC64 has washed out colors. Is that because the video options are set to emulate scan lines? Can this be overridden and would that make the colors the same?
I'm in the UK, and have a 'The C64' that I got just before Christmas (I was lucky - most places had sold out!!). The examples of the demo running at the end are Not representative of one set to PAL running through a PAL TV. With mine, the 'classic' mode screen is just as blue/purple vibrant as the O/G 64 was, and running games, it's not in the slightest subdued or washed-out looking. It looks identical to the original PAL CBM64's that I used back in the early 80's (the optional scan-line emulator is actually pretty effective with this device as it's subtle, and doesn't 'dim/darken' the picture!).
Maybe a capture card problem in the video that wasn't getting all the colour information properly as the capture card would be set natively for American NTSC output? Don't know.... but the genuine UK item, set to PAL, running on a PAL TV is every bit as colourful as the original CBM64 - and a lot sharper being upscaled to 720p....
And of course, for the most part of the video, showing the different features, you could see how good the colour was, and how vibrant it looked... the end 'demo' section of the video was not a good representation of the system - that was a technical issue on his part, not the 'The C64' console's part... ;-)
Fact checking :52. According to Bedford Level Experiment this event occurred Christmas of 1983.
Well spotted. "Commodore 64 Christmas" is a rare instance of a fictional BLE song. Another BLE song, "History (Commodore 64)", tells the true story.
I'm trying to round off or truncate a float in Basic. Possibly turn it into an Int. Thanks for your great videos.
You can use the INT() function like A=INT(A) to truncate or A=INT(A + 0.5) to round to the nearest whole value, for example. You can also assign the value to an integer variable, like A%=A to truncate. Note that integer variables are only signed 16-bit so the maximum value they can hold is 32767. Also, A% is a distinct variable from A.
@@8_Bit I'm trying to truncate a float like (8.123456) to (8.12). Is this possible?
@@Larry-AK0Z Yes, just do something like: A=INT(A*100)/100
Try powering it on with 2 joysticks plugged in from the start and see if it will then recognize them both.
I REALLY LOVE C64 👍🥂🎩
The Amiga 500 Mini mouse does work with THEC64 from what I've seen.
fingers crossed for a re released
1:33 You might need to jump into a time machine and smell an original C64
when it was new.
3:20 How long does the original C64 take to boot to BASIC?
9:00 Does VICE emulate the 1351 mouse?
12:25 Can you do things like change the standard ROM to make the default cursor color white?
15:58 If I enter 0 POKEV,A:POKEV,.:GOTO ⏎ 10 V=36878:A=15:GOTO ⏎ on the NTSC VIC-20 in VICE, I get 246 Hz, since the VIC-I chip doesn't steal clock cycles from the processor.
33:19 The aspect ratio of each C64 display is about 1.5 instead of the standard 1.33.
37:47 The lyrics are seeming a little bit "copyrighted".
An original C64 takes slightly over 2 seconds to boot, mostly because of the RAM check that's done. Some common utility cartridges skip it, and so the boot is nearly instant.
Yes, VICE emulates the 1351, it's something that can be toggled on and off. So likely TheC64 could implement it if they can provide a fairly universal mouse driver.
I don't know of any way of changing the KERNAL/BASIC ROMs on TheC64, but I could probably customize a Fast Load or Super Snapshot cartridge image to change the default cursor colour.
It's funny how fast the VIC-20 can seem compared to the C64. No bad lines gives a bit of a CPU boost, and then having way fewer bytes to shuffle around on screen makes some games run very fast. Of course, if a VIC-20 game needs smooth scrolling or to simulate smooth sprite movement, then it needs all the help it can get.
I mainly got TheC64 for the VIC-20 mode and I love it.
Has anyone had any success in getting the Scott Adams Adventure cartridges to run. I load the .crt images and then type SYS 32592 but nothing happens. Any ideas?
I'd like to know this too. Tried various flags with no joy. Also can't get Splatform to run either.
I added a link in the description to 5 Scott Adams VIC-20 games in a .zip file, with the proper config flags set. Launch any of those, then SYS 32592 and you should be set. Also, I updated the Splatform download with the correct flags too, so it should launch fine now. Thanks for letting me know!
@@8_Bit Thank you, thank you, thank you. They work really well. I'm really happy with this thing. And I really enjoy your channel, very informative.
One thing I forgot to ask: are there onscreen tape controls for saving game progress onto tape images? I created some blank tape images and can mount them (the C64 tries to load a program straight away instead of waiting. It would be better if it waited for a load command). But when playing an adventure game and I type "save game", I can't find any option to press play/record. I don't want to use save states as I would like to do it the original way (I understand that obviously this is emulation anyway but still want the experience).
If there aren't any controls, what is the best way to submit a suggestion about having them added. Thanks again for your help. :)
@@8_Bit Thanks Robin. Using banks 2 and 3 was helpful and worked. The manual would would suggest you added banks incrementaly, which wasn't helpful to us uneducated...even though I owned a Vic20 back in 1983...
@@seank8489 As far as I know, there aren't any tape controls; that would be a great feature to be added. I suppose that game is hard-coded to save only to cassette, rather than disk? For suggesting features, I'd try either (or both?) the Retro Games contact form: retrogames.biz/contact and also starting a thread in the main TheC64 group on Facebook and seeing how many other people want it added.
Unless I'm mistaken, there's sadly still no solution from RGL to the REU problem on the VIC20 emulation. What I'd love to see is the Boot mode menu offer the different memory configs (Classic, Classic + 3k, Classic + 8k, Classic + Super Expander, etc.), or the ability to plug in virtual REU memory CARTRIDGES in the Media Access menu as we all did back in the day with real hardware. I want to be able to expand the memory and then read in my own programs off disk images created via ZoomFloppy. Currently, that doesn't seem to be possible.
I noticed you said something about using other USB devices like a mouse that didn't work. While that is true, if the device you are plugging in is recognized like a flash drive it will work with them. I tried this after watching Retro Recipes 1541 mini for theC64 using a USB 3.5 floppy. This sparked me to investigate if I could do the same with an old Iomega USB Zip Drive. I was able to find my old USB Zip Drive... it was in a box with 2 old Iomega Jaz SCSI drives and an old Parallel Zip drive!! Found a box of fifteen 100mb zip disks in a different box. Plugged it into a Win 10 machine and it recognized right of way it was a USB Zip drive. Stuck a disk into it and it spun up (forgot how loud these were). The disk was already formatted as FAT, so I formatted it again to clean the crap I had on the disk off and then copied some D64 images over to it. Turned theC64 Maxi on and then plugged the Zip drive in and waited about 10 seconds and it did show up like it was a flash drive. Loaded a couple games and they all worked. Why would you use a USB Zip drive instead of a flash drive you may ask... No reason other than just to see if you can!!!
it would be really cool to use a usb cd rom drive. then u can modify an old 1541 drive and put the cd rom drive in it. You could put all your roms on a cd.....that would be neat! If its possible i'm going to do it.
oh man, that microswitched joystick makes a TON of difference!
If I can ask a question. You provided vic 20 disk images with the memory expansions already loaded; is there any way the memory expander could be a virtual cartridge? The c64 maxi has problems loading multiple disk images in the disk drive and I found this really cool 'software' for the vic 20 that needs a 16kb expansion. I'm just getting started learning all things commodore, and am not well versed at Basic yet (I plan to change that if the world doesn't end).
Love your videos by the way, been going through them as I teach myself basic.
The colors on TheC64 are so washed out compared to the original hardware, I didn't expect that. Is it the same in NSTC? Great video!!
It actually looks more accurate, at least on my pc monitor, the one on the left seems oversaturated (don't know if that's the capture card or what). 64 was never known for having vibrant colours
@@googleboughtmee That's true, it really surprised me I had to double check
There were a lot of C64 models in different colors. This is much closer to the C64 colors on some European models
1
Hi Robin, enjoying your videos very much and trying to learn assembly language now too! I've followed the instructions for the REU hack various times and once I was able to see the ram expansion but other times I tried it for some reason it now shows 0k and the test program wont run from $c000. Not sure if I messed up the machine or something. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Looking forward to more videos on assembly language for both the VIC20 and the C64!!
Not gonna lie..I'd almost buy this for the VIC20 mode alone..that is if you can play VIC20 games on it
As of firmware version 1.6.1 mouse emulation has been added, but I've not really tried it out because I don't have GEOS on my unit, though I may try and download it if I can. I have messed about a bit with GEOS on an original C64C.
Hi there Robin,
It's now possible to press the "freeze" button of a cartridge, just like in Vice. So you can use a REU (via your trick), TMP and your beloved Action Replay cartridge! One has to change the emulator that The C64 uses by one made by the community. This can *BRICK* your The C64 if you do not do that right.
1. Download the so called "Project Carousel USB" (PCU) from this forum post: thec64community.online/thread/501/project-carousel-usb .
2. Extract the following file from that zip file: '/Carousel_Games/Options/Emulators/c64emu-pcu.rgl'. Copy it to a USB stick.
3. Delete the PCU zip file, you don't need it anymore.
4. Download the so called "X-Windows Mod" (XWM) from this forum post: thec64community.online/thread/487/thec64-windows-mod .
5. Extract its contents to the root of the USB stick and start The C64 (with this USB stick in it).
6. Do a "fake firmware update" to start The C64 with Linux (i.e. XWM). In The C64 do: "Options > Device settings > System information > Apply firmware update". This will NOT update your fw, it'll just restart your The C64 with Linux.
7. Backup the following file from The C64's NAND rootfs (it's the emulator): '/usr/lib/c64emu.rgl'. This is the part that can *brick* your The C64!
8. Delete the original 'c64emu.rgl', copy 'c64emu-pcu.rgl' from your USB stick to '/usr/lib/' and rename it to 'c64emu.rgl'.
9. Reboot The C64 into classic mode. Press "Control + /" for a nice Help screen. Press "Control + F" to freeze a cartridge.
FAQ:
Q: Why not use PCU to start The C64 with XWM?
A: Because then all the files on NAND memory are in use. This means that the emulator file can't be overwritten.
Colours on the pal c64 real were allways nicer then ntsc i think we all know that
Will they ever do a C128 mode?
I doubt it due to the fact that the 128 has a numeric keypad. Maybe if you used a USB keyboard in order to use the mode...
In the head-to-head demo starting at 33:18, why were the colors from TheC64 so unsaturated?
The pale colors of TheC64 look pitiful when compared to those from the real Commodore 64!
They are NOT in reality..... I'm in the UK and have a 'TheC64'.... this must be a problem with the capture equipment used (perhaps it can't decode PAL properly?) My C64 on my PAL TV is vibrant, colourful, and not at all grey/muted looking from that video capture.
It looks just as I remember the original CBM64 looking on a PAL TV back in the 80's.