Coming right up!

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]The guy I bought it from makes new C64 power supplies. They require two spots on a power strip, but I'm fine with that.[/quote]

Huh, interesting. Got a link to these new PSUs?

Yeah, I thought that going the eBay route might be a disaster, personally. I have difficulties getting things shipped to my house and I didn't want to bother with trying to get eBay and PayPal to make things right if it did not arrive. The guy I bought it from makes new C64 power supplies. They require two spots on a power strip, but I'm fine with that.

I agree for the most part, TDarcos. The Commodore 64 was actually not my first computer, but a friend of mine introduced me to it around the time I played Ultima 5 on an "IBM Compatible" computer at another friends house. Always wanted a C64 mainly for the games I had never played but mom wasn't having any of that. I couldn't even convince her an Amiga 500 for 249$ near the end of their lifespan was a good deal. Our first computer ended up being a Packard Bell "IBM Compatible" (which ended up being for the best). I didn't get a C64 until a few years ago when Flack gave me a spare!

The first computer I ever messed with at a very young age was a TRS-80 at a neighbors house. I really don't have any desire to revisit the ol' Trash 80. The 2nd computer which I actually used a lot was Apple II. We had a computer lab in elementary with a bunch of Apples we'd mainly use to play Number Munchers on. While I never did get an Apple II for nostalgic purposes, I do still fire up an Apple II emulator once in a while and play the Munchers games, Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, and a couple of others on occasion.

Icecreamjonsey, I ended up getting an original replacement PSU for my C64 off Ebay for a good price and it has worked well. The one that was originally given to me worked, but it buzzed like a hornet nest and I feared it was gonna fry something soon.

Since you've opened this thread I will both pose a question and answer it.

The question is, "Why bother with the C64 or old C64 games, they are old technology - what, 25 years - the Comodore is a slow machine, you could probably run any software for it in emulation on a Raspberry Pi faster than the real hardware, and is there really anything so amazing for it that nobody bothered porting or cloning?"

And I'll answer that.

There is no greater machine than your first machine. It was how you viewed the world and what you would use as a bench mark in solving any problem. For me, it was the PDP-11/03 micro running RT-11 and MU-BASIC, and possibly the 11/70 mini running RSTS/E and Basic Plus. Later I would expand that further to the Univac 90/60 and IBM 370 mainframes, (although I never liked almost all software IBM developed), You can run almost all of these in software emulation on a 3ghz multicore PC, now, faster than the original hardware, but there was something about the actual machine that made it magic.

Plus all of these were text interface only, which today, is still the arcane province of a wizard. There are probably millions of Windows users who have never even once had to understand how to use a command-line application.

And despite their age we still love them.

I do have a C64 you gave me! It lacks a power supply, however. It looked like it took the same connector as the power supply to my Atari 800, so I just plugged it in and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened, however.

So I assume I need one of those, which is fine, I am going to get cracking on that. I have an unknown amount of time before the flash drive shows up, which should be enough to get a power supply for it.

If you don't have a 64 yet, let me throw this at you -- the guy who made the 1541 Ultimate is about to start making a C64 Ultimate, which is a brand new C64 motherboard with old ports and new (like USB and HDMI), plus it'll have the 1541 Ultimate built in! I think it's going to sell for around $200 and you would need a donor C64 to swap it in, but it sounds pretty amazing.

This makes my fingers itch to buy a Commodore 64 and get one.

If I got one I'd name it Schmidlap


THE
1966
AARDVARK

I'm excited for my printer!

And then you wait, possibly for months.

I'm not knocking the guy at all (literally, it's just a single guy), but the time between paying for one and getting one is quite the wait. Even after it ships, which could be a while, it'll be another 4-6 weeks.

The Ultimate 2+ (the current version) is literally (to date) the single greatest thing you could purchase to add to a vintage Commodore computer. Not only is it 99.99% compatible with everything released... you can play .SID files from the menu, you can set it up to emulate stereo SID chips... heck, it even emulates a printer! Print in any program and it'll save it to your SD card as a PDF! It's truly, truly amazing.

I'm excited for you.

It was a little odd buying it, but I realize these are normal guys, not Walmart. You create an account, fill out the info on what you want and hit "Save." Then you go to Paypal and send them payment. Just in case anyone else goes this route.

I went ahead and bought the 1541 Ultimate II. I've got a nice setup for my Atari 800 and I think having it side by side with the C64 would be pleasant.

Spanicopida!

No seriously, what's up with the c64 thing...I'm itching for a good game of MULE you should bring it your next visit so long as you won't get arrested like a kid named Ahmed.

Sure, that's fine. Also I just remembered that I have a Commodore Flyer. A guy offered me one cheap via Twitter a year ago and I bought it. I never even opened it.

There were three versions of the 1541 Ultimate, although their website only refers to the model I and model II. The model I (the one I have) uses SD cards while model II uses Micro-SD cards and USB sticks and comes with a case. vII also comes with a built-in SID player and text file reader.

There was a version between I and II that included an ethernet port, but neither the I nor the II have that.

I've considered selling my model I and buying a II. The build in SID player and text viewer would be nice but the I does 99.9% of what I need so it's not worth the additional $200 to upgrade.

I just traded Tom Brady to Jacksonville!

I'm going to make this a guest post on the front page of Jolt Country if I have your permission.

I'm going to research and digest what you have given us after work. I would also like to - in the spirit of this thread - declare a THREAD OF LAWLESSNESS. From now on, in this thread ANYTHING GOES!

I'm going to give you a few options to choose from.

[b]01. ZoomFloppy[/b]

The ZoomFloppy is a $35 card that allows you to connect a 1541/1571 disk drive to your PC using USB. This will allow you to turn real disks into d64 disk images (so you can use them with emulators) and turn d64 disk images into real disks.

Advantage: $35.
Disadvantage: If you only have one disk drive you will constantly be swapping it between your PC and your C64. You'll need a working disk drive and some floppies.

[b]02. 1541 Ultimate[/b]

the 1541 Ultimate is the best thing I ever bought for my Commodore 64, and I'm including Samantha Fox's Strip Poker in that evaluation. The 1541 Ultimate is a virtually 100%* compatible replacement for the 1541 disk drive. You plug it into your C64, run a drive cable from it to your C64, and you're good to go. Games are stored on SD cards in D64 format, so you can easily transfer files back and forth by putting the SD card in your PC and adding disk images. There's an on screen menu system that allows you to switch virtual disks on the fly for multi-disk games. You can even daisy chain a real disk drive and copy files between real disks and disk images with no problem. It's also compatible with cartridge images like Fast Load, Final Cartridge, etc.

Advantages: The only flash solution you'll ever need.
Disadvantage: Costs around $200 and there's usually a waiting list to get one. Also, it no longer has an ethernet port.

[b]03. SD2IEC[/b]

People that can't afford the 1541 Ultimate seem to be buying the SD2IEC. I've not used one but I've read a little about them. They can be purchased pre-assembled or you can save money and purchase as a kit. Like the 1541 Ultimate they use SD cards to read programs from. Unlike the 1541 Ultimate it doesn't have an on screen menu so you will be typing a lot of long commands. You can load .prg files directly, but d64 disk images have to be mounted first. It is not programmed to be 100% compatible like the 1541 Ultimate so this is more for loading cracked games (which almost everything out there is cracked), although there are some multiload games with built-in fastloaders that will not work. Basically anything that used unique 1541/71 loading commands are going to fail.

Advantage: ~$60 for an assembled unit.
Disadvantage: A lot of typing to save money, not 100% compatible, may involve more work in getting a specific game to run.

[b]04. Commodore Flyer[/b]

I almost didn't include this one because I'm not sure they are being sold anymore. This is similar to the SD2IEC except it doesn't contain any storage. Instead, you have to connect a network cable to it and then you load your games either from your PC (if you are running their server software) or from an online website. They were around $100 and you may still be able to find one.

Advantage: $100.
Disadvantage: Requires network connection and host software on your PC.

[b]05. EasyFlash[/b]

I don't have one of these but I am thinking about buying one. This is literally a flash cart for the C64. It can hold multiple images (8?) that you can swap between so you can put a few games and a few things like Fastload on there. No disk drive required. I believe that you flash the crt files onto the cart from the c64 itself which means you still need a disk drive to read the crt files from.

Advantage: Useful for cartridge emulation, can hold multiple images. $65. Can use later without a disk drive even though you need one to flash the cart.
Disadvantages: 64 only, not compatible with the Commodore 128.

There's one other option called the Turbo Chameleon 64. It's still in beta and costs $300 and I wouldn't recommend it. If money is no object, the 1541 Ultimate is the best thing ever, hands down. If money's kind of an object, try the SD2IEC and lemme know how it goes.

I'd be interested in this too. I keep putting off messing with my commodore 64 again because I'm afraid that squeaking I heard in my drive the last time is more than a dirt issue and I've had enough broken shit lately to deal with heh

Also, a lot of games that were tape-drive only such as Masters of the Universe I've played on emulators I'd really like to be able to play on the real thing.. thinking flash drive is the only way to go. Never had any success with things like .tap to .d64 converters.

Hey Flack.... what's the recommended flash cart solution for Commodore 64s these days? I suppose it's time to get the one you gave me completely running.

I'll get into Lawless Legends in a bit.