The C64

[Lardo Boffin]

Snap. This is a GOOD year!

Can you post some thoughts / mini-review of The C64 please? Curious as to how good it is, especially around game / disc image compatibility. Thanks!

Seems to be a good recreation of the Commodore 64. It has 64 games built in being a mixture of C64 and Vic20 games. All the disk images I have tried work a treat and I didn't expect otherwise as it has Cloanto logos on the box so assume the emulation is based around the Amiga/C64 Forever Cloanto emulators which I have always found to be very good packages.

I have read reviews of the C64 mini saying that there are lags with input. This new full size machine doesn't seem laggy at all to me and is very responsive to joystick and keyboard input. It's got a good build quality and over all I am impressed and think it was money well spent (by my wife ).

Sounds like a good remake! Are the loading times reasonable?

Can you give Wasteland a go please?

Moderator note: Continuation from this thread Mark

[markjw]

the 8-bit Guy has done a video on this machine - https://youtu.be/kxx2F4ffmeE - and as part of it tested the input delay which can be found at 8m40s into the video. The joystick he received had proper microswitches unlike the one supplied with the C64 mini. Also he found that it appears the case moulding is based on the VIC20 rather than the C64.

[Leew]

Sounds like a good remake! Are the loading times reasonable?

Can you give Wasteland a go please?

I see what you are getting at now. Loading times are not an issue. You mentioned SD2IEC, which I believe uses the disk drive serial port on an original C64 so is effectively as slow as an original 1541 disk drive. This new machine is an emulated C64 running on an ARM processor so the D64 files load as fast as the USB port throughput speed which means for a tiny file like a D64 disk image, almost instantaneously.

That said a lot of the disk image files that I have have been compacted, so after each file loads from the disk you still have to wait for the C64 to uncompress the files.

I haven't figured out how to manage multiple disk images / disk changing yet. When I work it out I will have a look at Wasteland and maybe Last Ninja.

Hope this helps.

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks Lee.

Multiple discs are always fun. I think Pool of Radiance has 6 or 8 sides!

Yes the SD2IEC uses the serial port and is glacially slow (although an Epyx Fastloader, or similar, cart helps immensely). The Pi1541 does the same. And is as slow. Not sure if a fast loader cart helps with that - might need the full JiffyDOS experience but not got that far yet.

However I can finally run Wasteland with the Pi.

I have a .lst (a file containing a list of files) set up and on the Pi and SD2IEC you select that - if this is a convention then maybe The 64 does the same. There should be a .lst file in the Wasteland zip if you get chance to try.

[Kazzie]

as part of it tested the input delay which can be found at 8m40s

For a brief moment I was thinking "that's one heck of an input delay!"

[markjw]

ouch! the price gouging has started for these - they were £109.99 last week, but the only one on Amazon UK today is £227.99

Out of stock everywhere else that is listed on 'The C64' website

[roland]

I have looked at the video of the 8bit guy. Especially taking it apart .... what a surprise what is in there (or better: what is not in there)
This way we could also make cheap Atoms (after all, we already have the FPGA stuff for the Atom), but then we will run into my/our problem: where to get an affordable keyboard and housing from?

[Boydie]

ouch! the price gouging has started for these - they were £109.99 last week, but the only one on Amazon UK today is £227.99

Out of stock everywhere else that is listed on 'The C64' website

For anyone who wants one, Menkind has started selling them as an online exclusive, and has them in stock for the normal price.

[Leew]

ouch! the price gouging has started for these - they were £109.99 last week, but the only one on Amazon UK today is £227.99

Out of stock everywhere else that is listed on 'The C64' website

For anyone who wants one, Menkind has started selling them as an online exclusive, and has them in stock for the normal price.

Argos are taking orders for the C64 Switched Joystick if you need another stick although it says lead times are 11 days as of today, but they don't appear to have the actual machine as an item for sale.

There are a few reviews out now and Wi-Fi Sheep has done a Q&A video on it, links below...

The 8-Bit Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxx2F4ffmeE - Review

Wi-Fi Sheep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHUy-89ca88 - Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGDfinnfgTQ&t=547s - Q&A

[Leew]

Sounds like a good remake! Are the loading times reasonable?

Can you give Wasteland a go please?

OK, I have given Wasteland a go and it turns out swapping disks on The C64 is really easy.

However getting Wasteland to actually load was a little tricky as it kept hanging on a black screen.

I eventually figured out that you can add switches to the d64 disk image files by renaming them on the USB drive, eg adding '_M6ADCD' to the file name means 'M6' = Regular C64 configuration, 'AD' = Accurate Disk emulation, and 'CD' = Continuation disk in set

The switch that got Wasteland to load was the 'AD' one and I have found that a couple more games need this too and I do occasionaly get a disk IO error, but I think that this is my cheapo dodgey USB stick.

I have screen captured the loading of Wasteland so you can compare it to SD2IEC on your real C64 for comparative loading times, oh and I left the disk indicator turned on, so you will see a floppy disk image in the top right corner when the disk is being accessed.

https://youtu.be/Pb-0GNDrLvY

Cheers
Lee

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks Lee!

Looking at it, the loading speeds look very similar to my C64 with Pi1541. I assume the advanced setting pretty accurately mimics the original hardware, including load times.

The display is quite a lot better than the composite out of my breadbin though. Sadly I don’t have an S-video TV to use.

[scruss]

Disk compatibility should be excellent, 'cos they used VICE but didn't credit the developers. I'm sure the choice of a custom A20 board seemed like a good idea at the time - but again, the developers benefited greatly from open-source hardware like the A20-OLinuXino boards.

[1024MAK]

After the Vega+ debacle, I’m very wary of these ‘projects’.

The fact that they are using GPL software but not crediting the original developers and not complying fully with the GPL means I won’t be buying one.

I already have VICE running on my Linux PC

Mark

[zeem]

Also he found that it appears the case moulding is based on the VIC20 rather than the C64.

Reading down the comments reveals that there were two versions of the C64 breadbin case - the original one with the same dimensions as the VIC-20, and a later one which was slimmed down. The 64 is based on the earlier one.

[Leew]

Also he found that it appears the case moulding is based on the VIC20 rather than the C64.

Reading down the comments reveals that there were two versions of the C64 breadbin case - the original one with the same dimensions as the VIC-20, and a later one which was slimmed down. The 64 is based on the earlier one.

8-bit Show and Tell has done a good video on The C64. It is quite long (about 45 minutes) and he compares The C64 and 3 different original Commodore 64s from the 80s and they all had different case sizes! He also says he developed some of the software on The C64. Link below

https://youtu.be/z2GACGEucTI

[anightin]

Got mine working over the Christmas break on my games system.

I had to use an HDMI upscaler to convert the C64 HDMI output into a format my ASUS ROG SWIFT Curved PG348Q, 34 Inch UWQHD (3440 x 1440) Gaming Monitor could read.

After that little hiccup, all was well. The C64 now sits above my gaming keyboard


I loaded Commando and a few other titles onto a USB stick, and that worked fine too.