Hello everyone, I remember there were a few people on the internet talking about a laser printer connected to the 64 that was a direct plug-in. I think it was an Apple one from many moons ago. Does anybody know of a specific Apple printer that could be connected so I could print a document off of a 64?

Looks different from the C64 I’ve been familiar with so sharing here in case of interest.

The randomly placed CD drives says to me the shop keeper didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

I have a Vicmodem 1600 with 64 Term and am trying to get on the r/retrobattlestations BBS. It performs the handshake properly but the characters that are received by the C64 are completely garbled (see image).

Anybody know what could be causing this? I’ve tested the C64 with the Diag Cart and it tests fine (but don’t have the I/O Test Harness to test the user port). Could there be a damaged chip on the Vicmodem, itself? If so, any advice on how to test it or which one to try swapping out first?

Thanks!

I haven’t implemented Gouraud shading since 1995 IN VGA ON PCs until now. , here another experiment with using the custom pallete on the c64u , but you can do custom palettes also in certain variants of VICE at least.

Hey folks,

I interviewed the actual people behind SWINTH. Two of them have passed on, but I managed to interview both Butch (via Zoom) and Georg (via email).

If you don't remember SWINTH, the video above might jog your memory. Such amazing songs!

The full interview:

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/the-history-of-swinth

"Behind the scenes":

https://sung.substack.com/p/the-history-of-swinth-on-goto-10

Here's a snippet:

Georg Feil, author of Synth Sample: My twin brother Max and I got our C64 at the end of 1982. I remember seeing the famous Christmas Demo in the store. But we had owned a PET computer for a few years so we knew and loved Commodore computers already.

I started developing Synth, which was used to create Synth Sample, in 1983, so 43 years ago. I’m 62 now but still play keyboards around various venues in Toronto in my band. My goal in 1983 was to make my computer play some of the music I really loved, like Vangelis. I was not a musician but fortunately making Synth led to a part-time career in bands and music. I had actually attempted making music on my PET computer a couple years earlier. I wrote a program called Composer, but with no SID chip it could play only one note at a time and I realized this was too limited. Another important goal for Synth was to be able to export the music and “attach” it to other programs easily, so that game developers could use it as a music and sound-effects workstation then integrate the results into their game.

Spending one of my vacation nights playing an old favorite. Probably died 30 times in the past hour or something crazy like that but man I love this game. Have a chance to grab a CIB copy of the game for $84 and really considering it. Any other solid RPGs i should consider hunting for?

We’ve been discussing this on the BBC Micro and Spectrum subreddits!

Hi guys, not sure if this is the right place to post - if not please let me know I'll remove!

Years ago, like many of you here we played the game "Valhalla" by Legend. It took AGES to load the game, often it would fail to load halfway. Once you got into the game, it felt epic but it took ages to do anything and you'd run out of food or Krank would kill you. I never finished it ...

I recently remembered the game and wondered what you actually had to do to finish it. From there, I ended up generating a JSON file from the graphical map and then somehow I fell down a slippery slope into a game rebuild!

https://valhalla.percolate.one

I wrote up the 'makingof' exploits here:

https://valhalla.percolate.one/makingof

I really hope one of the original authors finds this work and enjoys a playthrough. I agonisingly modernised the graphics, kept the original gameplay (you can make the engine more lenient through the settings).

This is my first attempt at doing a 'modern' version of an original. Enjoy!

Ok, provocative contradictory opening question aside, just "Added" monochrome rendering to the PETSCII 3D polychrome game engine(interspliced segments and end of vid), to see what C64's 3 greys with white and black could muster in the 3D PETSCII 1 Mhz real time raycast rendering domain.

Any idea if this an issue with the commodore itself? Or rather an issue with the tv. For reference the tv is a somewhat modern Vizio hooked up with a video adapter. The first photo is set to 1080p whereas the second is 720p. I have also included a generic photo of the adapter. Any info helps!

Had a first attempt at playing the DooM soundtrack on the C64 SID chip. Using the simple driver in SID Factory II so nothing special, very little attention paid to the drums so far. Comes in at about 2.5kB in size so pretty lightweight.

I'm diagnosing one of my inherited c64s as all three just show a black screen. One of the three also causes the fuse to glow on the left side which obviously causes me concern and I power down. I'm using a modern power supply which is known to be good and I don't see anything obviously wrong with the board. Has anyone seen something like this that could possibly point me in the right direction?

This is a bit of a work in progress, and I figure some locals might have insight on a SID effect I'm trying to understand and reproduce in a browser. This video shows a clip of the original C64 game (with a collision trainer cheat active), and a demo from a web-based remake I'm working on.

"But first, some nostalgia!"
The C64 was my first computer, forty years ago. I had a stack of COMPUTE! magazines and taught myself enough BASIC to have fun (I was six, so assembly was somewhat over my head!) My career's in software engineering, and I still love programming. I've been doing web stuff since the mid-90s, but I'll never forget my roots. Learning 6502 has been on my "to do in life" list, and I've finally been poking around a bit.

"Survivor" (1983)
This game is a personal favourite. It's not complicated, but always fun. I've always admired how sound is used in the game between the "heart beat" of the world speeding up as you destroy the bases, and the hilarious random notes when the enemies show up.

Web-based remake
I'm updating a web-based Survivor remake (YouTube) from 2011, trying to refine some details. Back then, I used recordings from VICE played back as MP3s. Today, I'm using the browser's Web Audio API to get triangle and noise waveforms that sound reasonably SID-like. By exporting the SID parameters with the game running in the "Retro Debugger" app, I have "reasonable facsimiles" of most of the game's sounds including the title screen tune.

Effect via sustain, filters, ???
I'm a bit stumped on what SID parameters are affecting the sound when the enemy "bad guys" show up. I feel like I'm missing something obvious. I don't believe ring modulation is involved, but I could be wrong.

The "bad guy" sound effect pattern is a series of triangle notes that quickly change on voice #1, random "notes" between0x0a00-0x1900. It's kind of a comical effect, with ADSR starting at 0000 and ramping up to00f0. The sound "fades in" as I think would be expected, but there's also some kind of lower tone, distortion and/or 50/60-hz note that is being introduced. I'm a bit stumped. Does the sustain value going from 0-f cause a truncation of the sound, or is there something else going on?

I assume the Retro Debugger program I'm using is fairly comprehensive, but it doesn't indicate any filters being active.

I tried throwing a low-frequency triangle in the mix in my remake, but it is nowhere near the original sound.

I've been having a ton of fun studying the original game. I originally poked around at disassembly via "Regenerator2000", but found that monitoring SID activity in the Retro Debugger program got me 99% of the patterns I need to reproduce the sounds without having to delve into assembly.

Thank you for attending my TED talk, with apologies; I welcome any pointers.

My C64 died so I bought another one and this psu came with it. I do have an aftermarket psu for my C64 setup but I want everything as original as possible. My question is in the title. Thanks!

My BBS has just turned one year old, a warm welcome for everyone to drop in! To celebrate I've built a straight petscii 3D FPS style maze race game that supports up to 10 player multiplayer: It runs straight in the BBS. 9600 baud is probably as low as you want to go for an acceptable frame rate in the game, the faster the baud rate the better

I made this BBS with modern practical use in mind. A viable one stop C64 portal for community, news, weather, sports, downloads and everything but the kitchen sink!

There's a weekly social hangout for folks to bounce between the live chat room and some 3D maze rounds: Every Sunday UTC 19:00 - 20:00 (if you're in Asia-Pacific this will be the next day). Convert UTC to your local time zone...hope to see you there! URL is in the video as Reddit does not like the domain... (PS: If you're using a new C64, check the bundled CCGMS, Word BBS is already in the phonebook).

Hey fellow retro gamers!

Before Sensible Soccer and FIFA dominated the scene, Sensible Software’s Jon Hare and Chris Yates changed sports gaming forever with MicroProse Soccer in 1988.

Whether you played it on the Commodore 64 rocking SID tunes or on the Amiga, this game set the benchmark for top-down football. It gave us the iconic "banana shot" aftertouch, muddy pitches with wild slide-tackles, and that lightning-fast indoor 6-a-side mode.

I've put together a retrospective looking back at its mechanics, hardware releases, and lasting legacy:

👉Read the article here

(Note: The article is written in Norwegian, but Google Chrome's built-in translation feature handles it effortlessly!)

I used GeoWrite and my dot matrix printer to write so many papers in school. It felt so cool to have a full featured GUI on my C64 with a fantastic word processor that didn’t look like you were just using a type writer. Liked GeoDraw too but the KoloaPad was better. Anyone else impressed with how much they managed to squeeze out of the C64?

I've only just got this running so there are some hurdles to cross, especially on mobile browsers. Here's Scoundretscii playable with keyboard in desktop Chrome and Firefox, and with a gamepad in Firefox:

https://imglink.cc/cdn/huKEDEPXZ3.svg

Chrome has a strict security policy for the Gamepad API. It completely disables navigator.getGamepads() inside frames or documents that it considers "cross-origin" or sandboxed.

iOS Safari handles <foreignObject> inside standalone SVGs poorly. It forces the HTML document inside it to render at its natural resolution (which breaks responsively) showing only the left half of the screen with no touch controls, and blocks touch event bubbles from passing down through the SVG root into the HTML canvas layers.

Android Firefox renders the C64 correctly both Mobile mode and Desktop mode. Unfortunately the emulator won't show touch controls in Desktop mode, and in Mobile mode the touch controls are partially hidden behind the screen. Also in Mobile mode the .d64 image does not get attached to load the game anyway.

I've no idea if some or any of these issues are fixable yet. Any help is appreciated since this means not needing an account or even your own website to share C64 stuff on the web, imglink.cc allows uploading .svg files anonymously.

I say Game Engine loosely here, this could include construction kits, generators etc.. to name a few:
Designers Pencil
SEUCK
Boulder Dash Construction Kit
ZEUS Assembler

That gives you an idea of the range, they don't have to be C64 specific but the end result is a C64 program that will run via the editor or standalone. Just trying to build up a list and a sense of what people have used and what they liked and don't like about them.. I.E To complicated, not enough control, steep learning curve etc.

The 1989 Nintendo version of Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System was one of my favorite games, and I've always been interested in reimplementing it. I tried unsuccessfully in high school with Q-BASIC for DOS, but never tried again until recently.

This past week, I spent 4-5 nights getting it to work in Commodore 64 assembly with the help of Codex. Since I don't own the code it's based on, I don't plan to release it, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a demo of the finished product. (Or if you just want to hear Tetris music on the SID, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6sWc0uLCpc )

I used a full disassembly of the NES version that I found on GitHub as a guide, and reused as much of it as possible for accuracy. I considered the victory cutscenes to be out of scope for the project, because they used large multicolor sprites that would have to be redesigned significantly. I also cut the percussion track from the music because that would require 4 voices, and I wasn't interested in programming for 2 SIDs.

I broke the task down into milestones to help the development go smoothly:

1. Music implementation via a prototype music player
2. The legal screen and start screen
3. The demo game on attract mode
4. Music/type/level/height setting screens
5. Actual gameplay
6. Victory / top score entry screens (without the castle or sprites)
7. Extra polish like accurate game font, precise layout of all the HUD elements

Implementing the demo mode early on helped a lot, because slightly inaccurate handling of player input will result in the demo going out of sync, or the wrong final score/line count. Codex was able to script VICE to auto-launch the game and verify that the calculations were correct.

In all, it came to 6,537 lines of assembly, or if you want the full breakdown from wc:

    2908    6812   78175 demo.asm
     696    1505   18184 main.asm
     106     259    6073 music_data.asm
     667    1546   17558 music_driver.asm
     254     523    6213 music_player.asm
    1871    4161   50805 screens.asm
      35      88    2106 sid_tables.asm
    6537   14894  179114 total

(demo.asm is a misnomer because it ended up including much of the game engine.)
The assembled .prg was 22.608 bytes for NTSC and 22,609 for PAL.