Category - Reviews

Commodore 64, Music, PET, Reviews, VIC 20

I’ve covered some storage solutions for Cassette tapes in the past but sadly they are no being made. With my own collection of tapes continuing to grow (both music and computer games) I needed a smart, attractive storage solution, and preferably one that would continue to be made for a long time to come.

There was really only one way to guarantee the latter so I’ve ended up designing and 3D printing my own rack and have made it available to purchase on my Etsy Store in case anyone else would like to get one.

Empty storage rack. Mounting holes at the top.

The finished storage rack measures 23cm x 23cm and is a shade over 5cm deep. I literally cannot make a larger capacity rack as that’s pretty much the maximum size of my printers’ build plates.

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It has a couple of screw mounting holes at the top so it can be hung on a wall. Alternatively it can be placed free-standing on a shelf, or even on its back inside a drawer.

Lots of VIC20 games

The idea is that you can just keep adding more racks as your collection grows.

A rack full of VIC20 games.

Although you can just place them side by side or on top of each other when expanding I’d recommend fixing them to the wall if going vertically for stability. Nobody wants their collection of tapes falling on the floor if your cat decides to go mountaineering!

Expanding your collection – 3 racks together

These are produced on Bambu Labs printers using premium PLA and each one takes nine hours to complete. They’re really nice quality even if I do so so myself but you can judge for yourself by looking at the photos.

As I said if you want one you can get one from my Etsy store. If you’d like to order more than one then drop me a message and I can sort out a discount.

MEGA65 Showdown Review

14th July 2024

MEGA65, Reviews

Showdown, by Badger Punch Games, takes the award for being the very first boxed retail game that I’ve picked up for my MEGA65 from PolyPlay. Hopefully as the MEGA65 userbase continues to grow more games like this will emerge as has happened with the ZX Spectrum Next scene. I actually bought this way back in November 2023 but as I never had a machine to play it on it’s been sat sealed on a shelf – until now!

Back of the box

The box itself is beautifully produced with a picture of your typical spaghetti western gunslingers on the front and some screenshots of the game along with a description of the gameplay on the back.

All of the goodies you get inside the box

So what comes in the box?

Removing the shrink-wrap seal on the collectors edition box reveals a plethora of goodies inside, including;

3.5″ floppy disk with professionally printed game label.
Leather Showdown keyring
MicroSD card including D81 disk images and other digital files
Fold-out manual
Thick postcard with mock bullet hole (whole thing is made to look like its a plank of wood)
Stickers
A3 Showdown poster
Registration card

3.5″ Floppy and MicroSD card. Both containing the game

The game is included on both a standard DS/DD 3.5″ Floppy Disk and also digitally on a small 256MB MicroSD card. The card also stores a copy of the manual in PDF format, the box artwork, postcard, poster and also the soundtrack music in mp3 format. It’s essential that releases like this have a digital option, either included on a card like this, or as a download, because magnetic media is notoriously unreliable now. Floppy disks haven’t been manufactured for about 15 years or more so even if you find some ‘new old stock’ they have still been in storage for at least that long!

MicroSD Card

I’m really glad I had the digital D81 version of the game too because when I popped in the floppy disk I couldn’t get the game to load. On closer inspection there appeared to be nothing on it which was disappointing.

Popping the game into the MEGA65’s floppy drive

Thankfully the D81 image loaded fine so there was an easy fix. Leaving the floppy disk in the internal drive I mounted the D81 disk image as drive 9 and then used the MEGA65 command ‘BACKUP U9 to U8’ to copy the contents of the disk image to the real floppy disk. It was quite a slow process but at the end I had a fully populated physical floppy disk. I ran a quick ‘DIR’ to make sure all the files were present before attempting to load up the game once more – which they were.

Contents of the freshly copied Showdown floppy disk

I’ve no idea why my disk appeared blank – it’s the first MEGA65 game I’ve bought from poly.play. Maybe it’s supposed to be blank and you have to copy the game onto it yourself? Maybe somebody just forgot to put them on my disk? Who knows.

I did a bit of googling before posting this and it turns out this was an oversight by the team as they didn’t have access to an actual MEGA65 machine to test the disks on which is fair enough. Presumably any copy of the game bought since won’t have this issue.

Anyway this time I was able to boot up the game successfully from the floppy and was greeted with a nice Badger Punch Games splash screen.

Badger Punch splash screen

Shortly after that the game finished loading and I reached the title screen with the option to pick either a 1 or 2 player game. Sadly I have no retro gaming friends so it was ‘1 Player Game’ or nothing for me.

Gameplay is very straightforward and everything takes place on a single screen. You, the red guy, are on one side of a dirt road and the enemy, the blue guy, is on the other side. You can run around the confines of your side of the screen but you cannot cross the road. You need to shoot the other guy before he shoots you and the first gunslinger to rack up 5 kills wins.

MEGA65 Showdown title screen

Screens are are peppered with cacti and sometimes a few buildings which you can use as cover. These don’t last forever as bullet hits chip away at them, space invader base style. Occasionally a covered wagon will make its way up the screen making for some mobile cover whilst you duke it out.

If you stand still whilst firing then your bullets shoot straight across the screen. However if you fire from the hip whilst moving then your bullets follow a diagonal trajectory in the direction you were heading. Skilful exploitation of this mechanic can help take out the enemy from behind cover.

Don’t play whilst trying to take photo’s…

Explosive crates appear from time to time and these are great for catching the enemy unawares as they have quite a wide blast radius if you shoot one. Just be careful he doesn’t do the same to you, or worse still, you accidentally shoot one next to you and take yourself out!

Your gun can only hold 5 bullets but thankfully ammunition is plentiful and you only need to walk over one of the blue bullet icons that randomly appear to replenish your supply. The first player to rack up 5 kills is the winner and that’s about it really as the game ends and you are whisked back to the title screen.

Hiding behind cover

There’s some decent music playing throughout the game but no gunfire sound effects which is a shame. Showdown is certainly fun for a while but it lacks the mechanics that would keep me coming back for more. There’s no scoring and thus no high score to try and beat and no new levels to try and unlock. It’s clearly been designed as a 2 player game and I’m sure it would be infinitely more fun running around trying to kill your mate sat next to you and rubbing their nose in your victory than the rather more hollow satisfaction of besting an AI bad guy.

Converting a Simulant ‘Classic USB mechanical PC Keyboard’ to work natively with the Amiga

19th April 2024

Amiga, CD32, How to's, Reviews

6 Comments

Back when I purchased my Amiga USB keyboard in 2022 from Simulant it carried a disclaimer that it wouldn’t work with ‘real’ Amigas but that they were working on an adapter. That was about 18 months ago now and I had almost forgotten about it. However a few weeks ago I received an email saying they were taking pre-orders for the adapter so I jumped on board. It arrived a few days ago so I’ll go through the installation and how well it works in this post.

Amiga Conversion Kit Contents

The kit included the adapter, an A4000/CD32 keyboard cable, an A2000/A3000 adapter and a small strip of doubled-over plastic.

Raspberry Pi Pico

The adapter itself consists of a small Raspberry Pi Pico board affixed to a custom PCB that has some extra chips, sockets and circuitry to interface with the keyboard itself.

Back of the custom PCB

There were no instructions supplied with the kit at all, not even a bit of paper with a URL to visit for more info. Unsure if that was an oversight or not. Thankfully I received an email from them shortly before the delivery was due and it contained a link to download some new firmware for it. Within the zip file there was a small text file with basic instructions and a few photos. It was enough to set me on the path anyway.

Updating the Firmware

The very first task was to install the latest firmware on the Pico board. This was really straightforward and just required me to hook it up to my PC with a Micro USB cable whilst holding down the ‘BOOTSEL’ button on the Pico board. After a few moments it then appeared on my PC as a regular storage device; ‘RPI-RP2’ and I was able to copy the firmware across.

The RPI-RP2 mass storage device

The drive disappeared automatically once the firmware had successfully installed which was my cue to unplug it and move on to the next stage.

Dismantling the keyboard

The next job was to get the keyboard opened up. The top half of the keyboard overlaps the bottom half and is held in place by a series of plastic clips. There are four along the front edge and another four along the back – there are none on the sides.

Spudger time!

The two halves fit together extremely snugly so to avoid any cosmetic damage I used a plastic spudger tool to gently prise the them apart and then slid it along, disengaging the clips as I progressed.

Top half of case removed.

With all the clips dealt with the two halves separated easily and I was able to lift the top off and place it to one side.

Keycap puller

The next job was to remove some of the keycaps to gain access to the screws holding the keyboard and bottom of the case together.

Keys removed revealing screw beneath.

First I removed the Caps Lock, Tab, Q and A keys on the left…

Keys removed revealing screw beneath.

Then the 7 and 4 keys from the numeric keypad on the right.

Removing the left-hand side screw.

Then I removed the small phillips screw from each side of the keyboard…

It’s a screw!

and placed them, along with the keycaps, somewhere safe so I wouldn’t lose them in the black-hole that is my desk!

Don’t want to lose these!

With the screws removed I was then able to separate the keyboard from the bottom of the case.

Bottom of the keyboard released

I then set about removing the cable clamp from the bottom of the case.

Removing the cable clamp screws.

The clamp was held in place by two phillips screws, smaller than the ones I had encountered earlier.

The cable clamp.

The cable was then free to be moved around to give me more slack to work with for the next stage.

The path of the cable is a curvy one…

In order to fit the adapter I needed to remove the old cable from the keyboard circuit board.

Silcone…

Unfortunately for me, whomever made it decided it would be a good idea to squirt lashings of silicone all over it.

Slcing the silicone off

I spent the next 20 minutes very carefully removing chunks of silicone…

Another chunk of silicone removed…

using a combination of craft knife and tweezers, doing my best not to slice through anything I shouldn’t!

A lovely mess.

It was a pretty tedious task but eventually I had a small pile of silicone bits and I was able to remove the old plug from the socket and feed it back out through the small slot in the case.

Finally – all gone.

This eventually left me with a nice, silicone-free, keyboard cable socket!

Installing the adapter

Now it was finally time to install the adapter. I began by gently feeding it through the small slot in the base of the keyboard case until I had enough cable to work with,

Pushing the new cable through the slot.

Next I connected the plug into the empty socket on the adapter board.

Cable now hooked up to the Pico board.

Simulant recommend the adapter be placed out of the way with the two sockets straddling the plastic ridge in the case so I placed it between the left foot and the cable entry point as shown below.

Placing the adapter board out of the way.

Once I’d placed the cables where I wanted them to go I re-attached the cable clamp to hold it in place.

Attaching to the keyboard.

The final connection task was to plug in the short fly-lead running from the adapter into the socket on the keyboard (the one that was previously covered in silicone).

Plastic shielding.

Before closing everything up I wrapped the adapter in the plastic sheathing provided and secured it with a little sticky tape. This was there just to prevent any kind of electrical short occurring between the adapter and the bottom of the keyboard circuit board.

Making sure nothing gets trapped as the case is reassembled.

I then carefully mounted the keyboard back into the bottom of the case making sure that nothing got trapped in the process and then re-seated the top of the case over everything to hold it all together once more.

Ta-da!

Testing

The conversion was now complete so it was time to hook it up to my Amiga and put it through its paces!

A4000 PS/2 connector.

The standard cable it comes with ends in a PS/2 connector, like the one you would find on an A4000.

The 5-pin DIN adapter.

It also comes with an adaptor to convert it into a 5-pin DIN style connector more commonly found on A1500/2000/3000 machines.

The adapter cable.

Sadly I do not own any kind of big box Amiga to test it out with… the price of these machines has skyrocketed in recent years and it’s difficult to justify the expense when they appear on eBay, However I do have a CD32 console and this is blessed with an A4000 style PS/2 socket so I used that for my testing.

CD32 PS/2 ‘AUX’ socket.

My CD32 is equipped with a ‘TerribleFire 330‘ which means I am able to run a fully loaded Workbench environment off a compact flash ‘hard drive’. I have it hooked up to my Philips CM8833-Mk2 monitor via RGB. Not as good as an A3000 with RTG but it’s still a nice setup.

New keyboard connected.

I loaded up a copy of Final Writer and began bashing away on the keyboard. It’s a lovely typing experience with plenty of tactile feedback without being too clicky and annoying. All the characters and punctuation marks appeared correctly including the likes of £, @ and $ (I’m in England so use a British keyboard layout). The caps lock key also functioned correctly as did the number lock key.

Final Writer.

One little quirk I did notice was that the hash key next to the Return key was basically redundant and had no function at all. Interestingly this is a blank key on my A1200 and doesn’t exist at all on my A500 so it makes more sense in light of this. It was not an issue anyway as the hash character was accessed using the key to its immediate left whilst the tilde character was accessible from the key to the left of the numeric 1 key (which is where it is located on a real Amiga keyboard).

Proper Amiga keycap layout.

The other important thing I realised was that the Amiga keys didn’t work when trying to access Amiga shortcuts, however I found that the two ‘Alt’ keys did. I solved this by simply swapping the keycaps over so that the Amiga keys were placed directly either side of the space bar and the Alt keys adjacent to those. After that everything behaved correctly with shortcuts like ‘Amiga+ S’ to save and of course the ‘three finger salute’, CTRL, A + A to reset it proving to be no problem at all.

Rounding Off

At a shade over £50 this is not a cheap kit, especially when you’ve already shelled out over £100 for the Amiga USB keyboard. However it’s been well designed and does exactly what they said it would. Considering the price that original A4000 keyboards can go for on eBay it begins to look a lot more economical! It’s also been made in very small numbers so there’s no economies of scale at play either.

My only criticism would be levelled at the lack of any instructions included with the kit but maybe someone just forgot to throw them in the jiffy bag when they were packing mine? Additionally, and this is not a criticism – more of a request really, it would be great if they could give us the option to quickly switch from the original USB configuration to the Amiga one without having to take it all apart again. I’d like to continue using it with my MorphOS machine as well as with my emulated Amigas and not be forced into choosing one or the other. A first world problem for sure!

Anyway if you already have one of these Amiga USB keyboards and want to use it with a big box Amiga then I can heartily recommend this as it does exactly what it says on the tin!

WiC64 Review

14th March 2024

4 Comments

The WiC64 might possibly be one of the most interesting devices for the Commodore 64 I’ve seen in years. It’s not just the hardware (which is great) as there have been a few Wi-Fi interfaces released already for the C64 over the years, but more how the software that’s been created for it leverages the new hardware to achieve something truly special. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this could be the future for modern day 64 enthusiasts – I’ll explain why during the rest of this post.

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This glorious gizmo was sent to me by Tim Harris over at Shareware Plus. Inside the rather unassuming box there’s the main host board, an ESP32 module, a teeny tiny OLED display and a card with a link to a website to go to for more info.

Contents of the WiC64 package.

So, what is it and what does it do?

Basically the WiC64 is a plug-in Wi-FI accessory that connects to the user-port of the Commodore 64 providing internet access. (It also works with the SX64, C128 and VIC20 computers though I’ve not tested it with these). However unlike existing Wi-Fi adapters that utilise serial mode data transfers and are thus restricted to stuff like accessing BBS due to their slow communication speeds, this bad boy operates in parallel mode, utilising 8 data lines, 2 handshake lines and one control line. This is all handled by the ESP32 module.

Basically it’s super fast and capable of loading a typical C64 program in the blink of an eye across the Internet. Yep you read that right, with this device you will be able to download (and upload) programs and files directly over the Internet on your C64!

Putting it together

No manual is provided but then again it is 2024 so having online documentation is to be expected. Following the link on the product card takes you to the WiC64.net website where you can download assembly instructions, a launcher program in PRG format and some STL’s to print a nice case for it.

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Assembly was an absolute doddle and just requires you to fit the ESP32 module and screen to the host board. They both simply push into the sockets provided – all you need to be careful with is the orientation of the ESP32 module but there’s photos in the PDF manual showing which way around it needs to go.

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After putting the WiC64 together I decided to 3D print the case for it so loaded the STL’s into my slicer software to prepare them for printing. The model has been well designed so no support material is needed when you place each part flat on its largest side.

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Just over an hour later (I have a Bambu Labs P1S printer so it’s fast) the print was complete and looked fantastic.

Freshly printed case halves

The two buttons on the host board pop through matching holes on the side of the case whilst there are a couple of little push buttons incorporated into the top of the case so you can still depress the ones on the EPS32 module.

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Oops

Unfortunately I ran into my first problem here when I tried to plug the newly encased WiC64 into the user port of my C64C – it simply wouldn’t fit! This was through no fault in the design of the board or even the case but just bad luck on my part because of where I had chosen to locate the switches for my SIDFX install.

Houston, we have a problem!

The case was clearly never going to fit so I had to abandon that idea and go naked. Even without the case it was an incredibly close fit with just a couple of millimetres clearance between the board and the switches. To be honest though, apart from the obvious lack of protection, I think I prefer it without the case as it does look incredibly cool with all the LED’s glowing and the little OLED screen displaying messages and such. I’ll just need to be careful to never drop a paperclip down the back of my C64!

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Teething Problems

With the WiC64 now plugged in it was time to test it out! I downloaded the Launcher from the WiC64.net site (currently at version 2.5) and copied it over to my 1541 Ultimate II+ cart (via ethernet) so that I could run it.

Ground control to Major Tom…

It popped up a message saying it was searching for Wi-Fi and a few of the lights started to flicker on the board…

Lights are on but nobody’s home…

However it never got any further than this. After about a minute of trying the launcher would simply crash leaving me with a blank screen.

This doesn’t look good!

Needless to say I tried this a few times but got the same result each time. I even tried activating the hotspot on my iPhone (with maximised compatibility) in case it didn’t like my Wi-Fi 6 router but it still failed.

Updating the Firmware

With nothing seeming to work I decided to have a go at updating the firmware as I remember seeing this mentioned on the card. The whole process is web based and conducted within the browser itself. I had to unplug the WiC64 board from my C64 and then hook it up to my Windows 11 PC using a MicroUSB cable.

WiC64 ready to be flashed

Needless to say I had to install a driver for it first as the UART device was showing as unrecognised in Device Manager…

How it appears in device manager

There’s step by step instructions on the ‘Online Flasher’ page and it directs you to a Silicon Labs website to download the drivers. I have Windows 11 so chose the CP210x Universal Windows Driver which worked out well. Installing the driver was just a matter of right-clicking the device and selecting ‘update driver’ and then pointing it to the folder where I’d extracted the driver previously.

Driver successfully installed

Flashing the device is actually done within the browser but it must be Chrome, Edge or Opera. I use Brave but thought I’d still be OK because it’s Chromium based but the Connect button never appeared for me until I changed over to Edge. Then I was able to select ‘CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller (COM7)’ as the serial port to begin the process. Sadly within a few seconds of starting the update it failed with an error. Although I never did find out what caused the error the solution was to hold down the ‘BOOT’ button on the ESP32 module whilst performing the update and it then worked without a hitch.

With the firmware now updated it was time to put it back in my C64 and see if I could get it to connect to my Wi-Fi.

I hooked it back up to my user-port, turned on my 64 and loaded up version 2.5 of the launcher once more.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Much to my delight this time around it displayed (just) my 2.4Ghz SSID (I have a Tri-band router) and I was able to enter the password to connect to it just like you would expect to do with any modern day device.

BOOM! We’re in business!

After a few moments it connected and my C64’s IP address was displayed on the OLED screen, along with the SSID, signal strength and current firmware version.

WiC64 Welcome Screen

The launcher menu screen also loaded up with new options to Login and Register. I didn’t have an account so I selected Register to create one which only took a few moments and then I was finally into the system proper.

WiC64 Menu Screen

Let the Games Begin!

There’s a lot of sub menus and interesting things tucked away into the WiC64 Launcher menus but I’m just going to pick out some of the things I found interesting – in no particular order!

Offline Games List

I’ll start with the games as there’s quite a lot of them. They’re split between Offline games (found in the File Area>Games section) Online games and online multiplayer games. The mind blowing thing about these games is that they load onto your C64 over the internet, but not only that they load in just a matter of seconds. I decided to give Shadow Switcher a quick blast as it’s a game I know and love. I selected it from the menu and BAM, a second later it had loaded and I was able to play it. Absolutely incredible.

Shadow Switcher

The Online and Multiplayer games have their own section which splits off into another 4 sections containing approximately 20 games. The ‘Online’ games are existing games that have been modified to incorporate persistent High Score tables where you can compete for bragging rights against other WiC64 players. There’s a global ‘all time greatest’ score table and also a ‘Todays Greatest’ which is a cool feature that gives everyone a shot at fame no matter their skill level as it gets wiped every 24 hours.

All-Time Greatest and Todays Greatest High Scores

I decided to have a blast at Great Giana Sisters next, which being a bigger game, took a bit longer to load, coming in at a whisker over 20 seconds. Still mightily impressive and if you don’t own or have a copy of the game to hand the sheer convenience of this system is game-changing. Imagine having an entire catalogue of hundreds of games and being able to tap into them whenever you want and play them on your real C64 with persistent high scores stored in the cloud adding a new competitive edge to the gameplay.

Great Giana Sisters – WiC64 High Score Edition

There’s currently only 2 multiplayer games; Artillery Duel Deluxe and Multorio. Multorio appears to require the username of the person you want to play against upfront before it will do anything so as I don’t know anyone else using it I’ve not been able to try this.

Artillery Duel Deluxe

However Artillery Duel Deluxe is a lot more user friendly and will let you play against random people online, play local multiplayer or even just play solo. It even has a spectator mode called ‘Onlooker mode’ where you can watch other players duke it out! I’m not sure if this is live or more of a replay of past battles but it’s still entertaining!

Artillery Duel Deluxe

Obviously this isn’t Steam or Xbox Live so finding other users online can be tricky which is why the solo mode is much appreciated. I assume this is probably why the developers seem to be focusing on asynchronous gameplay, affording everyone the opportunity to compete against others, any time they want.

Internet Radio

WiC64 Radio is another program I found myself coming back to time and time again. It’s tucked away in the ‘Apps’ section of the ‘File Area’. Personally I would have thought the Internet section was more appropriate but it didn’t take long for me to remember where it was located.

WiC64 Radio

I absolutely adore SID chip music and this program supplies a never-ending stream of it over the internet directly into your SID chip. The program will just keep playing an endless stream of fantastic SID tracks until you close it. If you come across one you’re not so keen on you can just tap space to skip it and move onto another,

WiC64 Radio

Not only that but you can create a custom playlist of your favourite tracks too. The screen displays lots of info about the track currently playing including the author, title, it’s release date and run time. I tend to load this up and just leave it running in the background – you can’t beat some classic SID tunes being played through real hardware.

Demo’s

One of the things I used to love doing in my youth was watching and listening to scene demos on both my C64 and later on my Amiga. Well the WiC64 has got me covered here too with a nifty Demo section containing 8 demo’s filled with pulsating graphics and sound for that shot of nostalgic dopamine.

“Quadrants” Demo

Most of these demo’s loaded pretty much instantaneously for instant retro gratification. The Elite Code Mechanics demo soon proved to be a particular favourite due to the amazing music which I could (and did) happily listen to for hours.

Elite Code Mechanics Demo

The still pictures obviously don’t do the demos justice but I just couldn’t get my iPhone to capture video off my 1084 monitor without it turning into a horrid flickering mess.

Crystal Gazer Demo

Ideally I’d like to see many, many more demos appear here so hopefully the developers add to this section over time, after all, most of them are probably in the public domain (unlike the games) so there shouldn’t be too many obstacles to making it happen?

Chat/Messaging

WiC64 seems to be a predominantly German project right now so the Chat and Message board areas are dominated by German users which is a shame but I’m sure in time as more of us come on board this will change

Sadly most, if not all, the messages seem to be in German

However I was intrigued by the ChatGPT option at the bottom of the menu. Surely this couldn’t be THE ChatGPT that is all the rage right now?

Surely not, ChatGPT on the C64?

Chat GPT

Well yes, actually it is. Incredibly the AI revolution has made it to our trusty C64’s in 2024. You can ask it any question and get a near instant reply. It works just like it does on a modern computer, simply ask it a question and it will respond with an answer almost immediately.

ChatGPT in action on the C64

Obviously unlike, for example, Copilot in Windows 11, it is unable to create images but I wouldn’t really have expected that anyway. It also does seem to lack the continuity you get when interacting with ChatGPT on modern systems. For example if you try to tell it a Knock Knock joke it will respond with ‘who’s there’ but then thinks your answer is a new question. Likewise you can start a game of hangman but your guesses don’t seem to be recognised. It’s probably churlish of me to nit pick things like this when the fact it works at all is an astonishing achievement, but it would be the icing on the cake if they could fix this. However ask it any other straight question and you will get just as comprehensive a response as you would on a new computer which is just incredible.

Google Maps!

Yes you read that heading right, WiC64 also gives you a portal to Google Maps on your C64 and what’s more its actually useable too! This is arguably even more impressive than ChatGPT given the graphical overhead involved in drawing them.

Google Maps

You can search for a place or post code from the menu screen or just dive straight in. It seems to have a rough idea where you are already, presumably based on your external IP address, unless it was just pure coincidence that it started me off in Merseyside! Once the map is visible on the screen you are able to zoom in and out using the function keys and pan around using WASD. There’s a choice of satellite view or road map view. Each page refresh takes about 5 seconds or thereabouts to display – eminently useable and I was able to find and navigate around places I know very easily.

Google Streetview!

But there’s more! Pressing ‘V’ toggles Street View so you can look around in glorious 8-bit 3D at your street and even find your house, all on your Commodore 64. I would not have believed this possible if I’d not experienced it myself. It’s an absolutely astonishing accomplishment.

Clocks

There’s plenty more programs and features to be discovered that I haven’t mentioned yet too. For instance there’s an entire sub-menu devoted to a collection of Real Time Clocks (synced to the Internet of course), ranging from a simple digital clock to some downright convoluted affairs that require some serious thought to decipher!

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C/Place Pixel Project

There’s also something called “C/Place Pixel Project” which is an interesting little concept. It’s basically a community art project – you take it in turns with other users to place a single pixel on a 40×50 screen in order to ‘paint’ a picture. If nobody else is around you can make a picture on your own instead! It also has an option to let you watch a timelapse of pictures being created which can be quite mesmerising to watch and a really neat extra feature.

c/place Pixel Project

WiC64 Media Center

This is yet another really cool feature that lets you upload your physical disks into the cloud, either for public use or your own private use.

Uploading one of my disks to the WMC

You simply pop a disk in your drive, enter a few details to help catalogue it so you and/or others can find it in future and then hit upload. Naturally you can also download the disks too.

Downloading a disk from the WMC.

In just a couple of minutes I was able to download a game from the WMC cloud onto a floppy disk with just a few keypresses and then load it up and play it.

Playing the game I’d just downloaded.

There’s a whole repository of disks already waiting to be accessed in the cloud too. This is the sort of thing I could only dream about back when I was a teenager but it’s now a reality thanks to the WiC64.

Honourable Mentions

There’s even more stuff to play around with that I’ve not covered yet including:

MOSCloud Compiler (a facility to upload your BASIC programs and have them compiled in the cloud).
Remote Image Viewer (enter an image URL and it will render it on your C64). I didn’t have much success with this as most online images have horrendously long and complex URL’s and it’s very easy to make a mistake entering them without the option of copy’n’paste. However even when I was absolutely sure I had the URL correct I’d get a ‘failed to process image’ error. Hopefully it’s just a glitch and will be ironed out in due course.
CSDB Browser to keep up to date with the latest C64 releases
RSS Feed viewers for Forum64 and Tagesschau – sadly both in German only.
Telnet program – with a few provided servers to try (similar sort of experience to BBS’s) or you can try entering your own.
A DiskMags section – I found the intro screens and accompanying chip music a lot more entertaining than reading some of them but as always with these things YMMV.

Excess RapidNews DiskMag

Conclusion

I did have a few crashes and lock-ups but nothing major and considering what it’s trying (and succeeding) to do I can totally forgive a little instability. Besides, on the odd occasions it happened I just reloaded the launcher via my 1541 Ultimate-II+ cart and was immediately returned to the exact same position in the menu that I’d launched the program from. It was a minor inconvenience at most. There were also few little issues I had during setup but nothing major and they were all easily solved by a spot of RTFM. There were a couple of sections that seemed to be dominated by German speaking users but hopefully that will change as the device becomes more popular, but even if it doesn’t it only affects a tiny fraction of what’s on offer anyway.

Without a doubt this is an absolutely incredible hardware and software package that really brings the venerable C64 into the 21st Century. It offers so many new ways of accomplishing things, new ideas to try out not to mention the potential new features it may bring in the future. This is one of those devices that every C64 user owes it to themselves to get hold of. Whether you are a gamer or a tinkerer there’s something to interest everyone here and at just £35 it’s a bit of a no-brainer too. SharewarePlus has them in stock now so what are you waiting for? Go get one!

Andy’s Utility Cart Review

8th November 2023

In this post I’ll be taking a look at ‘Andy’s Utility Cart’, a collection of 12 utilities (and one music demo) from SharewarePlus, all combined onto a single C64 cartridge..

The Cartridge and Instruction Manual

The cartridge comes packaged in an attractive cardboard box along with an ‘instruction’ booklet. However this is just a small folded sheet containing a list of what programs are on the cart. No instructions for any of the included programs are actually provided.

Inside the Cartridge

Removing the solitary Philips screw and opening the cartridge shell reveals a smart looking white circuit board hosting a 1Mb Atmel AT27C010-70PU EPROM along with a couple of ancillary chips. The Atmel chip is a ‘one time programmable’ affair that contains all the C64 programs.

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What’s on the Cartridge?

So now that we’ve seen the hardware inside the shell it’s time to see what programs are on it. See below for a full list of what’s included.

64 DOCTOR
64 TESTER
FAST LOADER
TURBO NIB COPY
DISK TOOL b.S
CASS.AZIMUTH
HEAD ALIGN
1541 ALIGNMENT
15 SEC FORMAT
THRUST CONCERT
1541 ALPS CHECK
TURBO 250 [Bonus Program]
DIAGNOSTIC [Bonus Program]

All of the utilities on the cart are selectable from a handy menu screen as can be seen in the photo below. There’s no way to exit most of the programs or get back to this menu screen so you will need to power cycle your C64 to achieve this.

Andy’s Utility Cart Menu Screen

Strangely for a compilation that is described as ‘twelve utilities for the Commodore 64’ there’s actually 13 in total. Not sure why there’s a discrepancy. Maybe they considered 13 to be unlucky? Perhaps it’s because one of the programs, Thrust Concert, isn’t actually a utility at all but more of a scene demo? Alternatively it’s conceivable that they felt some of the programs were a bit samey? Who knows… but I’m certainly not going to complain about having an extra program included!

Back of the box (and a list of what’s on the cart)

Here’s quick look at each of the 12 13 Utilities

64 DOCTOR (Diagnostic sequence by Computer Software Associates)

This is a comprehensive diagnostic program that can help with troubleshooting issues with your C64. It can test the keyboard, video, audio, joysticks, disk drive, datasette, RAM and even an attached printer. You are able to launch a complete systematic scan or you can select a specific test and just run that.

Menu Screen for 64 Doctor

In the photo below I ran the keyboard test which marks each character on the screen as you press the corresponding physical key on the keyboard. Great for seeing at a glance which keys might be faulty on an old keyboard.

Running through the keyboard test

64 TESTER (Comprehensive screen, keyboard & joystick port tester by Tim Cannell)

This is another diagnostic program that focuses on testing the screen, keyboard and joystick ports. The tests are displayed on-screen immediately on launch and includes character maps, colour palette (including overscan borders), along with sprites, and the current status of both joystick port axes.

C64 Tester Screen

Additionally a counter ticks upwards at the bottom, presumably so you know the program is still running/not crashed and a rather annoying ‘Close Encounters’ style 5 note beep jingle is stuck on repeat too which had me reaching for the volume knob after about 30 seconds!

FAST LOADER (Commodore 64 fast disk loader with shortcuts by MR. BYTE)

This one is a floppy disk fast loader utility, presumably similar to Epyx Fastload and the like. Unfortunately in my testing I didn’t have much luck with it and nothing would load with it enabled. At first I had both my 1541 drives on and I was getting an error in German saying ‘Bitte nur floppy anschalten’ which translated to ‘floppy only please’. Not very helpful but I took it to mean ‘one floppy drive only’. Thinking it didn’t like having both drives on I turned one off and tried again. This time I didn’t get that error but instead the screen would just go blank when attempting to load stuff, unsuccessfully. I tried a variety of disks and programs but nothing made any difference. Some instructions for this one might have been helpful – maybe I was missing a vital step. I also made sure my JiffyDOS ROM was disabled, but that too made no difference. Maybe it just doesn’t like my C64? The brief description did mention ‘with shortcuts’ but I have no idea what they are and whether they were optional or a necessity to get it working. In the end I had to throw in the towel and admit defeat with this one.

I may never know how speedy Mr Bytes fastloader is…

TURBO NIB COPY – (Copy Q turbo nibbler disk copier with error scanner by Cracker & CSS)

This is a very handy and easy to use ‘nibbler’ disk copy utility that can copy the contents of one disk to another using either one or two 1541 drives.

Turbo NIB Copy Initial Screen

An option screen allows you to select drive unit numbers for both the source and destination drives letting you configure disk to disk copies if you have more than one drive.

Options Menu

Obviously copying disks is quicker and more convenient using two 1541 drives but it’s still perfectly possible if you only have a single drive at your disposal.

Reading phase

In the case of single drive copying, disks are copied in sections with you swapping the source and destination disks in and out of the drive. It takes four passes (8 disk insertions in total) to completely copy a single disk although the fourth and final pass is much faster than the previous three.

Writing phase

A visual representation of the tracks and sectors being copied is displayed on screen in real-time providing reassurance that progress is being made.

DISK TOOL b.S (Disk Tool V6.5 with comprehensive floppy & disk monitors by Klaus Raczel)

This program includes a whole raft of disk related tools ranging from the mundane like formatting and verifying to advanced sector editing.

Disk Tool Title Screen

Unfortunately the menu’s are all in German which I cannot understand (it’s been nearly 40 years since I studied it at school and I was never particularly good at it anyway). Some of the German words were close enough to their English counterparts that I could understand them, but others, not so much.

Some of the German is easy to understand… some is not

Basically I struggled to use this utility. I did try the translation feature of my iPhone which did a pretty good job of translating the photos I took of the menus to be fair but it made using what is already quite a complex program a chore. One rainy day maybe I’ll go through all the menus and translate them into English…

CASS.AZIMUTH (Cassette Azimuth for aligning & adjusting your datasette by H Diebek)

This is a really useful tool when you are having issues loading software off tapes from your datasette unit. Apart from having a dirty read/write head, azimuth (head alignment) is probably the main reason for having games and programs fail to load. On Commodore’s datasette units you can adjust azimuth using a small Philips screwdriver but you need real-time feedback to let you know whether your are making things better or worse. This program provides that feedback.

Menu/Instruction Screen

I do already have software to do this that I purchased back in the 80’s from Interceptor Micro’s. It came with a little Philips screwdriver and a pointer to attach to it so you could see how much you had rotated it. However it’s one glaring flaw was that the software came on cassette. Not ideal if your read/write head is totally out of whack!

Alignment screen – clearly my drive needs some adjustment…

The program displays the data being read off a C64 tape in real time as little black dots falling down the screen. This allows you to fine-tune the azimuth on the fly by adjusting the screw until the dots appear as orderly and distinct thin vertical lines (rather than be splattered across the screen). In the photo above there is certainly room for improvement on my deck.

However it’s important to remember that azimuth can vary on a tape by tape basis as much depends on the azimuth of the machine that recorded the program onto the tape in the first place!

HEAD ALIGN (Minimal head alignment v1.1 for your datasette by Enthusi)

This is basically another Datasette azimuth alignment program only this time a more streamlined, bare bones version that doesn’t require you to press any keys to start the process. It also didn’t like having my JiffyDOS ROM enabled and refused to supply power to my cassette port until I disabled it. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Head alignment screen

1541 ALIGNMENT (Commodore 1541 disk drive track & sector alignment by Antiram)

This is a comprehensive track/sector alignment tool for tuning 1541 drives. Happily my drives are in perfect shape so I didn’t mess around with this program at all but it’s a very useful tool to have in ones toolbox for when the need arises for sure!

1541 Alignment Menu Screen

15 SEC FORMAT (Fast 15 second formatter by Mike J. Henry & Alf Maier)

This literally does what it says on the tin – load it and it prompts you for a disk name and ID number. Enter these and press RETURN and away it goes!

The name’s Bond…

In fact calling it ’15 Sec Format’ actually does it an injustice as I found it was consistently formatting disks in 12 seconds. Using JiffyDOS made no difference to the speed in this case. The program ends once the format is complete but you can simply RUN it again to format another. If you have a whole bunch of disks to format then this would be a great solution.

THRUST CONCERT (Music concert featuring Rob Hubbard & Jeremy Smith by Stoat & Tim)

This isn’t a utility but still a welcome addition to the cart. I suppose it could be considered a ‘sound test’ but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Stoat and Tim Present…

This is basically a music demo and I do actually remember listening to this quite a lot back in the day. The demo features the music Rob Hubbard created for the budget Firebird game callerd ‘Thrust’ and is ‘played’ by a band of animated computer characters.

Rob Hubbard on keyboard (bottom right)

If, like me, you love Rob Hubbard’s music then this demo is an essential listen.

1541 ALPS CHECK (Alps 1541 drive alignment with LED & stepper motor tests by Commodore)

This is another terrific 1541 diagnosing program that allows you to test/adjust everything including the LED’s, head alignment, stepper motor speed and even the write protect tab. A very useful program to have, especially on cartridge in case your drive is in no state to load up your utility floppy.

1541 ALPS Check Menu

Bonus Programs

F1. TURBO 250 (Turbo cassette load & save by Mr Z)

This is a pretty simple but effective program that allows you to save (and then subsequently load) programs onto cassette tape in turbo format. It cannot load non-turbo programs from cassette at faster speeds as the speed itself isn’t altered. What this program actually does is increase the density of data saved onto a tape. With more tightly packed data, any given length of tape will contain a larger section of the saved program and thus when read at the same speed, loads more of that program into your C64’s RAM. Ultimately the result is that the program loads in a fraction of the time.

Turbo 250 Menu Screen

Of course densely packed data is more susceptible to read errors but with this cart you have the tools required to sort that problem out too!

F3. DIAGNOSTICS (Diagnostic Program 324528, by Commodore)

This is another C64 diagnostic program that tests things like RAM, Timers, Memory and Colour output.

Diagnostics Test

It runs all the tests automatically on launch and loops through them continually. A counter is updated at the end of each test cycle allowing you to keep track of how many times it has run, useful for bench testing a machine after a repair for example.

Colour Test

Final Thoughts

Andy’s Utility Cart is a really useful collection of utilities to have in your arsenal. Sure, there are a few duplicated programs but this allows you to pick the one that suits your needs best.

It’s a shame I couldn’t get the Fast Loader to work and that the Disk Tool utility is presented in German but there are loads of other programs available so it’s far from a dealbreaker. There are no instructions provided (nor links to online documentation) so you either need to know what you are doing or be prepared to do a bit of research and hunt around online for information in order to get the most out of some of the packages.

Priced at just £18 it’s easy to forgive these minor shortcomings anyway. I certainly had a lot of fun playing around with all the programs on the cart and have no doubt I will be using several of the utilities to maintain my disk drives and datasette.

The cart is available from Tim Harris over at Shareware Plus priced at £18 at time of posting.

C64 User Port Expander

23rd February 2023

Over the years I’ve amassed quite a number of C64 peripherals that attach via the User Port. Off the top of my head I have a Wi-Fi modem, FM Radio, MP3 Player, sound sampler, Parallel printer device, Power Monitor, webcam interface not to mention DIY contraptions from various electronics projects. I’ve probably got other stuff that I’ve forgotten about too. Constantly swapping all these device over is a bit of a pain and not only that it must exact a toll on the user port which has already seen decades of wear and tear. Suffice to say that this all lead me to the idea of getting hold of some sort of user port ‘expander’ device.

Don’t press that big red button… unless you want to reset your C64!

I reached out to Tim Harris over at SharewarePlus who stocks a plethora of Commodore 64 peripherals and as luck would have it he had such a device in stock and sent one over. Once attached it provides three user port edge connectors instead of just one. As an added bonus it also incorporates a handy (impossible to miss) reset button on the board too.

Underside of the user port expander.

I immediately set about attaching everything I could to the expander to see what would work and what wouldn’t. There’s certainly one glaring issue right away in that anything you hook up to the right hand connector is going to interfere with the datasette port.

Nothing is connecting to the right-hand side unless I remove that tape adapter!

I had to disconnect my 1541 Ultimate II+ tape adapter to be able to attach anything I owned on that side.

A losing combination of user port gizmo’s.

The other issue is that not everything plays nicely with other devices as they are sharing the same connections. My FM Radio was particularly anti-social in this respect and refused to work at all when anything else was attached to the expander. However my MP3 player, Wi-Fi modem and Power Monitor were all much better behaved in this regard. I had a great time listening to some tunes from my MP3 player whilst browsing BBS’s via the Wi-Fi modem. Awesome stuff!

Winner winner, chicken dinner!

I haven’t tested every combination of devices together but it definitely requires a level of experimentation to see what will work. Don’t get one expecting to be able to just attach three random devices and for them to just work. I will be leaving the expander connected most the time, even if it means only having a single device attached to it. Why? Because it will stop the wear and tear on my user port – the poor thing has been getting used and abused for forty years now, it deserves a rest!

Happy compromise so that I don’t lose access to my datasette port.

The reset button worked well although I usually just use the one on my 1541 Ultimate II+, it’s nice to have another option. My only other criticism would be that the expander isn’t supported in any way so the weight any devices attached causes it to droop down at an angle. This isn’t really that much of an issue since the user port is quite low and the length of the board means the angle it comes to rest at is pretty shallow.

Added a couple of silicone feet to the board.

However my OCD just couldn’t let it slide so I had a rummage around my junk drawer and found a few silicone feet that were the correct height and attached them to the bottom of the board.

Board is well supported now.

With the little feet attached I was much happier as I knew the weight of the board and attachments wasn’t going to put any strain on the solder joints.

Pros & Cons

This is a great little device to have in your arsenal of C64 peripherals and can potentially offer a lot of convenience and functionality, provided the devices you choose to hook up are mutually compatible. It will also help to protect your C64’s user port and if you don’t already have one, the reset button comes in really handy and saves wearing out the power button on your C64.

It’s by no means perfect though, especially if you want to keep using your datasette port. Doing so effectively means you lose the use of a connector. I suppose a version with vertical slots would help here, but in my case that would create a new problem as my monitor stand only offers 8cm of headroom. Some extra circuitry to allow you to disable a slot if an attached device won’t play nice would be a boon too. Regardless I’m really happy with it as it lets me use two devices at the same time and when I do need to swap over to a difference device I know that it isn’t wearing out that edge connector on my 64.

If you would like to get a user port expander for your own C64, head over to SharewarePlus and drop Tim Harris a message to let him know what you are after and he’ll sort you out.

A C64 MP3 Player!

11th February 2023

2 Comments

Given that the much more powerful 16-bit Amiga 500 is unable to play MP3’s you could be forgiven for thinking that the lowly 8-bit C64 has no chance. Well it’s time for a re-think because equipped with this nifty little C64 MP3 Player device your humble C64 can now play MP3 files without breaking a sweat!

The C64 MP3 Player Top View.

This slick little device was designed and hand built by a chap called Pietro in Italy. It consists of a larger PCB, approximately 7cm x 7cm in size with a smaller 4cm x 4cm Mp3 ‘daughterboard’ attached to it in one corner. It didn’t start out looking like this though. Pietro’s first prototype consisted of a bunch of wires and components soldered directly to a user port connector. Only once he knew it all worked did he set about designing the PCB to do the job in style.

The larger PCB links the power and control lines of the MP3 module to the corresponding connections of the C64’s user port. He also added a few extra components into the mix to enable an LED illuminate when the device is playing music.

You can clearly see the tracks snaking around the board on the back of the device here.

Pietro tells me that it started out in life as an MP3 ‘voice playback’ module he picked up off AliExpress. Although the module was designed to be used with an Arduino device, after some tinkering he figured out which pins controlled things such as next/previous track, volume up/down etc. He then set about writing the software to control it in C using the CC64 compiler along with a bit of Assembly where speed was a factor.

From left to right; MicroSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack and line out.

There’s a lot of connectivity packed onto that small daughterboard including a MicroSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, line-out connection and also a Micro USB socket. You can control the output level of the line-out using a small potentiometer on the daughterboard.

The blue cube in the centre is a potentiometer to control the line out level. Note also the Micro USB socket that allows connection to a PC.

The last thing of note to point out is the bright red DIP switch array. There are three little switches here that can be configured in different positions here according to which piece of software you want to use it with.

Lets Play Some MP3’s

The first thing to do is get some music onto a Micro SD card. It doesn’t seem to be fussy about what cards it will read so I just used a cheap one off Amazon and have had no issues with it.

Micro SD card inserted.

To actually get music onto the device you can either pop the MicroSD card into a reader on your PC and copy it across, or alternatively, you can connect it via a Micro USB cable and it will appear on your PC as a mass storage device allowing you to copy music across that way. The device is able to play MP3’s at up to 320Kbps without issue and also lossless WAV files. However FLAC files appear to be unsupported so if you have a bunch of these you want to listen to then you’ll need to convert them over to MP3’s.

A blue LED will light up once the board is connected to a PC via USB cable.

Obviously the board must be plugged into the user port and connected to either an external powered speaker (my personal preference) via the 3.5mm headphone jack or a suitable amp via the line out but I didn’t have one available to test this side of things.

MP3 Player hooked up to the C64’s user port.

There’s a few different programs that Petro has written for the player. The “basic” program toggles the 8 pins to select a track number from 1 to 255 whereas the “one” version as he calls it uses the One-Line interface from which you can also change the volume, EQ setting and more. Naturally as the second one offers the most features it’s the version I opted to use.

Once the software has loaded (only takes a couple of seconds) you are presented with a screen reminding you about which mode the program is using and how to set the DIP switches. Assuming they’re in the correct position simply hit ‘return’ to continue. If the switches are set wrongly then you must do as it suggests and turn off the computer and move them into the correct positions before trying again.

Checking the DIP switches are correctly set.

Sadly file/track names are not supported here so you must know the number of the track you want to play. If there was one feature I’d like to see in a future version, track names would be it!

The MP3 Player Interface.

The main program screen provides pretty much all of the features you would expect from an MP3 player. You can start, pause and stop a track, skip back and forth and navigate through directories too as these are also supported. There’s a full repertoire of extra functions, such as repeating a single track, repeating all tracks or repeating everything within a directory. Random track play is also supported in a similar way. If you know which track number you wish to play you can skip straight to it using the ‘select file’ option.

The player software also includes an Equalizer that really has a dramatic effect on the sound playback. The choices provided are; ‘Normal’, ‘Pop’, ‘Rock’, ‘Jazz’ and ‘Classic’. Finally you can control the volume in 30 increments using the +/- keys.

Final Thoughts and Availability

This really is an amazing and fun little device that adds yet another string to the C64’s already impressive entertainment bow. The quality of music playback is terrific and provided you keep a little printout of what files are on the card handy, navigating around your collection is fairly straightforward. The one caveat I must point out though is that you do need a powered speaker or headphones with a suitable pre-amp to listen to it. This is because the device itself lacks an amplifier of it’s own so although you can plug headphones directly into it, the sound you’ll experience is quiet and tinny.

The Original eBay auction advert for the MP3 Player.

Unfortunately Pietro informed me he only made a handful of these devices for fun so doesn’t have any more of them available for sale right now. However he says he’s totally open to the idea of making more if the demand is there so if you fancy one of these for yourself get in touch with him over at his eBay store and let him know!

Commodore 64 FM Radio Module

3rd February 2023

If you’ve ever wanted to have an FM radio built into your C64 then your dreams have just come true. I spotted this cool little device whilst browsing around the SharewarePlus website a few weeks ago and have been putting it through its paces since…

What’s in the box?

Included in the box is the radio module, a real time clock (RTC) module, small telescopic aerial, program disk, battery (for the RTC), some fittings and finally some instruction sheets.

Kit Contents.

The board is nicely made and incorporates sockets for stereo audio output, aerial input and a 6-pin female socket header to accommodate the RTC.

Close-up of the Radio board.

Audio port (left) and Aerial port (right).

The RTC features mostly surface mounted components on one side along with 6 header pins that will allow it to be plugged into the Radio PCB.

The RTC module.

The reverse side is dominated by a battery holder for a 3V Lithium CR2032 battery which is required to power it.

3V CR2032 button cell goes here.

The RTC attaches neatly to the main Radio PCB as shown in the photo below.

Here the RTC ‘daughterboard’ has been securely attached to the radio PCB.

A couple of small screws top and bottom with a stand-off sandwiched in-between ensures the RTC stays in place as you can see in the photo below.

Close-up showing how the board attaches with the stand-off spacer.

Getting it Working

The FM Radio module plugs into the User Port at the back of your Commodore 64. Sound is output via a standard 3.5mm jack so you can attach a pair of headphones, or, as I did, hook it up to a powered speaker. In order to actually pick up any stations you also need to plug in the included telescopic aerial.

FM Radio plugged in a ready to go.

With the radio board plugged into the C64’s user port, speakers and aerial attached it’s time to power on the C64 and load up the supplied software to get it working.

Contents of the supplied floppy disk.

The supplied floppy disk contains a number of different programs for both the C64 and C128 but the one I was interested in to get the radio working was the first one in the list above; “fmradio-64.prg”.

Initial screen.

Loading it up will initially present the screen above where it will confirm the presence of the RTC, show the current date and time and give you the option to set it too. Pressing ‘space’ loads up the actual FM Radio program.

Using the Radio

With the program running you can control the radio via a basic but functional user interface (UI) that displays all the information you need.

FM Radio Software UI.

The top-left portion of the screen is dedicated to showing the following 6 things:

CPOWER – Power status (Green=ON / RED=OFF)
Mute – on/off
Bass Boost – on/off
Scan – Indicates if the radio is currently scanning for a channel
Stereo – Shows whether channel is playing in Mono or Stereo
50us de-em – ‘de-emphasis’ 50us or 70us setting that can help remove unwanted noise/interference

Moving across to the larger section on the right we can see details about the currently tuned channel along with the volume level and signal strength. If you have stored a channel in a ‘preset’ and named it then that will be displayed too under ‘Station name’.

In the strip below (providing you have set it already) the current date and time will be displayed.

Finally below all this and occupying the majority of the screen is the channel preset/listing area. This is basically a list of all the channels you have stored and the names you have assigned them.

How well does it work?

As the C64 FM Radio is digital rather than analogue, tuning in to stations is really simple. You can initiate an automatic channel scan up or down the FM frequency by tapping ‘;’ and ‘:’ respectively. Alternatively you can nudge the tuner up or down 100Khz at a time to fine tune a station yourself by using the ‘U’ and ‘D’ keys. The radio will not automatically retrieve channel names but once you have tuned in a channel you like you can press ‘C’ to store it and assign it any name you like (up to 12 characters) and save it into one of the 16 available slots. These presets are saved to disk when you quit the program. The first 10 presets can be quickly accessed by simply pressing the corresponding number on the keyboard. Alternatively, you can use the cursor keys to move up and down the list and press ‘return’ to select one.

Here’s a short video of me using the radio, switching channels and so on, all from my C64.

Once you have tuned into a particular station you have the option of changing between mono and stereo reception and toggling a ‘de-emphasis’ setting to improve the audio. I found tuning to be mostly ‘all or nothing’ meaning that most of the stations either tuned in perfectly or barely at all so I had no use for these tools but it’s nice to have them available. Of course you can also alter the volume level, add Bass Boost or mute the audio all from your C64. The bass boost works quite well too, at least with my Bose speaker anyway.

I was only able to pull in a couple of local radio stations initially with the supplied telescopic aerial but I do have a lot of electronic equipment in my man cave that could well be affecting reception. However I replaced the supplied aerial with a 2m long aux cable I had lying around and was then able to pull in a few more channels. Who knows what I could pull in if I had an even longer one! If it’s been a while since you used an FM radio then you might have forgotten how finicky they can sometimes be depending on where they are placed and what direction the aerial is pointing in etc. Luckily for me, my favourite radio station (Greatest Hits Radio) was one of the two I could receive with the supplied telescopic aerial. The quality of the reception was spot on too so I was quite happy to continue using the stock aerial.

I should point out that the FM Radio hardware is doing all the work here. The C64 just interfaces with the board to provide power and interact with it via software. This becomes pretty obvious once you quit the program or reset your C64 because the radio continues to work. However this allows you to play a game on your C64 whilst listening to the radio so is actually a positive for me!

GEOS

The included RTC works with GEOS (after you install a small driver to read the time from it) which is amazingly useful and really cool. Sadly this latest radio design (there have been at least 3 different ones used that I’m aware of) doesn’t yet work with GEOS but the guys behind this project are working on a revised PCB that should fix this in the future.

I was able to get hold of an older version of the Radio hardware that still works with the GEOS Radio program and it’s a really slick experience. It provides a modern, mouse driven UI for the radio with a nice chunky digital channel display. You can see how attractive the radio app is in the photo below.

Radio program running within GEOS.

Where to get one?

I picked up my C64 FM Radio kit from Shareware Plus in the UK. If you fancy getting one yourself you can find them here. It’s not only a fun piece of hardware to tinker around with but its really useful too. The clock feature for GEOS alone made it worthwhile for me. Just be aware that if you have your heart set on using the radio with GEOS then hang fire until they revise the board to work correctly with it.

Wireless Amiga and C64 Gamepad Review

23rd January 2023

Amiga, Reviews, VIC 20

I spotted this wireless Amiga gamepad in an advert in the latest issue of Amiga Future magazine and ordered myself one immediately. Reading a physical Amiga magazine in 2023, seeing an advert in it and actually being able to order the item in that advert is a pretty special experience for me as a retro gamer. Normally when browsing through old Amiga magazines I see adverts for products and from suppliers that are long gone, but this was like being back in the early 1990’s all over again!

Advert in Amiga Future Magazine.

It’s full name is the “TURBO 2000 Super – Deluxe Wireless GamePad Controller” which is ridiculously OTT in a loveable 80’s kind of way. I picked mine up from their eBay web store but they’re available elsewhere online from other retro retailers too.

The box front.

Despite coming from Germany delivery took less than a week and I had no import fees to pay. Yippee! 🙂

Back of the Box.

It came packaged in a pretty slick and colourful box that definitely wouldn’t look out of place on the shelf in your local game store.

Batteries Not Included

Opening up the box reveals a couple of instruction sheets, a dongle with a standard 9-pin DSub plug and of course the gamepad itself.

Everything you get inside the box.

They actually make four different versions of the gamepad for the Amiga, C64, Atari VCS and Atari 2600. They’re all the same physical device though, it’s just the vinyl sticker on the controller that differs for each version.

The wireless dongle and gamepad.

I chose the C64 themed controller as the colours just appealed to me the most.

Bottom of the Gamepad.

The controller takes 2 AAA batteries (not supplied) that fit into a little compartment on the underside.

AAA Battery Compartment.

Connecting the Gamepad to the Amiga

Connecting the dongle and gamepad to the Amiga could not have been any simpler. You just plug the dongle into the joystick port as normal (or in my case my Roboshift), power on the Amiga and then power on the gamepad.

Hooking the Wireless Dongle up to my Roboshift device.

When you first plug the dongle in and power on your Amiga, a red LED on the device flashes signifying that it is trying to pair with the controller.

The Wireless Dongle.

As soon as I powered on the gamepad (which also had a small red LED above the D-Pad) both LED’s became solid red right away.

Notice the little Power/Connectivity LED above the D-Pad.

What’s it like to use?

The gamepad is well constructed and nicely finished in a textured matte black plastic. The vinyl sticker on the front is really well made and looks professional. The textured finish makes it easy to grip and having a set of batteries inside it means it has a nice bit of weight to it.

Close-up of the buttons.

The gamepad features 3 fire buttons (labelled 1, 2 & 3) and a dedicated ‘UP’ button which is a real boon in platform games. The ‘MAP’ button is used to switch around the fire buttons depending on your preference or system being used. It can also be used to switch the ‘UP’ button with fire button 1 should you wish. The ‘AUTO’ button toggles the auto-fire feature on and off. 4 different auto-fire speeds are configurable on the pad; 1, 5, 8 and 13 ‘clicks per second’.

The D-Pad is very responsive and easy to operate without accidentally triggering a diagonal direction unless you actually want to. The fire buttons are quite stiffly sprung and require a firm push to depress which gives plenty of tactile feedback. It did take me a little while to get used to though. Compared to say an Xbox or PlayStation controller they require much more pressure to operate.

Turrican 2 AGA

Having 2 fire buttons that work on the Amiga is terrific. Playing the new Turrican 2 AGA for example (awesome game by the way) is so much better when you have the 2nd fire button to help trigger extra weapons/abilities instead of having to reach for the keyboard all the time!

Turrican 2 AGA – 2nd Fire Button Configuration.,

This gamepad would be equally awesome for games that support 2 fire buttons on the C64 too. Games like Super Mario Bros 64 and Chase HQ 2 for example.

Another useful feature is that the gamepad turns itself off after a period of inactivity to conserve battery life. Turning it back on just requires a quick press of the ‘AUTO’ button for near instantaneous reconnection.

Final Thoughts

This is an awesome controller and I’m so glad I bought it. I have a ton of retro joysticks and gamepads now but this one has quickly become my favourite. The combination of auto-fire, configurable extra fire buttons and of course the wireless capability means it’s a no-brainer for me. It’s reasonably priced too, coming in at around the same level you would expect to pay for an Xbox or PlayStation controller. Considering this is a low volume product I think the price is very fair indeed.

Needless to say I’m going to order some more so I can leave one permanently attached to each of my Commodore machines! Highly recommended.

FYI

I’ve included scans of the instructions below in case anyone is curious about exactly how the button mapping or pairing works.

Retro Cassette HDD Enclosure

19th January 2023

Retro, Reviews

1 Comment

Picked this funky little retro cassette HDD enclosure up off Amazon a few days ago as I just couldn’t resist the look of it. It’s nothing special, just a cheap enclosure that you can pop a 2.5″ HDD/SSD in for some portable storage. However it’s been designed to look like a cassette tape which is what attracted me to it.

Front of the box.

It supports USB 3.0 as you would expect and claims a 5Gbps transfer speed which I’m not going to bother testing. I’m here for the looks!

Back of the box.

What’s in the box?

Inside the box you get the ‘cassette’ enclosure, a short USB 3.0 cable, some stickers and some rudimentary instructions in Chinese and ‘Chinglish’ as is expected with cheap electronics these days.

A look at what came inside the box.

The enclosure is made from transparent plastic and it came with a protective wrap to prevent scratches which peeled off easily.

Sliding the enclosure open.

Opening the case seemed like some sort of fiendish Rubik’s puzzle at first… until it finally dawned on me that the two halves slid apart instead of unclipping! To be fair the instructions did mention the word ‘slide’ but it was by no means obvious!

500GB Drive fitted snugly inside.

I had a bunch of old 2.5″ laptop drives rattling around in the bottom of my desk drawer so installed one of those inside the enclosure, a process which took all of about five seconds.

Lid back on the enclosure.

Putting the lid back on proved to be far easier than taking it off!

Close-up of the business end of the enclosure.

My HDD was pretty chunky so it fit snugly with no room to spare which means it didn’t rattle around. A piece of self-adhesive foam was supplied in the enclosure which could be used as padding for thinner drives such as SSD’s to prevent them from moving around inside the enclosure.

‘Cassette’ stickers.

Of course at this point it still looked like a transparent case with a hard drive inside it. Time to affix the stickers!

Looking a lot more like a cassette now!

Two stickers are supplied in the box, one for each side. I found it much easier to see what I was doing without the drive installed so I took the enclosure apart and removed the drive. Once I’d done that I found them very easy to align and stick on.

Transformation complete.

With the the stickers applied the transformation was complete and I had a cassette tape with a 500GB storage capacity! It definitely looks the part and is a lot more interesting to have than a plain old boring black plastic case.

If you don’t look too closely it certainly looks like a tape…

Below is a photo alongside a regular cassette tape for comparison. Clearly it’s quite a bit bigger but it needs to be so that a regular 2.5″ drive can fit inside.

Comparison with an actual audio cassette tape. Absolutely awesome song too!

Final Thoughts

It worked without any fuss when I plugged it into my PC, just as you would expect really. However it did so whilst looking cool, which is something you can’t say about the majority of storage solutions available these days! It brings a smile to my face every time I get it out of the drawer and everyone who sees it on my desk comments on it which makes it totally worth the few quid it cost in my book.

If I wanted to be really flash I’d probably install an SSD, however I bought it as a fun (and cheap!) way to make use of an old drive so I’m quite happy with it the way it is.

On the off chance anyone wants to pick one up I’ve included an affiliate link below 🙂

Building a Mini PET Kit

5th January 2023