Tag - Ultimate

I’ve had a C64 Ultimate on order for several months now and the order status remained disappointingly static for so long I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get mine. Seeing people getting theirs on social media only served to rub salt into the wound. So imagine my excitement to receive a UPS notification out of the blue a few days ago that my parcel was finally making its way to me! Now it’s finally sat in front of me was it worth the wait?

Hats off to Commodore (and UPS) as my C64 arrived in pristine condition, double boxed and well protected inside with thick foam. The Commodore 64 cardboard box itself also remained unblemished and has earned pride of place on display a shelf.

The packaging stays faithful to the original Commodore blue and white stripes and every side is packed with colour graphics, photos and interesting information about the new machine.

Upon opening up the box I discovered not one but two welcome messages – reassuring me that I would be returning to a happy place now that it had arrived.

The accessory box contains a 2.5m long Commodore branded HDMI cable (nice touch), a terrific sheet of Commodore stickers, a USB ‘Cassette’ and the PSU.

Sandwiched between two chunks of thick foam was the C64 Ultimate – ’Starlight’ Edition which I have to say is a beautiful looking machine.

Underneath that I found the User’s Guide, wrapped in bubble wrap to protect it.

Taking a closer look at the contents

Once I’d opened everything up I took a bunch of photographs of everything, obviously, so I could preserve the moment for posterity and of course share it with you guys.

I do love a good sticker and this sheet is jam-packed with excellent ones. Really high quality, glossy and well designed. These will be adorning the doors to my games cupboard for sure.

The ‘Very Second’ ‘cassette’ is apparently continuing a tradition as the ‘Very First’ tape was included with the original C64 back in the 80’s. I say ‘apparently’ as I wasn’t aware of this. As a child my parents couldn’t afford a brand new C64 so they got me a second hand one and a lot of the original accessories and box were missing.

However this ‘cassette’ is actually just a holder for a USB flash drive that slides out the bottom where the tape would normally be. Apparently there are over 100 games, demos and SID music tracks to enjoy on here so I can’t wait to rummage through and experience all of those!

I was pleasantly surprised to find the HDMI cable included, even more so to see it in a Commodore plastic bag.

I love the transparent PSU, I think it may well be the first one I’ve ever had.

It definitely has the first transparent earth pin on a plug that I’ve seen or owned.

Have to say that I was a tiny bit disappointed when I looked at the circuit board inside the PSU though.

No matter from which side I looked at it, the board was lop-sided.

Maybe it was designed this way on purpose to accommodate taller components on one side? I’ve no idea but it does seem a bit odd given the attention to details everywhere else.

At the end of the day it’s a trivial, nit-picking observation and it makes no real difference to how the PSU operates. Just my annoying OCD kicking in! Talking of OCD, when the PSU is plugged into a UK power socket the C= logo is upside down!

I had no such problems with the User’s guide though. It’s beautifully made, spiral bound with luxuriously thick pages and lovely full colour printing.

It features a little guide/mascot figure called C6T4 (a name clearly based on the idea of an 8-Bit Star Wars droid – or ‘Commobot’ as he’s called here) similar to the way the VIC20 guide had little cartoon VIC’s dotted around throughout.

C6T4 pops up here and there to explain or warn you about important stuff, or just to add a bit of charm to proceedings.

The manual is clear, easy to read and weighs in at over 240 pages. It has proper contents and index pages, covers port pin-outs, mainboard sockets and connectors and even has some type-in programs near the back which I’m dying to try out. I love that they kept it spiral bound as it’s so much easier to have it lay open on just the pages you want and it’s infinitely better than a PDF.

A Closer Look at the C64 Ultimate

The right hand side of the machine looks very familiar at first glance. Two joystick ports, an on/off rocker switch and power. However the power socket is now a barrel jack design and that rocker switch does more than just turn the machine on and off. It can also reset the machine or bring up the on-screen menu too.

Around the back of the machine it’s a similar story with a mixture of old and new ports but also some missing ones too.

The cartridge port is present and correct.

Gone is the RF modulator output and the little screw to adjust it. I won’t miss that at all – it used to give a pretty ropey picture anyway. In its place is a 3.5mm audio line out socket and an empty hole.

Moving along I found the familiar round AV monitor port and the serial port so I can still use it with my trusty 1084S CRT monitor and array of original disk drives should I wish to.

Next up is another old faithful – the cassette port edge connector, still alive and kicking in 2026.

Finally I reached the section where I would normally expect to find the user-port but it has now vanished. It has been replaced by an HDMI, ethernet and two USB-A ports. I know a lot of people (gamers) probably never used this port and thus won’t miss it but over the years some of the most interesting C64 projects I’ve come across utilise this port. Spoiler alert – it’s not completely gone, it has a new home and requires the purchase of an extra doodad to bring it back. More on that later.

The keyboard looks fantastic and the translucent red used for the function keys is particularly attractive, and this is all before it’s even illuminated.

I spotted some protective plastic on the C64 and Power badges so naturally I immediately started picking at them until they peeled off revealing fresh shiny lettering underneath.

The underside is well worth checking out too. There’s a lovingly attached label with the C64 Ultimate’s serial number in the centre, flanked by a little gold rosette assuring you that it has the ‘Commodore Quality Seal of Approval’. Over to the right you can see the signatures of the Commodore team on the underside of the motherboard. If I’d bought the cheaper beige edition I would never have seen these. A lovely tribute.

Under the Hood

Before I even switched the thing on I just couldn’t resist the temptation to take a peek inside the case. Out came the Phillips screwdriver and out popped the three screws holding the case together. Glad to see this time around they are using pan head machine screws with threaded inserts in the case. No more shredding plastic posts by accidentally over-tightening!

With the lid raised I could now see what was under the hood and the first thing I noticed was another raft of signatures including David Pleasance (the old MD of Commodore UK) and Gideon (the guy who designed the motherboard).

Also of note, two chunky ZIF sockets where you can install some real SID chips. Not sure if I want to transplant the SID’s out of my real C64C (have both a 6581 and 8580 installed in it on a SIDFX board) or get hold of a couple of ARMSID’s. Or maybe just stick with the onboard UltiSID’s… we shall see!

There’s also a built-in speaker and a couple more USB-A ports too. These ports can be used for USB storage devices so you can have a bunch of games and demos permanently available on some USB flash drives hidden away inside the case for a nice clean look and leave the rear ports free for other things.

In the centre of the board we find the ‘brains’ of the machine, an AMD Artix XC7A50T FGPGA chip sitting within a small daughterboard. I do like how they’ve annotated some of the components on the board like the RAM, Paddle, Audio and both Analog and Digital Video chips.

Moving across to the left-hand side of the board we see a bunch of connectors and wires for the RGB lighting and a white USB-C cable that connects the keyboard. There’s also pin headers labelled as ‘Utility buttons’ which, according to the manual, allow you access dedicated ‘Reset’, “Menu’ and ‘Freeze’ functions directly (think Ultimate II+ cartridge buttons). That’s a definite future project right there!

Directly below the keyboard connector is a MicroSD card slot giving the user yet another option for storing files internally.

Over to the right and directly below the FPGA daughterboard is the missing User Port – a long, long way from home. It appears Commodore sell an adaptor for this which entails hooking up a ribbon cable and having it exiting out the back of the case. Sounds ugly but if I want use of that port I don’t have much choice. Another little future project.

Have to say I’m a bit disappointed with this particular design choice. I mean I kind of understand they probably wanted to leave the mould exactly as it was originally, hence why it still has labels for ‘USER PORT’ and ‘RF’ when neither are there. Also Gideon’s board was designed to fit in original cases. But at the same time they had an opportunity to redesign both slightly when creating the Ultimate so we could have had the best of both worlds; retain the user port in the correct location and move the USB, ethernet and HDMI elsewhere.

Power On

After having a good nose around both the exterior and interior of the machine, and lamented what could have been, it was time to put those screws back and power up the new girl!

I flipped the switch and after a couple of seconds (not instantly like the old days) she flickered into life in all her ’Starlight’ glory. Flicking the switch upward momentarily whilst the machine is on brings up the menu screen whilst holding it upward for a full second resets the machine. You need to hold it in the downward position for four seconds to power the C64 off. It’s not called a multi-function switch for nothing! However it quickly becomes almost second nature.

Initially the screen was set to something pretty safe and low-res, looking rather stretched on my 32” monitor.

However after delving into the Video options and changing the screen mode to Full HD (1080P) with scan-lines enabled that all changed. The aspect ratio was now correct, the picture was pin sharp and it just looked the business.

Next I decided to connect it up to my Wi-Fi network, which, as it turns out, was very straightforward. It picked up my 2.4Ghz WiFi SSID (doesn’t see 5Ghz ones) straight away with no faffing about. It did throw me at first as it doesn’t pop up any sort of ‘Connected’ confirmation – you type your password in and nothing happens. However if you back out to the previous screen you can see the ‘Link up’ status and your current IP displayed on the screen.

Web Crawling

With my C64 Ultimate now connected to the internet I decided to give ‘Commoserve’ a go. I typed in the names of a few of my favourite SID tunes, Myth, Cybernoid and Supremacy, and listened to them using the built-in SID player. They sounded awful (bet you weren’t expecting that!). Myth in particular has a bass-line that should be sustained from one chord to the next but it just wasn’t so each chord would play for a second or so and then end, leaving the track largely bereft of bass.

I immediately dived into the ‘Audio Setup’ menu to have a tinker around. There are a lot of things you can tweak there but a quick fix for me was to change the UltiSIDs Filter Curve from 8580 Lo to 6581 Alt. This made a night and day difference immediately. At some point I will sit down and check out how all the different controls affect the sound but for now I was content to just enjoy my SID tunes.

In the little video below the first section is Myth played ‘wrong’, you then see me make some changes and then play the same section again, ‘right’.

 

 

It’s not just SID’s you can find on Commoserve but demos and even games too. Once located using the search function you can mount and run the .D64 images as if they are stored locally, a lot like how the WIC64 I reviewed a couple of years ago operated only this is all built into the machine, no extra hardware required. Very cool indeed.

Firmware

The same day I received my C64 Ultimate I received an email off Commodore saying they had released a new v1.1 Firmware would supersede the v3.14 it shipped with because… reason. So of course, like a true pioneer, I threw caution to the wind and set about updating.

The firmware file is found on the Commodore Download Center and once downloaded just needed unzipping to a FAT32 formatted USB drive. With the new firmware on a USB drive I just popped it into one of the rear USB ports on my Ultimate and used the Disk File Browser to locate and run the file.

It asked me a slightly scary question next, did I want to ‘Reformat Flash Disk’? As my nan always used to say ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ so I hit yes and let it do its thing.

A new screen came up, reassuring me with steady progress including the flashing of the ESP32 WiFi module. I’d say the whole process probably took less than two minutes and culminated in the C64 powering itself off (yes that’s actually thing it can do now).

I turned it back on and checked the System Information screen again and was pleased to see that the version was now reported as 1.1. I was slightly less pleased to discover that all my little tweaks to the screen mode and UltiSID’s were lost in the process so I had to spend a little time putting things back just the way I liked them.

The new firmware apparently fixes a bunch of little issues but it did add a terrific new feature that I found really useful. It allows you to use the ‘left arrow’ at the top-left of the keyboard to navigate back a menu. Sounds like a trivial addition but it was huge for me. Decades of muscle memory built up pressing escape on PC’s to do just that means I was instinctively pressing that key to back out already, only to then realise my error when nothing happened. Awesome.

Rounding Off (yes it was worth the wait!)

I’ve only scratched the surface of what this machine can do here, there are many features that I’ve not even looked at yet. Networking it with my computer to transfer files, using the modem, the virtual printer, trying the turbo boost and loads more. But that’s a great place to be in my book, having things left to discover and enjoy.

I’m really glad I paid the extra and got the Starlight edition – it looks fantastic, even when the lights aren’t on. I have seen a few people complain about keyboard flex on this model but I have no such issue with mine – it’s rock solid no matter where I apply pressure.

There is one downside to the lighting though – certain colour combinations can make reading the keys rather tricky. Not a dealbreaker, just something to be aware of if you are likely to make use of it for typing rather than just joystick waggling.

Is it the ‘Ultimate’ C64 though? It’s certainly pretty damned close. But there is a little room for improvement by including a proper User Port, making that MicroSD card slot accessible from the rear and factory fitting those ‘Utility Buttons’ too!

I’ll leave you with a little video of my C64 Ultimate playing a SID track whilst putting on a light show of its own to the beat of the music. I’m off to see what’s on that The Very Second USB ‘cassette’.