Be Excellent To Each Other

About ten year ago I had a lead (I may still have it) that had a PC parallel port connector on one end and a C64 disc drive port connector on the other. A free piece of software sent d64 files to the C64. The lead cost about £10-£15. I hope that the above does more than this...

Well, for one thing computers don't have parallel ports any more.

If it doesn't have a parallel port, it's not a computer.

As I said it was ten years ago... I'm no technical expert but I thought a USB connector instead of a parallel one wouldn't be beyond reason. The Ultimate thingy seems a pretty comprehensive piece of kit but you're going to have to get some use out of it for that price.

EDIT: Seems I still have it, I think. That is a 1541 connector isn't it?

You can buy a card easily for about £15. Parallel is still used in many industrial applications as is serial. Indeed a piece of industrial equipment that costs half a million quid may have a 20 year working life. I've been in factories where DOS, OS/2 and NT4 are in used as part of the control mechanisms embedded within them.

That C64 adaptor seems quite pricey considering it cost slightly more than it cost to upgrade my Amiga to a solid state hard disk, and to put an accelerator in it with 64 meg of RAM.

Yip thats it - I mentioned the connecting to a parallel port a while back



oh and another alternative

http://www.manosoft.it/?lang=en

(60 euros plus shipping)

So how would I go about getting one into my MacBook Pro, then?

Just kidding, it's a luxury item, that's for sure, and I wouldn't buy one unless I already knew it will see plenty of use.

And it's a standalone kit as well, no dependence on any particular other hardware or OS. All you need is a micro SD card and a way to get files on it.

And it's just nice, so shut up, and stop bringing me down.

Sorry I missed that. If minkboy or someone wants the lead they are welcome to it - if they can get some use out of it. I'm not likely to us it again.

I already have a cable like that, I think, somewhere.

I used it to transfer my personal stuff from my real C64 disks to D64 files. That was probably around 10 years ago as well. Even back then there were problems with a new standard of parallel ports and I had to go to the BIOS to disable the newer features in order not to screw up the precise timing needed to communicate with the C64 (or something like that). AND the software only worked in DOS as well, because Windows couldn't provide exact timing either. At least that's how I understood it. All in all it was a major hassle then, and I can only imagine it would be a lot worse now.

MrD has now added this to his forthcoming Parallel Cable Museum.

People have tried that treatment on discoloured/yellowed Transformer toys(!), and the results unfortunately aren't permanent. The plastic eventually rediscolours, on some occasions within in a matter of months.

No treatment will be permanent as the plastic will continue to react with UV light. But only at the same speed it yellowed to begin with.

However I haven't heard any reports of people treating computers saying they are discolouring that quickly after treatment. You can only treat ABS plastic. I'm not sure a toy would need the same kind of flame retardant that causes the yellowing to begin with. The whole point of manufacturers using that type of plastic was to stop the plastic bursting into flames if the machine/PSU overheated.

Never really known much about C64 stuff... never heard of a DTV certainly, but this mod looks rather impressive.

It does - although a little pricey - DTV is basically one of those 'games in a joystick things but it has a C64 on there and people have hacked it to allow it to run more than the limited number of games it came with - i think it was around £10 / £15 new

I've a couple of DTVs knocking around. I wish I knew someone who'd do mods relatively cheaply (colour fix and reflashing the thing with a personal selection of games), but the last I knew, someone wanted well over $100, which is a bit out of my price-range. (Note that I'm not suggesting people should do the mods for piss-all—it's fiddly work.)

It's time to kicktake this up a notchgear. I've bought myself a top of the range, very expensive, second hand, base model, cheap as hell DVD recorder. No more propping the camera up against the C64 and manually taking pictures at the same time as playing the game for me!

Except when I tune it into the C64's signal I get vertical rolling, even when I pass the signal through a VCR. Back to the camera it is.

Tonight, I'm going to play 'a totally original game for C64 featuring outstanding graphics and a sound track created by a professional Piano Wizard'. I can safely say that I've never played a game like this before.

It's...


Yes, it's Jeff Minter presents Jeff Minter's Hover Bovver by Jeff Minter. I bought it more or less accidentally. Nobody chucks working tapes on my watch.




Ta da!

I wish I were a Piano Wizard. It sounds exciting.




The eighties were a simpler time, it seems. Gordon's a flash bastard with sixteen lawns but no mower, so he calmly heads off to his neighbour Jim's wide open garage and takes his one without a care in the world.

In the background we've got a pleasantly obnoxious arrangement of 'English Country Garden'. Real background music that's more than a few notes long! That is new!




Let the games begin!

Hover Bovver is a bit like Pac-Man. You have to mow all the fuzzy tiles of long grass while avoiding both the dog and the neighbour. I'm really, really bad at it. I'm finding it hard to tell which part of my sprite is where I turn around. I think it's the mower part.

These camera shots aren't working very well with these vivid colours. I wonder what it looks like monochrome.



If the neighbour gets you, you instantly lose a life and Gordon has to go back and get another mower. Thankfully, the tiles don't completely reset or any nonsense like that.




Somewhere along the way I exhausted my supply of Dog Tolerance, causing the dog to run after me constantly. If the dog collides with me, my Mower Overload goes to full and I'm immobilised for several seconds. More than enough time for the neighbour to kill me.

I'm in a bit of a pickle. Gordon runs really slow to start and picks up speed the longer you run in the same direction. This here is perhaps the only situation where I can use this to my advantage and outrun the dog.




Gordon's walk isn't so much a 'walk' as it is a 'thrash'. He looks as if he's suspended by his shoulders and his legs are free to dangle around beneath his body.

I'm on to my last life already. Jeez...




I've got the hang of this now. The dog and the neighbour are jammed behind the impenetrable hedge, leaving me free to mow the remaining tiles of long grass and complete the level.

This looping arrangement of 'English Country Garden' was very nice at first, but it's starting to get a bit old now. I'm glad to not be left here in silence but I'm not convinced that the tune wasn't designed to slowly liquefy the victim's brains. Such is the wrath of the Piano Wizard.




If I hold the fire button down, the dog goes after the neighbour, keeping them both off my back temporarily, but I'm out of Dog Tolerance so quickly that the dog's back in less than a second.

And I'm dead.

Nice one, Gordon. You've alienated yourself from everyone you know and none of them will ever give you the time of day again, never mind let you borrow their mower. Your lack of morals has poisoned your community and everybody starts locking their doors, not talking to each other in the street and generally being miserable.

And then they get tired of that and just kick you out. They worry for a couple of minutes that THEY ARE THE REAL MONSTER, but then they figure out that they're really not and have a great old time without you.

One more go?




OH MY GOD THESE CUTSCENES ARE UNSKIPPABLE.




Damn it. It keeps happening. Without any Dog Loyalty, I can't keep the dog away. And I'm dead. Either I don't know what I'm doing or this game is really, really difficult. Perhaps there's some kind of slick manoeuvre that I don't know about where I can keep my speed while going round corners. If not, then I have no idea.

One more go?




Fire space up down left right run/stop restore F1 F3 F7 F5 enter




Level 3! I turned the music off... is that cheating?

I'm still not getting very far here. The game's rules are consistent, so I'm going to blame the creaky joystick that I got with the C64. This game demands absolute precision and I can't do that with this joystick.

IS IT FUN? It's like Pac-Man except I'm not used to it. And you can't really hide behind things or have epic chases or exploit patterns. So... not exactly. It's a perfectly functional game and it would probably make a good highscore battleground, but I'm not really into it.

On the atari version at least when your on the cutscene if you hold down the fire button your guy runs rather than walks so the cut scenes are much shorter.

Also when I first got this (it was pirated) someone had hacked into the game and replaced the normal text with other things , like when you accidentally hit the dog with the mower instead of the 'oh dear' type thing it said "Sh*t i've muzzled the F*cking dog" , which for the 12 year old me made it one of the best games ever :-)



You want to be taking long runs at things so you get your speed up , and you should be using the dog attack as just a 'tap' which makes the dog advance twards the neighbour while making him veer off (holding it down is a bad idea) , also if you can - avoid the flowers because then the parkie will come out to chase you.

C64 to composite SCART leads can be had on Ebay. If it's a later C64c you can even run S-Video. But given the age of your games I suspect you have a proper breadbin with composite only.

I really can't be arsed faffing around with UHF. It looks nasty and modern LCD TV's really hate tuning to things such as my Atari 7800.

http://www.iphonefreak.com/2010/10/fume ... racer.html

Spotted this earlier today - I'll have to give it a go as the video looked pretty good.

Be warned: Fumes Stunt Racer was fucking awful when I tried it. Maybe it's improved some of late, but the feel of the game was horrible.

The levels aren't really big enough to get a run up properly. I don't even try going over the flowers because the gardener is pretty much instant death for me. The only way I got any use out of the dog was to get the neighbour hooked around a corner, but that's really difficult.


Yep, composite only. I have some cables that can get the composite out, but I haven't tried it because the DVD recorder doesn't seem to like 'artificial' signals (when I put it through the VCR, it liked playing the tapes, but it didn't like the fullscreen set up interface for tuning the channels).

As I've run out of C64 tapes, I've been focusing my efforts on writing a game of my very own. How hard can it be?

As it turns out, not very hard at all.

Presenting...



Legendary 1985 puzzle game Twinz!

Y'know... Twinz...?



How can you not have heard of it?!?!?! It was written in an afternoon in DarkBASIC by a crazy guy who's since disowned it and it only works on Windows and only then sometimes a challengetastic DOS puzzler!

You have to catch your evil twin!

Controls are IJKL to move your guy, R to restart the level if you get stuck and Q to return to the title screen.

Features over eight levels of challenging puzzles to solve!

Complete all the levels for a reward!

Also features a remix of the original Twinz soundtrack!

You should just be able to put the PRG into Vice's 'autostart disk/tap' option and it'll do its thing. Might only work on PAL C64s.

Play Twinz for the CBM 64 today!

I'll come back to this, but

Friends! Internet strangers! Good news!

The X-COM funding panel has reviewed my progress and found it to be satisfactory.

USA, RUSSIA, UK, FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY, SPAIN, CHINA, JAPAN, INDIA, BRAZIL, AUSTRALIA, NIGERIA, SOUTH AFRICA, EGYPT and CANADA are particularly happy with my progress in dealing with the local alien incursion and have agreed to increase their funding:


OPEN THE BOX! TAKE THE MONEY! (Shouting this at funding meetings gets you kicked out.)



That's a lot! And I have to play them all. Eventually. Maybe. I don't know if I'm going to write anything about these games given that they're real games and you've probably already seen them before.

Until then, don't forget to read Super Adventures in Gaming every day! Cat face on a post is your guarantee of value!

What's that sneaking around in the bottom left corner?


It's this week's C64 challenge game Ghosts 'n Goblins!

Or, according to the spine, Ghost 'n Goblins. They hadn't finalised the contract with all of the ghosts at the time of printing, so they decided to play it safe and only indicate a single ghost. (Ah, but, etc!)


Voila! It's working!

No emulators, no special cartridges, no cheating: just me and the game. Will I succeed? Of course not. It's Ghosts 'n Goblins.


This is the furthest I've ever got in GnG. Those damn plants are too good for their own good. I only got this far by being a super gung-ho hero and never waiting around or going backwards. These first two screens are probably the hardest part of GnG for a long while.

You've got the flying gargoyle, the raft bit, the ghosty droppy guys, the end of level boss which is probably impossible without armour-loss invincibility frames and then...


Level two! Or three! I have no idea! I'm further thanRay and that's all that matters.

I immediately start heading right and fall off a jump that looks makeable but in fact isn't. You have to go up and left, then up and right and then fall onto it from above. This jump from above isn't easy because you tend to land on the 'next' platform instead of falling between the crack between the two in the right way.


Land the jump and you end up here. I don't recall what kind of enemies are here... I think there's things that drop stuff on you.


A house full of ogre monsters that turn to face you when you're on the same level? No sweat! Hammer the fire button to batter them with lances that stun for a couple of frames. Get hit by a bat? YOU SUCK!

Now there's several moving platforms... geez. When I land on one, they move higher, so the timing is difficult. I'm starting to run out of time at this point. Luckily, there's armour up ahead and I can defeat the end of level boss using the invincibility frames! Yeah!


Still in a state of utter shock, I arrive on this stage with moving cloud platforms. While I'm standing on one, a second platform arrives from the right and pushes me off into the abyss and I'm dead.


For my fourth or fifth go, I think 15500 is a very respectable score.

My original plan was to cheat and hang around the starting area killing skeletons to get my score up. I couldn't tell when and where they were coming up, so I kept getting hit like a fool.

Many thanks to Craig for his awesome cable. Finding a compatible computer and figuring out how to get it to do aught was an adventure in itself. A fun adventure!

Anybody played Twinz yet? Play Twinz. PLAY TWINZ.

I like this website.

I wrote about this for Retro Gamer a few years ago—it's still, surprisingly, a decent basketball game.


Don't bother with this on tape—waste of time. The disk version's an interesting insight into programmed AI and 'pet digital things' though.

I agree.

i'll play twins tonight (if i still have power 64 on my macbook, and it's a universal binary..)

Looks like a nice haul you've got there MrD - plenty of decent games there, assuming the C64 versions are on a par with the Speccy ones. Who Dares Wins II in particular was a very good variation of Commando.

Is it Konami Ping Pong? I remember that being a cracker.

apparently MacVice works under lion.. but can remember i didn't really like vice

I'm still trying to get anything to stick on a real tape. I couldn't remember whether tape recorders were supposed to obliterate the current contents of the tape or record on top or what. My incredibly old cheap hi-fi didn't erase the tape as it went. I listened to the tape back and I could hear all the different screeches from all my taping attempts. So I ditched it and got myself a shiny Sony TCM-939 for a fiver. Hurrah!

Still can't figure out a good method for realising tapes. I've tried simply plugging my computer's output into the cassette recorder's input, but I'm getting a buzzing noise. I can't tape-to-tape from the magic tape because I haven't got a second cassette player to play from.

I copied the wav file to my cheapo mp3/wav player and recorded from that. There wasn't any noise and the loading seemed to work (from looking at the coloured bars), but the C64 said LOAD ERROR and crashed every time.

I've found a piece of software that I thought had to exist: PTAP and Tapserv. PTAP is a PC program for sending tap files to the C64, which runs Tapserv to writing to tape using the datasette. Will it work? Stay tuned!

My first problem is figuring out how to get files onto the the only computer I have that runs DOS and works with 64HDD. I don't know how to get the CD drive working in FreeDOS and I have a suspicion that the laptop is old enough to not like CD-RWs. As far as I know, FreeDOS can't access USB drives, and there isn't enough hard drive space for me to put Windows Me on it as well. None of my towers have floppy drives any more. S'pose I could use a Linux live CD, but it's really old. I think I've got a many year old version of Slax that works on it.

Yes they are



That could just be volume (which you'd need to get right) or interference.

Tapes on the C64 could also be very temperamental for head alignment - on a 64 tape drive when you press play there is a little tiny hole slightly above the play button where you can put a screwdriver in to adjust the head alignment.
I had 2 basic settings for that - one loaded most of my original games , one loaded most of my copied games.



In theory that should have worked.



No idea about freedos , however there are 2 ways around this - one is search for the dos cd driver (atapi.sys is something that sticks in my mind for it) , have that in the config.sys and you need MSCDEX in the autoexec *or* create a windows 98 floppy from another machine (or download one) as it had a generic cd rom driver which worked in dos - so you boot with that floppy and you should be able to access your CD

I am not sure I understand what you are doing. One thing I remember about C64 "Datasettes" is that they had a tape head alignment that was intentionally way off from normal tape recorders. This made it impossible to copy commercial tapes with normal tape recorders, you needed a two Datasettes and a special adapter in the tape port. I don't know if this is in any way relevant to what you are trying to achieve...

Nah - you just copied with a twin tape deck and changed the head alignment (or hit the freeze button on your cart and dumped it out to cassette)

OK, impossible was obviously too strong a word. I meant not readily possible for your average person at the beginning of the life of the C64 when it all ran on magic anyway...

Messing about with tape head alignment was a major pain anyway, was very hit and miss and would eventually fuck your Datasette. What an incredible relief when Commodore finally reduced the price of the 1541 to something reasonable and my parents yielded and got us a drive. Ah the memories of that magical device after all the tape hassles...