eightbit Posted May 11, 2017 Share Posted May 11, 2017 (edited) I barely have time to play with all of my vintage computers, but I try to invest some time into each every other night. I figured tonight would be a good ol' C64 night. I have a mint clean C64 and a Ultimate II+ cart which makes life easy. But tonight I was running into odd issues. First, the joystick would only move left and right in the menus (in joystick #2). WTH? Rebooted and it worked again. Odd. Was setting up some settings, and the machine backed out to basic in the middle. Then I played a game and it did it again. Now I am starting to think something is wrong with the hardware (either the C64 or the Ultimate II+) Then I went to play Gyruss. The controls felt weird. I quickly noticed I could not move down. Hmmm.... Then I downloaded this fantasic and useful app: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=31647 Sure enough, the 500XJ I had connected to port #1 has an issue. Down was not working. I replaced it with another and tested that. Down (and all directions, fire) work fine. Now everything works fine. When I first received the Ultimate II+ I ran Gyruss and it would freeze on launch every other time. I never really played it. I was just running stuff and I assumed it was a U2+ compatibility issue of some type. Gyruss is one of those games that use port #1 for gameplay whereas 99% of everything else uses port #2. So, unless you are using port #1 often with something you may never know you have a bad joystick plugged into it. That stupid joystick was the cause of all of my odd problems. There must be a short somewhere in it on top of it not working correctly. Glad that is resolved. At least I found a nice GUI C64 program that can test them Case in point that issues can be from anything...even the most simple of things. Edited May 11, 2017 by eightbit 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjameslv Posted May 11, 2017 Share Posted May 11, 2017 ooh nice! Downloaded this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eightbit Posted May 11, 2017 Author Share Posted May 11, 2017 I also found in all of the madness that there was a Ultimate II+ firmware update that corrects a lot of issues including the floppy speaker whine problem....and adds volume control to that speaker as well. Definitely recommend updating if you have one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danny_galaga Posted May 11, 2017 Share Posted May 11, 2017 ooh nice! Downloaded this. Same here (",) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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