Discovering the Commodore 64

[oracle_jedi]

Picked up two C1702 monitors off Craiglist last week.

 

Haul included a boxed C64 and 1541 disk drive. This is the first 64 I have owned, so I am having some fun discovering what it can do, but also some frustration.

 

Sure, I remember the C64 when it was the hot machine, lots of friends had them. I remember playing games like Elite, Entombed, Dambusters and Thing on a Spring.

 

Now when I try to find those games to download, I am finding they are almost all PAL-only (this is an NTSC machine), or they come in T64 format.

 

I have a VIC-20 and I have Jim Brain's uIEC device, I am familiar with D64 and PRG files, but how I get a T64 file to load on a real 64?

 

Are most 64 games PAL-only? Where is the "fandal" or "atarimania" site for the 64?

[Rybags]

I can't recall that many games being PAL only. But sometimes it could be a simple case of them having a "Cracktro" which crashes on NTSC hardware.

 

For sure, the fact that many games are only uploaded as tape images is a pain. Not sure what can be done there, fairly sure you can't just LOAD then SAVE it to a disk image.

 

There should be utilities around similar to CAS2WAV for the A8 that put a T64 image into an audio file that you can record to tape... but IMO anyone that tolerates cassette loading times must have some sort of masochistic streak.

[youki]

http://www.lemon64.com is a very good site about C64.

[carmel_andrews]

unless you had one of those high speed disk loaders for the c64 (like the one's that came with action replay/expert cart etc), loading a disk game on a c64 is likened to loading a cassette game on an A8, and loading a disk game on an atari is likened to loading a cassette game on the c64 (as most c64 tape games came with turbo loaders)

[saehn]

Sure, I remember the C64 when it was the hot machine, lots of friends had them. I remember playing games like Elite, Entombed, Dambusters and Thing on a Spring. Now when I try to find those games to download, I am finding they are almost all PAL-only (this is an NTSC machine), or they come in T64 format.

 

Try looking at www.gamebase64.com. They usually list PAL/NTSC. Let me know via PM if you still can't find working versions. A good general tip is to try them on WinVICE first with NTSC emulation on and drive emulation off. That should give you a good idea whether they'll work on your NTSC machine with uIEC.

 

I have a VIC-20 and I have Jim Brain's uIEC device, I am familiar with D64 and PRG files, but how I get a T64 file to load on a real 64? Are most 64 games PAL-only?

 

Google DirMaster. It's an easy-to-use C64 file editor, and it will let you extract PRG files from T64s. Then you can use those on the uIEC.

[saehn]

unless you had one of those high speed disk loaders for the c64 (like the one's that came with action replay/expert cart etc), loading a disk game on a c64 is likened to loading a cassette game on an A8,...

 

...or if the disk game itself has a fastloader. However, most disk-based fastloaders won't work with the uIEC.

[carmel_andrews]

i guess this uIEC is somewhat likened to the SIO2xxx product line from the A8

 

Sorry, don't follow the c64 much so not quiet upto speed on 'the scene'