svenonacid Commodore 64 data corner at Fuusiå and oldsk00l posse meeting!

Me (vedos/svenonacid) and SounDemoN/Church 64^Dekadence^Onslaught (Otto Järvinen) were last weekend in Fuusiå happening at Vimma art and activity house. Thanks also for Jani Rand for help! It had many floors with different happenings. There was animation movies, a darkbeat documentary (I guess it was this http://www.darkbeatmovie.com/), circus acts, an electronics workshop (including C-64 activities by yours truly and Otto), art and photography.

We were showing some demos to people and we played some IK+ GOLD (you can get it here: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=3757) with 4-player adapter (though the game has only 3 karatekas to control :), Hat Trick and maybe some more which I don't remember. It'd be cool if someone would hack Hat Trick also to support 4-player adapters, so the goalies could be controlled with two extra joysticks. Ninja/The Dreams... There's a little project for you. ;)

I don't know which type of 4-player adapter Otto had, but it was nice that you could use the third ninja as human player. We had two C-64 setups. One was connected to big LCD flat screen and one was connected to my old trusty 14" television. :)

MMC64 and Action Replay MK VI connected to C-64.

I had MMC64 and Action Replay MK VI connected to C-64 setup with 14" television. The another setup which was connected to LCD flat screen had 1541 Ultimate (http://www.1541ultimate.net/) connected (which Otto brought with him). It was first time I saw it in use. It seemed like a very nice piece of equipment although we had some problems with the file/disk copier. Otto had version with ethernet connector which is a very neat option to do all kinds of stuff. He had 8GB SDHC card filled with demos and games. I noticed my memory card reader doesn't seem to support SDHC cards :(. 1541U is FPGA-emulated Commodore 1541 drive with lots of other options like cartridge support eg. Action Replay or Retro Replay and REU emulation etc... Because it emulates 1541 it supports all kinds of loaders and is most compatible of similar add-ons.

Currently 1541U is sold out, but 1541U-II is coming soon. The only thing which I'm disappointed in it is that it doesn't have network functionality. The homepage says "Ethernet will not be supported until further notice.". I'm not going to buy it until Gideon or someone else implements ethernet into it. Another option is that I'll be patient enough so Individual Computers finishes their very promising product called Chameleon. It has all the options 1541U-II and more. You can read more about it @ http://allt.jonatanforsberg.net/krams/c64/50chameleon.html. Chameleon's VIC emulation core is already available in C-ONE (http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one/). I haven't seen it in action, but I'd really like to see how it copes on frame buffering the VIC chip to VGA compatible frequencies.

We also fixed one C-64 which had broken SID chip (we replaced the 6581R3 with 6581R4) and the VIC chip's metal shield was loose (it is mean't to cool down VIC chip) and we soldered it back. It has maybe broken RF modulator, because when using RF out it gives static noise, but the picture is ok. It also might be that the problem was with the 6581R3 (which had b0rked filters).

When we used C-64's excellent video output everything was fine and the static noise was gone. I haven't got around to build one yet (lazy me!) even though I have all the needed parts for it (we used Otto's audio/video cable). Here's the construction page for it http://sta.c64.org/cbmmonc.html. You need only 3 wires for audio/video cable (audio out, video out, ground).

I'll check it out later if the static noise when using RF signal is gone after us fiddling with the machine and update this blog. You can also take S-Video output from C-64's video output connector. It is recommended to use 300 ohm resistor in chroma line to reduce over saturation in picture. You can find some info here: http://www.bigmech.com/misc/c64mods/svideo.html.

I also lifted pin 26 (EXT IN) from the 6581R4 SID chip so I can use Antti Lankila's and Lord Nightmare's SID chip measurement program http://www.bel.fi/~alankila/c64-sw/yourchip.html. I just need good audio card for the measurement program which at the moment is at my old workplace.

6581 Pinout

The happening started at 12:00 and ended 18:00. The time was flying and I didn't even have time to check what else there was to offer.

We also made a invitation intro (invitro) for the happening. I'll use SOA abbreviation for svenonacid from now on. I'd like to thank Barfly/Extend for starting to do the intro, Hevosenliha/SOA for finishing it and linking the Algorithm/SOA's hidden part to it and ofcourse Vegard/SOA for musics, hukka/SOA for excellent charset and also KeFF for making the HiRes logo and Mâtador Gigante for MR-FLI graphics!

The invitro is also viewable @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_blUV7eGagY. If you watch it there you won't see it fully (because the 10min limit Youtube has for videos, if anyone knows how to get around this please let me know!). Youtube video is missing some scrolltext and the hidden part which is a picture and tune.

The picture uses new graphics mode which Algorithm has developed called MR-FLI (MultiRes FLI) you can read more about it here: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/forums/?roomid=13&topicid=74002. You can download the invitro @ http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=89497. It's really recommended to watch it on real C-64 because the MR-FLI mode really doesn't look that good on computer monitors. Here's also another MR-FLI picture http://ihku.org/~draft/pouet/robo-mrfli.prg.

I will probably write about transferring stuff to real C-64 later on and maybe how to use emulators and configure them properly. I can recommend Hoxs64 for Windows (http://www.hoxs64.net/) which is quite accurate C-64 emulator and is easy to use compared to VICE. If your machine has enough horse power I'd recommend you to go to Settings -> Emulation -> Sound to Resample to get more accurate audio emulation.

You may also need to copy d3dx9_31.dll to %SystemRoot%\system32 directory you can download it from here: http://ihku.org/~draft/blogger/d3dx9_31.zip

Settings to get more accurate sound emulation.

--- HOW THE HECK DO I MAKE HORIZONTAL RULER??? ---

After Vimma I went to a little reunion with my old friends (some of which I haven't seen in ages). It was a very nice to meet all the old friends who I used to hang out years ago. Some of them have moved to another cities and it was a really nice reunion. We had really fun and talked about organizing meetings like this more often! Greetings to all dudes and ladies in the picture! I'm waiting to meet you all again! I had a really nice saturday!

oldsk00l posse meeting (13.3.2010 @ Ravintola Bremer).