badmojo: Show her Giana Sisters on C64. So she can experience the genius of Chris Hülsbeck , as a musician. And then you can always show her Turrican too.

I am just curious here - do you still use this C64?

Or has the thrill worn off and it is now sitting in a closet?

I keep thinking about getting one myself. But I am afraid that will be what happens - once the thrill has worn off, I would realize what is the point in doing anything with it.

At one time I had got pretty good with machine-language on the C64 - wrote an arcade game that could hold its own. But, unfortunately, by that time the 386 was out and the world had long since moved on. The C64 magazines were at that point a shell of what they used to be.

Still, there is a HUGE amount of nostalgia there. I actually downloaded some of the programmer's reference manual and was reading it. What memories. Still remembered that 1024 was the start of screen memory.

Yeah it spends most of it's time safely packed away, but then so does most of my retro gear - 2 kids and a new job doesn't leave much time for anything else. But I certainly don't regret the time and money I've spent on it, it's such an interesting piece of computing history.

I say go for it while they're still relatively affordable. There's a great community around the C64 and heaps of new hardware and software projects, so there's always something to do.

The only reason mine's still packed away is that I don't have a monitor/display for it 🙁 I don't even have a TV to hook it up to. Generally, I prefer playing my games on real HW instead of emulators. But when I did have a monitor it worked on, I still used it 😀 Too bad it went bad on me, I don't know enough to fix them, and it was making some rather scary popping sounds (and the tube wasn't working,) last time I tried it.

Yeah the screen thing bothers me too - I do have a nice little sony CRT for the job, but I don't have the room to have it set up all the time. I've tried various methods for running it through my VGA CRT, which I do have set up permanently, but the results are never quite OK.

When I rule the world, one of the first things I will decree is that someone develop a display that handles all of my inputs, from 8 bit console up to HDMI gaming machine.

Just came across this thread and thought I would add in my small C64 contribution. I did a thread on another great forum about it, but alas they are more the current hardware folks. A few did enjoy the flashback to their younger years with the pictures though so all was not lost.

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=44826

Enjoy the read if you so choose =)

I got way too carried away with getting a working c64 last year as well. Before you know it you end up with 6 c64's, a bunch of tape and floppy drives and a 1541u ordered 😀
You really want svideo inputs on a monitor for best quality, but I can just use my dell which has hdmi/dvi/composite and component inputs as the ultimate input I guess.
My oldy neovo I picked up from work has nice s-video inputs http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3873490/ha … 64_screen_1.jpg

yeah.... all of the above is why I am having serious second thoughts.... the chance of getting a good 1541 is small.... unless lucky I would wind up with 2-3 of them

and.... I keep thinking.... there's a *reason* why I got rid of that stuff

once I got a 486 with win 3.1 and started getting on the internet.... forget it

Having a nicely working c64 together with one of the fancier cartridges so you don't have to bother with real floppy/tapes anymore is always nice for a retro collector. But yeah what are you really gonna be doing with it, I don't like the games on them and it's mostly seeing the demos on the real deal that interested me. Maybe even trying to make a demo but that's much easier to just do in an emulator .

Goosebumps

ncmark wrote:

I am just curious here - do you still use this C64?

Or has the thrill worn off and it is now sitting in a closet?

I've had the C64 on my mind since you brought this thread up, so I found a spot for it. I needed to do a bit of work on my Wico stick, one of the buttons of which was jammed on. I haven’t looked inside one of these old sticks before, they’re simplicity itself. I guess that’s why they’re so reliable.

The C64 is still humming along, powered by the C128 PSU which barely gets warm. It’s tons of fun but if I’m honest it’s the 1541UII – a modern invention – that’s the key to unlocking the magic. Being able to load anything, quickly and easily from a USB key, makes all the difference. I don’t have the time or patience for tapes and floppies anymore.

badmojo wrote:

...but if I’m honest it’s the 1541UII – a modern invention – that’s the key to unlocking the magic. Being able to load anything, quickly and easily from a USB key, makes all the difference. I don’t have the time or patience for tapes and floppies anymore.

That's like removing 50% of the nostalgia and fun factor. 😒

That really was a remarkable restoration job you did - the thing looks brand new!

You guys probably know about this side, but it is new to me and I ran across it the other day looking at C-64 related stuff:
http://www.lemon64.com/

ncmark wrote:

You guys probably know about this side, but it is new to me and I ran across it the other day looking at C-64 related stuff:
http://www.lemon64.com/

Yes, excellent site that. I'm still a bit of a C64 noob but I do know that lemon64 was founded by Kim Lemon, who's name I've seen listed in the thank-you's of at least one of those groovy crack intro's you see at the start of cracked C64 games.

It's an active community and very helpful in my experience.

Did you see where someone got hold of the dies and was making brand-new 64C cases? 😀

ncmark wrote:

Did you see where someone got hold of the dies and was making brand-new 64C cases? 😀

Yeah, I saw it on "kick in the nuts starter".

WolverineDK wrote:

"kick in the nuts starter".

+1

I just wonder if he'll actually come through, kinda ironic that he's from Mesquite, TX and his name is Dallas. Hmmm, only time will tell if this is another bait and run scam or legit.

If it was a breadbin mould, and he wasn't fixing on use god-awful non-original colours, then I'd be more interested. But you'd still need to BYO case badges, so you might as well just find an original case. They're not exactly rare!