Retrofan 64

@[email protected]
13 Followers
20 Following
89 Posts

Solidly Gen X. Missing the age where 8 bits got you pretty far, and 640K of ram seemed like a dream. I've been computing since Knight Rider was so cool I had to turn off my Vic-20 so I could watch it.

I've also got a lifelong love affair with music. I've loved making music since the C64 SID chip ruled, and the Atari 1040ST was hands down the best MIDI machine on the market.

Proud owner of a Mega65, C64U, Palm M515, and Juno 106.

Bring back the future we were promised!

#nobots

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Show threadRetrofan 6417h ago

My ongoing cowboy style research is showing talk of there being some flat panel TVs like the one I'm using being incompatible. This is, supposedly, due to some fast-and-loose h/v-sync signalling from the original C64.

The solution I'm going with will be to hook up a 1702. The napkin math shows that it's cheaper to eBay one of those than get all the gear I would need (oscilloscope and friends) to troubleshoot the signal timings.

Show threadRetrofan 6421h ago
More proof of life (AV/RGB) with Dreamcast
Show threadRetrofan 6421h ago
Proof of life (vga mode)
Retrofan 6421h ago

Today's frustration.

First: this is only on the C64, both using AV and S-Video. It is there regardless of NTSC/PAL

Second: this monitor works just fine with the Mega65 and was also tested using RGB/AV output from a Sega Dreamcast.

Obviously the C64 is new, and the video cable is also new from commodore.net.

According to (barf) Gemini this was a common problem with the Ultimate, but the "help" it's giving me is utter hallucinated bull.

Oh, and I've also tried a safe mode boot with default settings to no avail.

Has anyone run into this? If you did and ESPECIALLY if you fixed it let me know!

I'm good to just HDMI/dvi, but also want to have a relatively authentic experience.

#c64 #c64u #AskFedi

Retrofan 642d ago

My #rc2014 has apparently made it through customs and is in the sorting facility.

I'm seriously pumped to up my soldering game on this bad boy. It'll also be a treat to have a system that makes my C64 look like a leviathan. :P

Retrofan 64Mar 9

One of my biggest retro regrets is giving up a NeXTStep Color Turbo. This is followed only slightly by getting rid of my Atari 1040ST.

Past me needs a taking to by future me.

Retrofan 64Mar 9

Emboldened by a successful cartridge build, I finally pulled the trigger on an RC2014 kit. I'm going to be highly interested to play with it alongside the Z80 CP/M on the Idun cartridge.

Maybe someday I'll adapt one of the Z80 cores for the Mega65 to convince the Mega to be my RC2014 dev environment?

No matter what, I'm playing with tech again! It has no commercial value so it doesn't have AI and business needs choking the life out of it.

Retrofan 64Mar 8

Okay, the Idun cartridge (checks notes) slaps.

I have it working swimmingly on my C64U.

I even have it kind of working on the mega 65, with some slapping around. The key appears to be avoiding 80 column mode.

This is the first time in years I've worked on a computer project for 15 hours straight.

I learned so much. And I have the joy of knowing I built this thing by hand. That's seriously freaking cool.

Retrofan 64Mar 7

How do color blind people accurately read resistor band codes? I'm pretty sure that what I have is correct, but red / orange and brown / green are giving me some trouble.

#askfedi #maker #electronics

Show threadRetrofan 64Mar 7

This has all been pretty humbling. I also need to remember that getting all these parts and all this information together back when last did this 40 years ago would have required the help of several adults and trips to the library.

That said, I still feel like there's ancillary things that I am losing by taking the "ask the AI" shortcut:

  • taking the time to learn principles (workaround: I've made notes in my notebook to circle back to areas of knowledge deficit)
  • making the effort to relearn electronics concepts that I knew well enough to pass all the ham radio license requirements
  • interacting with a social community of makers / Elmers to get my head screwed on straight.

The TL:DR; is something I should have known - the component orientation of anything not an IC, a Diode, or Electrolytic Cap doesn't really matter. This build is mostly a few caps, bunches of resistors, and a few ICs and switches/jacks.

The real lesson here is that I have been jumping back into a past to remember to slow the fuck down. This is certainly helping with that.