Alston Grove

The basement looks like a graveyard for computer hardware, all victims of the PC plague. Sinclair. Coleco. Commodore. Amiga. They all still work, but their owner, sadly, pays them little attention, except for an occasional nostalgic power up. It’s time they found better homes. But first, history must be preserved.

I bought a XE/XM-1541 adapter on E-Bay that was originally made by VintageComputerCables.com. One end plugs into a Commodore 1541 floppy drive, the other end into the PC parallel port. Using Star Commander in DOS or OpenCBM on Linux, it’s possible to transfer a disk image (a D64 file). It also works with a 1581 drive and 3.5 floppies (a D81 file). I made disk images of all my programs. Remarkably, everything was still readable. I tried to copy some old commercial games, but the copy protection on the disks prevented it. It made sense after I thought about it. Anyway, my personal stuff was more important.

They run great under VICE, which is a very complete Commodore emulator. It even emulates the slow load times, or you can turn on warp mode when you’re feeling impatient. A friend pointed me to FC64, a Commodore 64 emulator written in Flash that can already play some programs. That’s crazy.

Even after making disk images to complete my C-64 codeography, I still can’t bring myself to pitch the stacks of old floppies. I feel like one of those people on Style Network’s Clean House who live in clutter because they can’t part with anything that carries a memory. I’ll work myself up to it eventually.

It took me a little longer than I wanted, but the results are worth it. My MAME cabinet is fully operational:

I’m slowly documenting the steps and materials to build it on my MAME cabinet page. The controls are all working, although I still need a light to make the trackball glow. The coin doors light up and accept quarters for games. (Coin entry is also simulated by holding down Player-1 and tapping Button A.) It makes me feel like a kid again.

LOAD “*”,8,1
SEARCHING for *
LOADING

If you just enjoyed a blast from the past, then have I got a new old toy for you. A joystick loaded with 30 Commodore 64 games, ranging from Impossible Mission to Summer Games, that can be played on your TV. A hot seller on QVC, it was designed by Jeri Ellsworth, a high school dropout and self-taught chip designer. She created the device for Mammoth Toys from her Yamhill, Oregon home. There’s an interesting writeup about her in a local paper.

Tom’s hardware did a review of the C-64 DTV that goes even further to detail some fun easter eggs. The article calls it an emulator, which is how most of the all-in-one device are done, but some web writeups claim Jeri’s device is running the software natively. People have figured out how to add a keyboard and 1541 disk drive to the joystick.

I really like the Golden Tee 2000 arcade cabinets, with the swooping white top section contrasting with the main black base. I’m trying to mimic elements of this style in my own cabinet design. Let me present my first Rough Draft Cabinet Design.

Ok, so don’t laugh that I used graph paper instead of CAD. The monitor is 25-inch instead of 27, so the cabinet is not as deep and I was able to achieve a steeper (45 degree) angle on the monitor. What I like most about this cabinet, is that it can be broken down into control panel, main section, top section, and monitor for easy transportation.

I’ve been thinking about my MAME cabinet some more and I’ve set a goal of building it by Spring. I decided against my original idea of tongue-oiled hardwood — I want to make it classic, with black laminate, t-molding, coin-door, marquee, etc. I just got done reading “The Ultimate History of Video Games” by Steven Kent, and I am inspired.

I plan to use a 25-inch TV with svideo input. The doors in my house are 30-inch, and the cabinet needs to fit through without disassembly, which also means no speakers on the sides of the TV. Svideo gives a better picture because the RGB signals are separate. Do you know how hard it is to find a 25-inch TV with svideo and no side speakers? I finally found a Curtis Mathes TV that fits the bill at Kmart, of all places.

It goes unsaid that I will be running Linux. I got a CompactFlash to IDE adapter from Adi’s so I can boot Linux instantly from CF. There will be a hard drive partition mounted for ROMs and high scores. When you flip on the cab, it will boot straight to Pyrecade for the user to select their game. Pyrecade is written in Python and uses SDL for the slick graphics.

I’ve got most of my controls mounted on plywood and working well. My favorite game right now is Caveman Ninjas.

The Vintage Computer Festival was held this week, and they auctioned one of the C-64 prototypes still in working condition. Some people were valuing the machine at $10,000. It caused me to remember how much joy that machine brought me.

So I fired up my C-64 last night. I can’t believe it still works. I really can’t believe all my floppy disks load without error. The media is pushing 20 years! I remember thinking I had a bunch of games back then (over 300), but when I visit archive sites like C64.com, I realize just how popular this machine was — I mean is! It still makes me feel good to play games like Pooyan and Test Drive.

The C-64 had to be the most usable machine ever made. It had color video with sprites, sound, character sets, Basic ROM, expansion, and was easy to program. I looked at some of my programs I wrote back when I was 12. I was writing 6510 ML routines for smooth-scroll text and raster-interrupted split video modes for demos and games. Now I develop web pages. When did I become so stupid?

At one point, I wanted to copy my 5.25 disks to files on hard disk, but I found out that the disk format is too physically different for a PC-style floppy drive to read. I also lost my RS232 adapter long ago, so I couldn’t transfer over null modem. I gave up. Just recently, I ran into Star Commander, which takes a different approach. Using an X1541 cable, a Commodore 1541 drive can be connected to a PC, and Star Commander can read disks from it. Amazing. Now I can start my codeography.