Vintage Computing – distantdark

Commodore Vic 20 2-Rom Cartridge Files > Launch from a D64 image

Create a Commodore Vic 20 D64 Image That Launches (2) ROM Cartridge Images

This is a guide to create a Commodore D64 floppy drive image that you can load into your Commodore Vic 20 to run 2-Rom Cartridge files.
Feel free to use this guide and replace the games in the examples with those of your choosing!

Download your favorite 16k Commodore Vic 20 cartridge images. I’m assuming these are public domain and I’m not the host of these files.
http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/vic20/roms/16k/index.html

Download & Install a D64 editing program.
The one I recommend is DroiD64 because it’s java and can run in Windows/OSX/Linux.
http://droid64.sourceforge.net/

Download the CBM Filebrowser.

Download & Install Vice on your computer.
https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/index.html#download

Gather your
*CBM Browser D64 file
*Favorite Vic 20 16k Cartridge Files

Open your
*DroiD64 java program
*Vice program

In example, we are going to create a D64 image with several 16K Cartridges.
For the example, we are going to add”
“Jungle Hunt”
“Moon Patrol”
“Centipede”
“Lode Runner”
“Seafox”
“Skyblazer”
“Mountain King”
“AE”

To get these games to run, first we have to write little programs that tell the Vic 20 (the real thing, an emulator or the Mister FPGA!) to combine both ROM images togther in memory, then do a reset.
What is the secret program that allows us to do that?!!?!
Believe me, I’ve searched the net and came up with nothing. I had written something several years ago and searched my retro gaming stash in the garage for it. After a while, I tracked it down. There was a file on a pi1541 SD card that had a D64 image with the secret sauce!

First, create a new D64 image using droiD64:
In the menu, select Disk1, then D64 as ‘image type’ and “2-ROM CARTRIDGES” for the name. Then OK
Save to your folder with the downloaded ROMs.
Second, open your CBM Filebrowser D64 image by finding in in the second pane on droiD64.
Refer to the image below for clarity.

Right click the “FB20-8k” file in the second pane, then select ‘copy file’.
Now, eject the disk in the second pane by selection the little folder with the up-arrow in the right corner of the second pane.
Navigate to where you have all of your ‘prg’ cartridge images. Hold ‘ctrl’ key and select all the images. Then copy over to the D64 image you created in the droiD64 first pane.

We now have the D64 menu and all of the game images on our D64 images.
Now we need to create our launch program using the Vice Vic 20 emulator.

With the Vice Vic 20 emulator, select ‘create and attach an empty disk image’ in the menu.
Name it ‘2-ROM D64 Menu.d64’ and hit ‘save’. Probably convienent to save this into the folder with your ROMs.

Go back to your Vice Vic 20 window, and from the menu, Edit/Paste the contents of this text:

1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”jungle hunt-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”jungle hunt-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

After the ‘sys64802’ on the last line of text (in the Vic 20 emulator), hit enter.
Then:
save “junglehunt”,8,1

You have saved the first launch program to the new disk.
Now you will have to follow the same idea with each of the other Cartridge images.

Make sure everything is in lower case!

“moon patrol”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”moonpatrol-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”moonpatrol-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“centipede”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”centipede-2000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”centipede-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“lode runner”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”lode runner-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”lode runner-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“seafox”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”seafox-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”seafox-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“skyblazer”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”skyblazer-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”skyblazer-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“mountain king”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”mountain king-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”mountain king-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

“ae”
1 onagoto4,5
2 dr=peek(186)
3 a=1:load”ae-6000″,dr,1
4 a=2:load”ae-a000″,dr,1
5 poke37138,0:poke37139,0:poke37154,0:poke37155,0:poke37150,127:poke37166,127:sys64802

Once you have finished, eject Disk 2 in droiD64, and open your new ‘2-ROM D64 Menu.d64’ Disk image with all of the new launch files.

[droiD64_2.png]

Now copy those over to Disk 1. You can use droiD64 to move the files up using the “Up” button in the bottom menu (optional).
At this point, your D64 image is done!

Feel free to transfer to a real floppy image using a Zoom interface or by opening it with Vice Vic 20 emulator -or- the Mister Vic 20 Core.
Note: You will have to expand your Vic 20 memory.
The Windows & OSX version of Vice may vary but this is the RAM expansion option for Linux:

Expand Vic 20’s RAM with Vice (Linux version shown)

To launch the disk and auto-start the menu, select File/Smart Attach, then click on the “Autostart” button.

My64 – mini ITX system in a new c64 case

This is a project that I definitely WILL do early next year:

I thought the whole setup was great except for one annoying thing: I don’t like cables coming out the sides of anything. I know this is standard procedure – even a macbook pro costing thousands of dollars does this. Would have been nice to have the power on the back. But this is a clean setup, looks great and isn’t too expensive, relatively speaking.

When I got to the end and saw what the function keys did I almost spit my coffee.

Outstanding!

The mainboard/CPU mini-itx combo was really interesting. I didn’t know those existed, especially at that low price. I tried to find the board and they are out of stock everywhere but even better – the highest end version of the board is available for only $120:

Now that ARM processors are coming to the market for desktop computing, I wonder what kind of mini-computing setups we will see in the near future. I can picture something that looks like a 5″x5″x1″ shape that people shove behind a monitor that has Windows 10 and an SSD drive for under $200. We’ll see…

Commodore 64 BBS with Petscii on your PC using SynchTERM

Would you like to enter the exciting world of Commodore 64 BBS?

If you do not own an actual Commodore computer, you can visit a Commodore BBS with full Petscii (similar to ASCII) graphical support! The open source program SynchTerm allows you to do that.

If you are using a Windows or Mac OSX machine, you can download a binary here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/syncterm/

Windows and Mac users can skip to the part below titled, “To *use* SynchTerm”

If you are using Linux (preferably Ubuntu or something Debian based), you can install the program using these instructions.

First, the easiest method for Debian-based Linux:

curl -sSL https://git.io/JfAPE | bash

Launch the program:
cd /root/piKiss
./piKiss.sh

Navigate to "Internet", then "SyncTERM"

Alternately, in a terminal:

wget 'http'://syncterm.bbsdev.net/syncterm-src.tgz
(downloads the program)

tar xvzf syncterm-src.tgz
(extracts the program)

cd syncterm-20200223/src/syncterm
(enter into the program's directory; replace "20200223" with your directory name)

pwd
(tells you what directory you are in)

sudo make SRC_DIR=/home/user/syncterm-20200223/src/syncterm
(replace "20200223" with the number you see when you type "pwd")
(replace "user" with your username)

In my case, the program refused to "make" because I was missing ncurses.
If you run into this, install ncurses:
sudo apt-get install libncurses-dev

Then install the program:
sudo make install

If everything goes well, your computer will crunch away for a while and then install SynchTerm.

*SynchTerm homepage for more details:
http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/

For reference, here’s a list of BBSs: http://cbbsoutpost.servebbs.com/
Example of a BBS listing with name, address and port: Screenshot from 2020-02-23 13-11-08

To use SynchTerm, click on the icon.

Click in the area of the “Directory” (First box) Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-50-45

Select your keyboard’s “insert” key and type in the BBS name Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-51-58

Select “Telnet” for connection type Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-52-17

Enter in the address of the BBS you want to visit. Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-52-34

Select F2 to edit the entry you just created for fine tuning:

TCP Port: 6400 (that’s just an example) Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-52-54
Choose “C64” for Screen Mode
Esc to save
Now highlight the new entry and hit enter. If the BBS is available and you entered in the information properly, you should see something like this. You will need to create an account. Enjoy!

Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-50-01

Screenshot from 2020-02-23 12-50-23

Connect a PC to a Commodore 1541/1571 drive

Did you ever want to transfer files from your old Commodore 1541/1571 drive between your computer and a real drive? Did you also want to use a real Commodore floppy drive with the VICE emulator? Me too! 😉 Both of these things are possible with the zoomfloppy device being offered by Retro Innovations. You can download basically anything you want from arnold.c64.org (or any other commodore software source) and transfer it right to your floppy device so it can be used on a real Commodore 64 or Vic 20.

This device is unlike other solutions that only worked with specially built cables and DOS. You simply plug a USB cable between your zoomfloppy and your computer and then the serial cable between the zoomfloppy and the floppy drive. Once the physical connections are made, you simply run the OpenCBM software to transfer files or backup disks.

Here’s how to install a zoomfloppy device to your Ubuntu computer.

sudo apt-get install libusb-dev build-essential linux-headers-generic git

Install the CC64 Compiler:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/cc65/cc65.git
cd cc65
make
sudo prefix=/usr make install

Compile and install OpenCBM

cd ~
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/opencbm/code opencbm
cd opencbm/opencbm
make -f LINUX/Makefile
sudo make -f LINUX/Makefile install install-all install-plugin-xum1541
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libopencbm.so.0 /usr/lib/libopencbm.so.0

Add udev rules for the ZoomFloppy hardware itself:

sudo pico /etc/udev/rules.d/45-opencbm-parallel.rules

Add this to the bottom of the file, then save and quit:

SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", ACTION!="add", MODE="0666", GOTO="opencbm_rules_end"
# zoom floppy
ATTRS{idVendor}=="16d0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0504", GROUP="users", MODE="0666"
LABEL="opencbm_rules_end"

Restart udev:

sudo service udev restart

Check the ZoomFloppy and IEC device status:

cbmctrl detect

Bonus: Get VICE to use the zoomfloppy interface to utilize a real 1541 Commodore Floppy Drive!

1. Settings -> Peripheral Settings -> Device #8 -> Enable IEC Device
2. Settings -> Peripheral Settings -> Device #8 -> Device Type -> Real Device Access

Commodore 64 (Vic 20, Pet, etc) emulator from Raspberry Pi Raspbian

I can confirm this install method (source) worked with a Raspberry Pi 4 using Raspbian Buster.
Compiles Vice and installs into /usr/local/bin. Initial launch reports a sound issue. If you go into settings (F12), there’s a sound configuration you can change to “Alsa”.
…

# get dependencies – this may take a long time and ~ 1.5 GB
sudo apt install autoconf automake build-essential byacc dos2unix flex libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libgtk2.0-cil-dev libgtkglext1-dev libmp3lame-dev libmpg123-dev libpcap-dev libpulse-dev libreadline-dev libswscale-dev libvte-dev libxaw7-dev subversion texi2html texinfo yasm libgtk3.0-cil-dev xa65 libsdl2-dev

mkdir -p src
cd src
svn checkout https://svn.code.sf.net/p/vice-emu/code/trunk trunk
cd trunk/vice
./autogen.sh
./configure
make -j4
sudo make install

Install Linux console programs like Lynx on Mac OSX

You can install much loved Linux console programs like Lynx (text web browser) and Midnight Commander (powerful file browser) on Mac OSX using homebrew program installer “Brew”.

Example: Install Lynx
First you must install Brew. After this, you can install other programs with Brew.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Now use Brew to install Lynx:

brew install lynx

Now you can test it out:

lynx thinkzinc.com

Did you see thinkzinc.com in a text browser?

Try installing the Midnight Commander:

brew install mc

You can check out the “Brew” homepage and use the search for new programs to install. You can also very how many programs you have installed with this command:

brew list

I love Mac OSX but I can’t live without Lynx. Web surfing without busy ads and pictures. Enjoy!