I was about to post something similar. I had a lot of the same games and utilities. The labels are instantly recognizable.

Load Runner, Defender of The Crown, mrraow, yum - Guess Shadow of the Beast or Turrican would be too new school, lol. On topic tho, C128 is still on my must-have-once-just-for-me-myself-and-i-list, right next to an Acorn Archimedes 3000. Wonder why no KZfaqrs collection contains LAZER, was a great game. But there were so many. Pluh.

You think exactly like my boss does.

Ha, I'm glad I happened to choose that issue to show! That's really cool that you had a program published in RUN, congrats!

I've mentioned him as much as possible in my usual hangouts. No idea if anyone has picked up on it yet, but I do make the effort.

Cool! Was it just as unforgiving a game on the Atari? Were you able to finish the first level?

@@8_Bit The first level I think, but I do remember it being brutal.

Oh, interesting. I think I only tried Skyfox and not Arcticfox. Even then, it's quite possible that EA reprogrammed (and remastered) that game so subsequent versions worked on the 1571. It's funny how what was so disappointing or annoying long ago, like bugs and incompatibilities in games, is now the most interesting thing to me.

That would be very frustrating! I hope you were able to play some of the C128-enhanced games to make them jealous too :) Andrew Braybrook often made his games a little better for the C128.

Very cool, I'll try to track it down!

Of course, the last v8 is also one of the very rare action games which got a dedicated C128 release, which solves the compatibility issues, and actually has some improvements from what I understand.

"The Last V8" was named after a line from the original 1979 "Mad Max" movie.

With any register that has multiple flags, you should check for only the bit that you care about by doing an AND with the value that you want. So code should really be 'peek(1) and 16 0' on line 20 and 'peek(1) and 16 16' on line 40. Or, if you want to check the cassette motor bit as well as the cassette switch bit, use the value 48 (bit 5 %00010000 is decimal 32).

I would hope so, but I've never tried.

I deliberately put the Atari box in frame in the new video I just recorded ;)

I suspect the Thalamus problem is in a particular tape loader system that they shared, so the games on disk or otherwise cracked probably work okay. I wasn't able to replicate the Thalamus problems on my C128.

well, my C64 and C128 Years are over so long but he really explained it well and if you have a little experience with programming that helps too :)

I tried a few versions of Fractalus as it was on that list on Lemon64 and they all worked fine for me. So it must be a particular version that I didn't find online. Interesting about Star Rank Boxing, I'll see if I can replicate.

I probably won't go as early December is a terrible time to travel to Toronto, both due to potentially bad weather, and it being a busy time for my kids with end of school semester and pre-Christmas events. I used to go to WoC fairly regularly and always enjoyed the event and people, but the travelling and particular time away from my family greatly detract from my eagerness to go. I guess I didn't have to explain all that, but that's why :)

@8_Bit I completely understand and thought I would ask :)

@@RudysRetroIntel Thanks for asking, and if you're going, I hope you have a great time :) Maybe it'll still work out for me, but it's unlikely.

@8_Bit I will be going and have a table too. Will be showing my new PET board that I will be selling. It's called PET Companion, which provides external composite video, audio, RGB2HDMI connection, and joystick connection. If you come to the show, I will have one for you for free. Would love for you to review it and keep it. Thanks

When talking to a +4 guy and realizing that a lot of the TED hacks he was describing seemed eerily familiar from our C128 endeavours, I developed the theory that the VIC2e rework was probably done by the TED designer Dave DiOrio since the original VIC designer Al Charpentier had already left C= by the time they designed the C128... This theory was actually confirmed by Dave Haynie! ;-)

Star Rank Boxing (Barry McGuigan's boxing in Europe) was another

Hah... I'm only vaguely familiar with how all this stuff works, but I'm fascinated you can change one instruction and everything runs fine. Is it a possibility that one of these changes IS making some kind of difference in the execution of the code, even if it's too small/quick to be perceptible? I'm an old UNIX admin and can only code my way out of a wet paper bag under threat of violence, but it seems like SOMETHING different in the logic would be going on that might affect something, even if the user doesn't notice it. EDIT: Ah ok with the He-Man one you said it might happen... still the ones before it mystify me.

Heh, sounds like you're being a bit harsh on a bunch of non-engineers/non-hackers when they say something that might not always be true. They don't know any better, they're just trying to pass on the info as they understand it.

The C128 is a great computer. As shown in this video, the incompatibilities were very rare.

@@8_Bit yes I did not found one of the games I did have.

Apologies for not giving you a shout-out for the He-Man tip in the video. I try to keep track of that kind of stuff but this video was a more convoluted process than usual where I was working from multiple documents and it got left out :(

I wasn't aware! I'll see if I can get further with that info. I think level 7 or 8 is the furthest I've ever got. I've heard that level 16 is unbeatable due to some missing ladders, and I've meant to investigate that sometime.

@@8_Bit On real C64, I reached level 13 or 14 .. level 16 is the last level, and at least from walkthroughs Ive seen, it's finishable. Then you access level 17 which is just an ending cutscene using the game engine. Would love to see a Frantic Freddie video where you analyze the code and quircks.

@@DarkMoe Thanks, it seems that whoever thought there was a level 16 bug was confused and it was actually level 17 and the developers deliberately removed the ladders for the ending cutscene in that level.

I get what you're saying; I guess I could have said "the VIC-II and RAM system weren't updated to handle 2 MHz" instead. What clocks the DRAM currently? Are you saying the existing VIC-IIe would work perfectly in 2 MHz mode, if only the DRAM were 4 MHz capable? That's cool about all the neat timing stuff you can do with the VIC-IIe. I now recall reading a bit about that but haven't ever looked into it more. Maybe a very early version of GEOS didn't work on 128 or 1571; I tried v1.2, v1.3 and 2.0 and they're of course fine. I don't own copies of GEOS v1.0 or 1.1 - if they ever were released.

@@8_Bit No, the VIC-IIe wouldn't be able to do video fetches at 4 MHz if you had faster DRAM. It is still running from an 8 MHz dot clock and has to be able to clock everything from that. The VIC-II generates every clock in the system by dividing 8 MHz down. ø0: 1 (or 2) MHz into the 6510/8502. ø2 comes out of the CPU, delayed to be in sync with the CPU machine cycle. In the 64 all other chips are driven by ø2 out of the CPU, but not in the 128. This actually causes timing issues with a few C64 cartridges. RAS/CAS: These clock the DRAM. Low byte of the address is latched on RAS, which also refreshes DRAM. If RAM is selected, the high byte is latched on CAS and data goes in or out. Both are 2 MHz clocks at opposite phases from each other. So in 1 MHz mode, RAM is running twice as fast as the CPU and the VIC can get every other access. AEC: Address enable control, this takes the CPU off the bus during video accesses. Normally 1 MHz and opposite ø0 but if the VIC needs more for sprites or character pointers (badlines) it will stop the CPU and hold it low. When the VIC-IIe is put in 2 MHz mode, it doubles ø0 so the CPU runs twice as fast. RAS/CAS stay the same because the DRAM and many parts of the VIC-II cannot run any faster, and it stops asserting AEC so whatever is on the bus during "video fetches" just gets displayed. But wait there's more! The SID, CIA, and even the VIC registers can only run at 1 MHz even when the CPU is at 2 MHz, so in the 128 ø2 comes out of the VIC-IIe and is always 1 MHz, and there's a signal from the PLA to slow the CPU down to 1MHz for I/O access. The Z80 needs a 4 MHz clock, so the VIC-IIe generates that as well.

I actually tried to replicate those and couldn't. It might have something to do with the cassette loader rather than the game code itself.

Yes, and rumours abound that it was Freddie Mercury of Queen that inspired Frantic Freddie's name :)

Maybe, but unlike what some seem to believe, the C128 sold really well, with the total number of units sold being approx 10 times the number Commodore expected to sell when introducing it. That means the number of C128s sold is approx the same as all 'non GS' Apple II models combined. Sales wasn't really a problem with this machine, despite there not being that much software which took advantage of its capabilities.

Uhm, in C64 mode it WAS able to run in 2 MHz. But (just like in C128 mode) with no 40col VIC display output. Thats the issue here...

@@Lofote that’s what I meant - to run games that struggled at 1 MHz at 2MHz with the VIC II able to keep up.

@@c128stuff Yes, that’s true. In our collective memory it’s overshadowed by the Amiga, but they still moved a lot C128 of hardware. I think it’s a great machine, just don’t run CP/M on it. 😀

@@Doug_in_NC Ah they would had to redo the whole VIC chip then, because it was so perfect in timing, that it would be hardly compatible to the old one ;)... Timing is hugely critical on those old machines with racing the beam ;)... So only C128 in 80col mode could do 2MHz. But around 1,25Mhz was possible in both C128 40col and C64 mode by switching to 2 Mhz during vertical blank, while the screen borders where drawn, some games and an addon for GEOS used that trick to get a bit extra speed.

It's an awesome series, but looked like they could have did a better job with the graphics and audio, looks like ports of an Apple II game.

Apparently the main motivation for the Z80 was to provide CP/M support which was a priority to the marketing department, and wasn't at all driven by the engineers. I agree it drove up the price of the computer for a feature few people actually wanted or used, and in hindsight that money and time should have been put elsewhere. But it still delivered a C64-compatible computer with a lot of extra "real computer" features like a faster CPU, higher-resolution screen, proper 80 column display, fast disk access, and more RAM.

Thanks, it's an unreleased song from an unreleased album from my band. I gotta get around to releasing it. Here's a much earlier/rougher mix of another song that will be on the same album: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i5eGftqiur29kWw.html

Generally the datasette will work on the C128, but some software will fail. Some of those titles should be fixable by pressing the "CAPS LOCK" key before you load. I guess you don't still have it to give it a try :)

Yes, I didn't notice that while recording, but it's interesting. I think what's happening is that pressing the cassette button(s) changes bit 4 in the I/O port. Then the KERNAL system interrupt, next time it occurs (within about 1/60th of a second), notices that bit has been changed, and enables the cassette motor control (bit 5). And then when the STOP button is pressed, that bit 4 changes again, then the KERNAL notices, and the motor is disabled within a frame later.

1:00 Oh, it was Z80 so no chance for what i just wrote :O I knew there was better mode but Z80?! WTF

There were some programs available for the C64 and C128 that allowed that kind of task-switching or limited multi-tasking but they required programs to be fairly well-behaved and many were not. If Commodore was more forward-thinking they could have provided better operating system support from the beginning that would have encouraged more programs to be well-behaved. Alternatively they could have provided hardware support for that kind of task-switching in later models, but it didn't seem to be a priority. It would have been really interesting to see if Commodore could have successfully brought their C64/128 line into the future but instead they went somewhat half-heartedly into both the Amiga and MS-DOS platforms.