In the IBM PC world, there is no such thing as "single density" floppy drives. Floppy drives started out as double density and later matured into high density and even extra high density. Those of us who grew up in a PC world had no need to know about "single density". But where did single density come from and which systems used it? Moreover, what happens when system builders try to stretch single density reading into double-density capacities? The truth is a bit more complex than you might think.
Showing posts with label Commodore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commodore. Show all posts
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
The Obscure Ultima, Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash
Back in Ye Olden Days, I knew nothing of blogs and was content to post materials on forums and newsgroups and the like. I contributed a few writings to GameFAQs back before the days when it was purchased by GameSpot. The only actual FAQ for a video game I ever contributed that described how to beat a game was for the VIC-20 game Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash. When GameFAQs took over, I removed all my content from that site. Now, having finally been able to play the game on original hardware, I think it is time to revive the old FAQ. Moreover, no longer limited to plain, monochrome text, I can do more now that I have my own blog and the ability to add images, color text and link video. Let's take a trip into a rarely visited part of the Ultima Universe.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Meet Commodore's VIC(-20), the Friendly Computer
When Commodore made the PET-2001, they made a computer that found some success in the market, especially in Europe. The PET turned into a series, but it was an all-in-one PC that came with a monochrome monitor and was rather an expensive product. Commodore wanted to expand to more of a mass-market, and they designed the Commodore VIC-20, the first personal computer to sell for less than $300. The VIC was very successful when it was released in 1981, becoming the first computer to sell over one million systems. Its low price and feature set (color graphics, 4-channel sound) helped it to outsell its competitors. But it days in the limelight were short-lived due to the arrival of its successor, the Commodore 64. Having acquired a VIC-20, let's take a look at some of the practical issues with using it.
Friday, May 18, 2018
The Search for Artifact Color on the Commodore 64
NTSC composite artifact color is something typically relegated to computers with off-the-shelf graphics hardware. We associate it with the Apple II mainly, which used it in its high resolution modes. TRS-80 Color Computer fans also know it very well, because it was the only color available in that computer line's graphics until the Model 3. IBM PCs also used with more frequency than was commonly known in the early days in CGA graphics cards. But Commodore didn't rely on off-the-shelf 74-series logic to drive its home computers' displays. It had bought the MOS company and all its chip fabrication expertise. Its computers used real graphics chips and they displayed real color. They didn't need the composite tricks to get their graphics working and they didn't need boards devoted to graphics either. But I have come across some information which suggests that the assumption that the Commodore 64 did not support composite artifact color may not be supportable.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
The 1541 Ultimate II+ Flash Cart - Running Carts and Disks Images on the C64
My friend Cloudshatze generously ordered me an 1541 Ultimate II+ Flash Cart (U2+). The 1541 Ultimate flash cart series has been around for quite a few years, but the U2+ is the latest iteration of the device. It was released in December, 2016. In this blog entry I will give information about it and my experiences with it.
Cartridge Bankswitching Outside the NES
Bankswitching in cartridge based games is most famous on the NES, especially its Japanese version, the Famicom. The NES, Famicom and their unofficial clones were popular in many parts of the world, but the inherent limitations of its 8-bit CPU required software developers to devise ever more complicated systems to increase the amount of memory the system could address.
But the NES did not invent bankswitching. Most, but not all, 8-bit home consoles, home computers and handheld systems had cartridges with extra hardware to allow the system to address more memory. In this article I will trace the evolution of that hardware outside the NES and give links to sites and documents where the user can find more technical information.
But the NES did not invent bankswitching. Most, but not all, 8-bit home consoles, home computers and handheld systems had cartridges with extra hardware to allow the system to address more memory. In this article I will trace the evolution of that hardware outside the NES and give links to sites and documents where the user can find more technical information.
Friday, February 10, 2017
My Commodore 64 Saga Part II - Disk Drives and Disk Images
In Part I of this series, I covered some of the basic functionality of the Commodore 64 and my trials and tribulations in getting mine to work properly. In Part 2 I will talk disk drives and disk images.
Before I can talk about the Ultimate-1541, I need to discuss the Commodore 1541 Disk Drive and how the C64 deals with floppy disks, the other major storage medium for NTSC C64 users. The Commodore 1541 Disk Drive is an external 5.25" floppy disk drive which connects to the C64 via the 6-pin serial port. The 1541 had its own power supply and its own 6502 CPU, 16KB of ROM and 2KB of RAM, it was essentially a computer of its own. The disks used were standard double density disks, but the drive was a single sided drive like the drives for the contemporary Apple and Atari home computers. The IBM PC used single sided drives for the first year of its existence. Like the Atari drives, you turn on your drive first, then the computer.
Before I can talk about the Ultimate-1541, I need to discuss the Commodore 1541 Disk Drive and how the C64 deals with floppy disks, the other major storage medium for NTSC C64 users. The Commodore 1541 Disk Drive is an external 5.25" floppy disk drive which connects to the C64 via the 6-pin serial port. The 1541 had its own power supply and its own 6502 CPU, 16KB of ROM and 2KB of RAM, it was essentially a computer of its own. The disks used were standard double density disks, but the drive was a single sided drive like the drives for the contemporary Apple and Atari home computers. The IBM PC used single sided drives for the first year of its existence. Like the Atari drives, you turn on your drive first, then the computer.
My Commodore 64 Saga Part I : Initial Observations, Restoration and Repair Attempts
A couple of years ago, I had traded my Atari 800 for a Commodore 64. The C64 was a breadbin model and while it had a power supply, it did not come with a disk drive or any software other than a single cartridge. When I took it home, I noticed that the keyboard was extremely stiff with some of the keys on the left side barely registering to keypresses.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Analog Controllers in Consoles and Computers
A digital joystick is just four contact switches activated by pressing a directional instead of a button. This includes the Intellivision's controller, which has sixteen discrete positions, and most console "joysticks". An analog control allows for smoother movement instead of relying solely on the amount of time a directional has been pressed. Originally, analog knobs or paddles were used with Pong and other ball and paddle games. Eventually the combination of two of these "paddles" with a common control became a joystick and achieved some popularity for racing and flight simulators. Outside these pigeonholes, most of the popular games of the 70s and 80s used digital joysticks, trackballs and rotary spinners (the latter are used in the Breakout-derived Arkanoid). Only in the mid-90s with the rise of first and third person 3D games did a compelling need for a general analog controller present itself. In the blog post, I will discuss how analog controllers used to be used and how they are used today.
True analog controllers in the video game world use variable resistors. The humble variable resistor, also called a potentiometer, has had a wide variety of applications. You will see them at work in light switches, to change volume or temperature. They were often used in video game controllers.
There are two ways in which analog control was implemented at the hardware level, and both involve potentiometers. The most common way is to use the potentiometer as a variable resistor in a resistor/capacitor discharge network. In this method, a capacitor is discharged then a port is read until the capacitor indicated it was recharged. The time it took for the capacitor to charge gave the position of the potentiometer. More resistance equals a longer charging time. Only two wires are connected to the potentiometer in this case, one of the end terminals (to +5v) and the middle terminal is connected to the console.
The second method is to use the potentiometer as a voltage divider with a comparator. In this method, the potentiometer's output voltage is compared to a voltage ramp, which is reset, and the time it takes for the voltages to become equal indicates the stick's position. In this case, all three terminals of the potentiometer, one end to +5v, one end to GND and the middle terminal gives the signal to the console or computer.
Atari 2600 & 7800
The Atari 2600 usually came with a pair of paddle controllers. Each paddle had a potentiometer connected to two terminals, making it function like a variable resistor. Each controller port could support a pair of paddles but only one of any other type of controller. Paddle games were the only official solution for four-player gaming. The output line of these potentiometers is connected to the TIA chip. The rating of these potentiometers is 1MOhm. Each paddle had a single button, which shared the same line as the left or right joystick directional. Button inputs are connected to the 6532 RIOT chip.
Interestingly, while not an analog controller the Keypad Controllers and their clones also make use of the potentiometer lines. There are insufficient digital inputs on the 2600 controller port to read a 4x3 matrix. What the 2600 does is to set the joystick inputs as outputs and send a signal through each of the four lines. These correspond to each horizontal row of keypad keys. One column is read via the joystick fire button input on the TIA and the other two columns are read through one of the paddle input lines with the assistance of a 4.7KOhm resistor.
The Atari 7800 is backwards compatible with the Atari 2600 and includes a TIA and 6532, but no 7800 games support analog controllers.
Apple II
The Apple II and II+ came with a 16-pin socket which could accept four paddle inputs. These systems came with a pair of paddles with the Apple logo branded on them. Like the Atari paddles, these operate as variable resistors. They use 150KOhm potentiometers. Soon someone figured out that you can pair two paddle inputs to make a joystick input. Unfortunately, there were only three button inputs, making the use of two joysticks rare. Typically a single joystick would only use the first two button inputs.
The Apple IIe kept the joystick socket but also added an external DE-9 port containing the lines necessary to support the four analog inputs and three digital inputs. This port uses the same lines at the 16-pin socket, but it is easier to plug in and remove peripherals from the external port than the internal socket. The Apple IIc removed the internal socket and required the joystick to share the port with a mouse, limiting the joystick to two analog and digital inputs. For the IIe and IIc Apple released a joystick and paddles separately that use the DE-9 connector. The Apple IIgs has the capabilities and connectors of the IIe but also supports a fourth digital input for four buttons.
Tandy Color Computer, IBM PC & Tandy 1000
The IBM PC uses a DA-15 gameport supporting four axes and four buttons. The Tandy Color Computer and 1000 uses a pair of DIN-6 connectors, each supporting two axes and two buttons. All of these computers use 100KOhm potentiometers, but the IBM standard wires them as variable resistors and the Tandy machines wire them as voltage dividers. Like the Apple II, these interfaces use discrete circuitry instead of a custom chip.
Tandy's regular CoCo joystick uses one button and are non-self centering. They are not regarded highly. The Tandy Deluxe Joystick is self-centering, has two buttons and can be set to free-floating mode. The IBM PCjr. joystick has the same features and look identical to the Tandy Deluxe Joystick, but has a different connector and is wired as a variable resistor. Both joysticks hail from Kraft-designed joysticks, which were pretty much the standard for the early to mid 80s for the Apple II and IBM/Tandy.
See here for more discussion of issues relating to the IBM PC joystick : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/03/wheres-my-digital-joystick.html
The Apple II usually runs at one speed and unless an accelerator is being used, the constant speed eliminates issues with reading from the joystick port.
Commodore VIC-20 & Commodore 64
The VIC-20 has one joystick port, so only one pair of paddles is supported. The paddles are connected to the 6560 VIC chip, which provides video and audio. Because the paddles are wired to the Atari standard, the buttons are handled by one of the 6522 VIA chips.
The C64 has two joystick ports, so two pairs of paddles are supported. The paddles are connected to the 6581 SID chip, which also handles the audio for the computer. The SID chip only has two analog potentiometer inputs, so the inputs from two pairs of paddles are multiplexed and read with the assistance of one of the 6526 CIA chips. The CIA chip also handles button reading.
Commodore's paddles can be used with either system and they use a resistance value of 470KOhms. Atari 2600 paddles are more common and usually work OK, indicating that Commodore's paddles are wired as variable resistors.
Atari 8-bit Computers and 5200
The Atari 400 and 800 computers could support four pairs of paddles using its four controller ports. These are connected to the POKEY chip inside the system, which has eight analog input pins. Super Breakout for the Atari 8-bit computers supports eight paddles used in a sequential fashion. POKEY is also used for audio generation and other system functions including scanning the keyboard for pressed keys. The buttons are read by the 6520 PIA chip. The 2600 paddles are used in these computers.
The Atari 5200 was noted for being the first system to come with an analog joystick. The Atari 5200's joysticks manipulates a pair of potentiometers (not smaller than those found in paddles) and use a resistance value of 500KOhms. The 4-port system could, as its name implies, support for of these joysticks. The 2-port system could only support two joysticks. No paddles were specifically made for the 5200. There is no PIA chip in the 5200, so the joystick buttons are read by the GTIA chip. The keypad buttons are read similarly to the keyboard keys in the 8-bit machines by the POKEY, but multiplexers are used.
The later Atari 8-bit machines, from the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE, 130XE and XE Game System eliminate two of the controller ports, so you can only use two pairs of paddles with these machines.
Vectrex
The Vectrex controller may not have had quite as many buttons as the 5200 controller, but four independent fire buttons was a rarity. Its joystick was smaller than the 5200's and apparently less brittle. Also, far more importantly, the joystick is self-centering. The innards of the joystick look very similar to those of the Sony Dual Shocks to come in the following decade.
Not only does the Vectrex controllers contain a pair of potentiometers attached directly to the joystick, but there are also a separate pair of trimmer potentiometers located elsewhere on the PCB. Apparently these can be adjusted without opening the joystick and serve to fine tune the joystick's centering, not too dissimilar to how Apple and PC joysticks work. These trimmer potentimeters are 10KOhms.
Unlike the Tandy sticks, which have one end terminal of the potentiometer connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to GND, the Vectrex stick has one end terminal connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to -5v. The resistance value for these potentiometers also appears to be 10KOhms.
Because Vectrex controllers are rare and only two commercial Vectex games use the analog function, Sega Genesis 3-button controllers have been converted to work with them.
NES & Famicom
NES Controllers are primarily digital, they send out a bit for a pressed button. However, the NES and Famicom versions of Arkanoid were released with a paddle controller. This controller, called the VAUS Controller in the US, could be used instead of the gamepad. The Famicom controller plugged into the expansion port and the NES controller plugged into Controller Port 2. The paddle had one button. The NES and Famicom controllers are not compatible with each other, they function identically but use different bits to send their data. No other NES game used its Arkanoid controller, but the Famicom games Chase HQ and Arkanoid 2 could use the Famicom Arkanoid controller. The NES controller has a small screw that could be used to adjust the sensitivity of the controller via a trimpot. The Famicom controller does not have a trimpot.
The interior of the Arkanoid controller shows a 556 timer and potentiometer wired only to two terminals. This means that it works just like in the Apple II or IBM PC.
Thumbsticks - Sony PlayStation Dual Shock controllers and their successors
Outside the classic consoles, most systems of the third and fourth generation of video games did not support analog controllers. In the fifth generation, things began to change. The Nintendo 64 was released with an "analog" thumbstick, but the thumbstick uses optical sensors and is not really an analog controller for the purposes of this article.
The basic principle of how the analog thumbsticks operate on a PlayStation Dual Shock controller is similar to how the Tandy CoCo joysticks work. Although its successors may offer more analog controls, the basic functionality is unchanged. Essentially each thumbstick manipulates a pair of potentiomers, one for each axis of the stick. These potentiometers are wired in the three pin style, making them voltage dividers. When the stick is in the neutral position, the sticks should be outputting half the maximum voltage (2.5V). The controller chip of the controller reads these values and converts them into a digital 8-bit value which is sent with other stick and button information as a multi-byte serial packet to the console.
I have read that using a voltage divider is more precise than using a resistor/capacitor network as used in PCs and Atari consoles and computers. However, potentiometers are notoriously loose with their tolerances (20% seems to be the norm). I imagine Sony and its competitors may have higher quality parts and the lower resistance ranges (0-40KOhms seems to be about right) and the shorter travel distances may tighten the tolerance a bit (10% seems reasonable)
Every PlayStation game that supports the thumbsticks should use a standard routine to calibrate the thumbsticks when the game is bootup. Even with tighter tolerances and more compact form factors, the dead center position may not reflect the midpoint voltage reading.
There are two ways in which analog control was implemented at the hardware level, and both involve potentiometers. The most common way is to use the potentiometer as a variable resistor in a resistor/capacitor discharge network. In this method, a capacitor is discharged then a port is read until the capacitor indicated it was recharged. The time it took for the capacitor to charge gave the position of the potentiometer. More resistance equals a longer charging time. Only two wires are connected to the potentiometer in this case, one of the end terminals (to +5v) and the middle terminal is connected to the console.
The second method is to use the potentiometer as a voltage divider with a comparator. In this method, the potentiometer's output voltage is compared to a voltage ramp, which is reset, and the time it takes for the voltages to become equal indicates the stick's position. In this case, all three terminals of the potentiometer, one end to +5v, one end to GND and the middle terminal gives the signal to the console or computer.
Atari 2600 & 7800
The Atari 2600 usually came with a pair of paddle controllers. Each paddle had a potentiometer connected to two terminals, making it function like a variable resistor. Each controller port could support a pair of paddles but only one of any other type of controller. Paddle games were the only official solution for four-player gaming. The output line of these potentiometers is connected to the TIA chip. The rating of these potentiometers is 1MOhm. Each paddle had a single button, which shared the same line as the left or right joystick directional. Button inputs are connected to the 6532 RIOT chip.
Interestingly, while not an analog controller the Keypad Controllers and their clones also make use of the potentiometer lines. There are insufficient digital inputs on the 2600 controller port to read a 4x3 matrix. What the 2600 does is to set the joystick inputs as outputs and send a signal through each of the four lines. These correspond to each horizontal row of keypad keys. One column is read via the joystick fire button input on the TIA and the other two columns are read through one of the paddle input lines with the assistance of a 4.7KOhm resistor.
The Atari 7800 is backwards compatible with the Atari 2600 and includes a TIA and 6532, but no 7800 games support analog controllers.
Apple II
The Apple II and II+ came with a 16-pin socket which could accept four paddle inputs. These systems came with a pair of paddles with the Apple logo branded on them. Like the Atari paddles, these operate as variable resistors. They use 150KOhm potentiometers. Soon someone figured out that you can pair two paddle inputs to make a joystick input. Unfortunately, there were only three button inputs, making the use of two joysticks rare. Typically a single joystick would only use the first two button inputs.
The Apple IIe kept the joystick socket but also added an external DE-9 port containing the lines necessary to support the four analog inputs and three digital inputs. This port uses the same lines at the 16-pin socket, but it is easier to plug in and remove peripherals from the external port than the internal socket. The Apple IIc removed the internal socket and required the joystick to share the port with a mouse, limiting the joystick to two analog and digital inputs. For the IIe and IIc Apple released a joystick and paddles separately that use the DE-9 connector. The Apple IIgs has the capabilities and connectors of the IIe but also supports a fourth digital input for four buttons.
Tandy Color Computer, IBM PC & Tandy 1000
The IBM PC uses a DA-15 gameport supporting four axes and four buttons. The Tandy Color Computer and 1000 uses a pair of DIN-6 connectors, each supporting two axes and two buttons. All of these computers use 100KOhm potentiometers, but the IBM standard wires them as variable resistors and the Tandy machines wire them as voltage dividers. Like the Apple II, these interfaces use discrete circuitry instead of a custom chip.
Tandy's regular CoCo joystick uses one button and are non-self centering. They are not regarded highly. The Tandy Deluxe Joystick is self-centering, has two buttons and can be set to free-floating mode. The IBM PCjr. joystick has the same features and look identical to the Tandy Deluxe Joystick, but has a different connector and is wired as a variable resistor. Both joysticks hail from Kraft-designed joysticks, which were pretty much the standard for the early to mid 80s for the Apple II and IBM/Tandy.
See here for more discussion of issues relating to the IBM PC joystick : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/03/wheres-my-digital-joystick.html
The Apple II usually runs at one speed and unless an accelerator is being used, the constant speed eliminates issues with reading from the joystick port.
Commodore VIC-20 & Commodore 64
The VIC-20 has one joystick port, so only one pair of paddles is supported. The paddles are connected to the 6560 VIC chip, which provides video and audio. Because the paddles are wired to the Atari standard, the buttons are handled by one of the 6522 VIA chips.
The C64 has two joystick ports, so two pairs of paddles are supported. The paddles are connected to the 6581 SID chip, which also handles the audio for the computer. The SID chip only has two analog potentiometer inputs, so the inputs from two pairs of paddles are multiplexed and read with the assistance of one of the 6526 CIA chips. The CIA chip also handles button reading.
Commodore's paddles can be used with either system and they use a resistance value of 470KOhms. Atari 2600 paddles are more common and usually work OK, indicating that Commodore's paddles are wired as variable resistors.
Atari 8-bit Computers and 5200
The Atari 400 and 800 computers could support four pairs of paddles using its four controller ports. These are connected to the POKEY chip inside the system, which has eight analog input pins. Super Breakout for the Atari 8-bit computers supports eight paddles used in a sequential fashion. POKEY is also used for audio generation and other system functions including scanning the keyboard for pressed keys. The buttons are read by the 6520 PIA chip. The 2600 paddles are used in these computers.
The Atari 5200 was noted for being the first system to come with an analog joystick. The Atari 5200's joysticks manipulates a pair of potentiometers (not smaller than those found in paddles) and use a resistance value of 500KOhms. The 4-port system could, as its name implies, support for of these joysticks. The 2-port system could only support two joysticks. No paddles were specifically made for the 5200. There is no PIA chip in the 5200, so the joystick buttons are read by the GTIA chip. The keypad buttons are read similarly to the keyboard keys in the 8-bit machines by the POKEY, but multiplexers are used.
The later Atari 8-bit machines, from the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE, 130XE and XE Game System eliminate two of the controller ports, so you can only use two pairs of paddles with these machines.
Vectrex
The Vectrex controller may not have had quite as many buttons as the 5200 controller, but four independent fire buttons was a rarity. Its joystick was smaller than the 5200's and apparently less brittle. Also, far more importantly, the joystick is self-centering. The innards of the joystick look very similar to those of the Sony Dual Shocks to come in the following decade.
Not only does the Vectrex controllers contain a pair of potentiometers attached directly to the joystick, but there are also a separate pair of trimmer potentiometers located elsewhere on the PCB. Apparently these can be adjusted without opening the joystick and serve to fine tune the joystick's centering, not too dissimilar to how Apple and PC joysticks work. These trimmer potentimeters are 10KOhms.
Unlike the Tandy sticks, which have one end terminal of the potentiometer connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to GND, the Vectrex stick has one end terminal connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to -5v. The resistance value for these potentiometers also appears to be 10KOhms.
Because Vectrex controllers are rare and only two commercial Vectex games use the analog function, Sega Genesis 3-button controllers have been converted to work with them.
NES & Famicom
NES Controllers are primarily digital, they send out a bit for a pressed button. However, the NES and Famicom versions of Arkanoid were released with a paddle controller. This controller, called the VAUS Controller in the US, could be used instead of the gamepad. The Famicom controller plugged into the expansion port and the NES controller plugged into Controller Port 2. The paddle had one button. The NES and Famicom controllers are not compatible with each other, they function identically but use different bits to send their data. No other NES game used its Arkanoid controller, but the Famicom games Chase HQ and Arkanoid 2 could use the Famicom Arkanoid controller. The NES controller has a small screw that could be used to adjust the sensitivity of the controller via a trimpot. The Famicom controller does not have a trimpot.
The interior of the Arkanoid controller shows a 556 timer and potentiometer wired only to two terminals. This means that it works just like in the Apple II or IBM PC.
Thumbsticks - Sony PlayStation Dual Shock controllers and their successors
Outside the classic consoles, most systems of the third and fourth generation of video games did not support analog controllers. In the fifth generation, things began to change. The Nintendo 64 was released with an "analog" thumbstick, but the thumbstick uses optical sensors and is not really an analog controller for the purposes of this article.
The basic principle of how the analog thumbsticks operate on a PlayStation Dual Shock controller is similar to how the Tandy CoCo joysticks work. Although its successors may offer more analog controls, the basic functionality is unchanged. Essentially each thumbstick manipulates a pair of potentiomers, one for each axis of the stick. These potentiometers are wired in the three pin style, making them voltage dividers. When the stick is in the neutral position, the sticks should be outputting half the maximum voltage (2.5V). The controller chip of the controller reads these values and converts them into a digital 8-bit value which is sent with other stick and button information as a multi-byte serial packet to the console.
I have read that using a voltage divider is more precise than using a resistor/capacitor network as used in PCs and Atari consoles and computers. However, potentiometers are notoriously loose with their tolerances (20% seems to be the norm). I imagine Sony and its competitors may have higher quality parts and the lower resistance ranges (0-40KOhms seems to be about right) and the shorter travel distances may tighten the tolerance a bit (10% seems reasonable)
Every PlayStation game that supports the thumbsticks should use a standard routine to calibrate the thumbsticks when the game is bootup. Even with tighter tolerances and more compact form factors, the dead center position may not reflect the midpoint voltage reading.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Retro Kickstarters - Modest Goals Rewarded
I have been fascinated by the concept of Kickstarters geared to classic video game consoles and home computers. That many have been successful indicates that there are needs that are waiting to be fulfilled. However, most retro video game Kickstarter campaigns have had reasonable goals. Few that have required over $100,000 to be funded have been successful. In this blog entry I will talk about some of the campaigns and give my thoughts on their significance.
First, Kickstarter campaigns with lofty goals targeting the retro video game market will almost certainly fail. The Retro VGS is a perfect example of a campaign so wrong headed and just plain bizarre that it justifies the trope "truth is stranger than fiction:". They wanted $2,950,000 to fund a new retro-style cartridge only console built from a plastic mold for the Atari Jaguar shell. Oh, it may have had an FPGA that could recreate consoles like the NES or the 2600 in hardware. The Retro VGS campaign's risible failure has been commented to death and has really given far too much attention.
People may be more hesitant to spend their money for big ticket video game projects thanks to the failure of the Ouya console. The Ouya raised over $8 million on Kickstarter for a $99 game console (the controller was quite a bit extra) that would play games easily ported from Android. Despite the massive success of the crowdfunding campaign, the Ouya was sold off to Razer and discontinued within two years of its release.
There have been successes with sequels to classic games. Wasteland 2, Dreamfall Chapters, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded (a remake), Shadowrun Hong Kong and Shenmue III may never had been possible without crowdfunding. Also, some designers with classics to their name like Richard Garriott, Chris Roberts, Tim Shafer, Kenji Inafune and Koji Igarashi have found the resources to back new projects in the vein of their earlier work but which is owned by a large corporation that has turned its back on them. (Hideo Kojima may be joining them soon.) These games of course are designed to play on current platforms.
Crowdfunding true retro games designed to be played on classic consoles is a far greater challenge. Similarly, while there have been successful crowdfunding campaigns for books, documentaries and music albums related to classic video game consoles or home computers, crowdfunding useful hardware for those computers and consoles has been a task that has been a success only to a few.
The NES has had a quite a few successful hardware and software kickstarters. Hardware successes include the Blinking Light Win : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/113891498/blinking-light-win-resurrecting-your-nes?ref=discovery For $20 you bought a quality NES cartridge connector replacement that, eleven months after the campaign has ended, they are still having trouble stocking. It has fulfilled a need for a reasonably priced, quality connector from people who are passionate about what they are doing, not just some Chinese manufacturer endlessly recycling second-rate parts.
There has also been the Chip Maestro, a MIDI synthesizer device that uses the audio channels of the NES' 2A03 APU : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jarek/chip-maestro-an-nes-midi-synthesizer-cartridge?ref=discovery This is not the first cartridge to allow for the NES audio channels to be controlled via MIDI, the MIDINES was available years earlier, but may no longer be available for purchase.
While you may ask why you need a MIDI controller for the NES when you have FamiTracker and other musical composition programs that allow for full register access to the APU, if you want to use a keyboard directly with the NES in a live performance, you need something that will respond to key presses in real time, hence these MIDI controllers.
Cheetamen II: The Lost Levels (essentially a fixed version of Cheetamen II on a cartridge) is the most successful NES-based hardware Kickstarter I know of : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343248998/cheetahmen-ii-the-lost-levels?ref=discovery There is a patch available for the game here : http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/778/ that allows you to complete the game and you can play it on an NES PowerPak and an EverDrive N8 with the MMC1 patch.
Despite the full ALL CAPS and somewhat discursive presentation, the Kickstarter was a huge success. This must have been helped by the large number of NES collectors who wanted to fill a hole in their collection for $60 instead of $1,000, which is what the original Cheetamen II cartridge was going for at the time. The promotional video with James Rofle in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona (and his 1.95 million subscribers) must have helped enormously.
Another modestly successful piece of NES software is the retroplayer.nl Championships 2015, which recreates the Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge and competition : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1348643050/nintendo-nes-retroplayernl-championship-2015?ref=discovery Frankly I do not know how this got through Kickstarter because it uses Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers II, Tetris and Excitebike and no authorization from any of those rights holders seemed forthcoming. Considering that it flew well under the radar, no one may have brought it to their attention.
There are a pair of NES books on Kickstarter, the first is called the Complete NES by Jeffrey Wittenhagen : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesubcon3/the-complete-nes-collectors-book-physical-nes-rpg?ref=discovery
The book is being published alongside a game exclusive to the kickstarter called Jeffrey Wittenhagen's Black Box Challenge. It is being programmed by Sly Dog Studios, no stranger to NES homebrew. Whether their games are any good I cannot say but graphically they look pretty dull. This game is an RPG centered around the quest to acquire all NES black-box games. This campaign requested $15,000 and took in $24,455. If you wanted a physical paperback copy of the book and the game on cartridge without box or manual, you would have to pledge $90. For a more impressive hardcover copy of the book and a game with box and manual, the price increases to $170.
Perhaps the price seemed a bit steep to attract more donors. The second book, the Ultimate Guide to the NES Library by Pat Contri, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/560468638/nintendo-nes-library-guide-and-review-book-of-750?ref=nav_search gets you a physical hardcover copy of the book for $60. Normally I do not mention books without something else, but this book is the most funded NES project ever, expecting to hit the $100,000 mark. Pat has also had three successful Indiegoogo campaigns for his annual NES charity marathons and has also successfully raised money for four DVD volumes of his Pat the NES Punk series.
There is also documentary called The New 8-bit Heroes with a new NES game called Mystic Searches : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1316851183/the-new-8-bit-heroes-new-nes-game-and-creation-doc?ref=discovery The documentary is focused on the homebrew scene and the game will be an adventure game that appears to play in the Zelda vein. Also, accessible from the cartridge via a USB port will be a modern version of the game and the NES game and the PC game can talk to each other. Perhaps a bit too ambitious, and the $54,381 pledged is not sufficient for the modern game.
Another gentleman was able to get his NES homebrew game, Lizard, funded : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1101008925/lizard?ref=discovery There is a homebrew game for the SNES called Syndey Hunter and the Caverns of Death. A stretch goal enabled it to be ported to the NES : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439982171/new-snes-game-sydney-hunter-and-the-caverns-of-dea?ref=discovery It is the only non-NES and non-2600 homebrew game that seems to be crowdfunded. The only other homebrew game I could find that was funded through kickstarter was Star Castle for the Atari 2600. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/698159145/atari-2600-star-castle?ref=discovery
The Commodore 64 has seen some hardware kickstarter success. One gentleman was able to secure the case molds for the C64c and was able to offer new cases with different colors instead of the boring beige of the original :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1670214687/original-commodore-64c-computer-housing-in-new-coo?ref=nav_search
Unfortunately, the project manager was required to remove all references to Commodore from his campaign because the entity that holds the Commodore trademark threatened to sue for trademark violation. Fortunately they did not catch it until late in the campaign, so there was sufficient advertisement for the kickstarter to be successful. I understand it is compatible with any C64 motherboard with proper keyboard support mounts, and I have a nice C64 motherboard that works with a brittle, post-retr0bright failure case. Considering that the creator only wanted a modest $10K, obtaining over nine times that amount was pretty impressive!
The Commodore Amiga has seen similar success with a project (with their second attempt) to make new A1200 molds : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/a1200housing/new-amiga-1200-cases-made-from-new-molds?ref=nav_search You will note that the name Commodore is not present when describing the project. Of all the projects discussed here, this one is the only one which has passed the $100K mark. However, the project managers needed to make new molds, which is incredibly expensive. I cannot say I am incredibly familiar with the late model Amiga scene (not a lot of gaming potential there), but boy there had to be a need for these cases. They also have room for a Raspberry Pi or a MiST FPGA board, which would not have been the case with the original cases.
Of course, I cannot leave out a mention of HD Retrovision's Component Video cables for the SNES and Genesis : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hdretrovision/sega-genesis-and-super-nintendo-component-cables?ref=discovery Even though component video is not the best way to connect a SNES or Genesis to a modern LCD or to stream footage from one, it is still useful for those of us with big screen CRTs with component video inputs. A hardware project I would have liked to see succeed was the hdmyboy, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507669971/hdmyboy-a-full-hd-power-up-for-your-game-boy-class?ref=nav_search
which is a HDMI adapter/converter for the original Game Boy. Unfortunately, 65,000 Euro is an ambitious goal and I believe that people were really expecting not just original Game Boy, but Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance support, especially with the Retron 5 out there. How much more processing power would have been required to convert 15-bit color instead of 2-bit monochrome? Also, the hdmyboy lacked stereo output support.
As you can see, this is a very small number of successful projects (14). Most people who have a product usually rely on pre-orders from internet forums like AtariAge, NintendoAge, VOGONS, Vintage Computing Forums, Sega-16, PCenginefx forums or assemblerforums. AtariAge has been extremely successful in allowing developers to publish new games for the Atari 2600 in cartridge form. On the other end of the spectrum, kevtris had to fund development of the Hi Def NES Mod out of his own pocket, for example. Currently, retro console and computer related kickstarters that keep their funding goals within the five figure mark stand a good chance of success. Six figures is most likely poison to just about any campaign.
First, Kickstarter campaigns with lofty goals targeting the retro video game market will almost certainly fail. The Retro VGS is a perfect example of a campaign so wrong headed and just plain bizarre that it justifies the trope "truth is stranger than fiction:". They wanted $2,950,000 to fund a new retro-style cartridge only console built from a plastic mold for the Atari Jaguar shell. Oh, it may have had an FPGA that could recreate consoles like the NES or the 2600 in hardware. The Retro VGS campaign's risible failure has been commented to death and has really given far too much attention.
People may be more hesitant to spend their money for big ticket video game projects thanks to the failure of the Ouya console. The Ouya raised over $8 million on Kickstarter for a $99 game console (the controller was quite a bit extra) that would play games easily ported from Android. Despite the massive success of the crowdfunding campaign, the Ouya was sold off to Razer and discontinued within two years of its release.
There have been successes with sequels to classic games. Wasteland 2, Dreamfall Chapters, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded (a remake), Shadowrun Hong Kong and Shenmue III may never had been possible without crowdfunding. Also, some designers with classics to their name like Richard Garriott, Chris Roberts, Tim Shafer, Kenji Inafune and Koji Igarashi have found the resources to back new projects in the vein of their earlier work but which is owned by a large corporation that has turned its back on them. (Hideo Kojima may be joining them soon.) These games of course are designed to play on current platforms.
Crowdfunding true retro games designed to be played on classic consoles is a far greater challenge. Similarly, while there have been successful crowdfunding campaigns for books, documentaries and music albums related to classic video game consoles or home computers, crowdfunding useful hardware for those computers and consoles has been a task that has been a success only to a few.
The NES has had a quite a few successful hardware and software kickstarters. Hardware successes include the Blinking Light Win : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/113891498/blinking-light-win-resurrecting-your-nes?ref=discovery For $20 you bought a quality NES cartridge connector replacement that, eleven months after the campaign has ended, they are still having trouble stocking. It has fulfilled a need for a reasonably priced, quality connector from people who are passionate about what they are doing, not just some Chinese manufacturer endlessly recycling second-rate parts.
There has also been the Chip Maestro, a MIDI synthesizer device that uses the audio channels of the NES' 2A03 APU : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jarek/chip-maestro-an-nes-midi-synthesizer-cartridge?ref=discovery This is not the first cartridge to allow for the NES audio channels to be controlled via MIDI, the MIDINES was available years earlier, but may no longer be available for purchase.
While you may ask why you need a MIDI controller for the NES when you have FamiTracker and other musical composition programs that allow for full register access to the APU, if you want to use a keyboard directly with the NES in a live performance, you need something that will respond to key presses in real time, hence these MIDI controllers.
Cheetamen II: The Lost Levels (essentially a fixed version of Cheetamen II on a cartridge) is the most successful NES-based hardware Kickstarter I know of : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343248998/cheetahmen-ii-the-lost-levels?ref=discovery There is a patch available for the game here : http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/778/ that allows you to complete the game and you can play it on an NES PowerPak and an EverDrive N8 with the MMC1 patch.
Despite the full ALL CAPS and somewhat discursive presentation, the Kickstarter was a huge success. This must have been helped by the large number of NES collectors who wanted to fill a hole in their collection for $60 instead of $1,000, which is what the original Cheetamen II cartridge was going for at the time. The promotional video with James Rofle in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona (and his 1.95 million subscribers) must have helped enormously.
Another modestly successful piece of NES software is the retroplayer.nl Championships 2015, which recreates the Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge and competition : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1348643050/nintendo-nes-retroplayernl-championship-2015?ref=discovery Frankly I do not know how this got through Kickstarter because it uses Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers II, Tetris and Excitebike and no authorization from any of those rights holders seemed forthcoming. Considering that it flew well under the radar, no one may have brought it to their attention.
There are a pair of NES books on Kickstarter, the first is called the Complete NES by Jeffrey Wittenhagen : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesubcon3/the-complete-nes-collectors-book-physical-nes-rpg?ref=discovery
The book is being published alongside a game exclusive to the kickstarter called Jeffrey Wittenhagen's Black Box Challenge. It is being programmed by Sly Dog Studios, no stranger to NES homebrew. Whether their games are any good I cannot say but graphically they look pretty dull. This game is an RPG centered around the quest to acquire all NES black-box games. This campaign requested $15,000 and took in $24,455. If you wanted a physical paperback copy of the book and the game on cartridge without box or manual, you would have to pledge $90. For a more impressive hardcover copy of the book and a game with box and manual, the price increases to $170.
Perhaps the price seemed a bit steep to attract more donors. The second book, the Ultimate Guide to the NES Library by Pat Contri, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/560468638/nintendo-nes-library-guide-and-review-book-of-750?ref=nav_search gets you a physical hardcover copy of the book for $60. Normally I do not mention books without something else, but this book is the most funded NES project ever, expecting to hit the $100,000 mark. Pat has also had three successful Indiegoogo campaigns for his annual NES charity marathons and has also successfully raised money for four DVD volumes of his Pat the NES Punk series.
There is also documentary called The New 8-bit Heroes with a new NES game called Mystic Searches : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1316851183/the-new-8-bit-heroes-new-nes-game-and-creation-doc?ref=discovery The documentary is focused on the homebrew scene and the game will be an adventure game that appears to play in the Zelda vein. Also, accessible from the cartridge via a USB port will be a modern version of the game and the NES game and the PC game can talk to each other. Perhaps a bit too ambitious, and the $54,381 pledged is not sufficient for the modern game.
Another gentleman was able to get his NES homebrew game, Lizard, funded : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1101008925/lizard?ref=discovery There is a homebrew game for the SNES called Syndey Hunter and the Caverns of Death. A stretch goal enabled it to be ported to the NES : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439982171/new-snes-game-sydney-hunter-and-the-caverns-of-dea?ref=discovery It is the only non-NES and non-2600 homebrew game that seems to be crowdfunded. The only other homebrew game I could find that was funded through kickstarter was Star Castle for the Atari 2600. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/698159145/atari-2600-star-castle?ref=discovery
The Commodore 64 has seen some hardware kickstarter success. One gentleman was able to secure the case molds for the C64c and was able to offer new cases with different colors instead of the boring beige of the original :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1670214687/original-commodore-64c-computer-housing-in-new-coo?ref=nav_search
Unfortunately, the project manager was required to remove all references to Commodore from his campaign because the entity that holds the Commodore trademark threatened to sue for trademark violation. Fortunately they did not catch it until late in the campaign, so there was sufficient advertisement for the kickstarter to be successful. I understand it is compatible with any C64 motherboard with proper keyboard support mounts, and I have a nice C64 motherboard that works with a brittle, post-retr0bright failure case. Considering that the creator only wanted a modest $10K, obtaining over nine times that amount was pretty impressive!
The Commodore Amiga has seen similar success with a project (with their second attempt) to make new A1200 molds : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/a1200housing/new-amiga-1200-cases-made-from-new-molds?ref=nav_search You will note that the name Commodore is not present when describing the project. Of all the projects discussed here, this one is the only one which has passed the $100K mark. However, the project managers needed to make new molds, which is incredibly expensive. I cannot say I am incredibly familiar with the late model Amiga scene (not a lot of gaming potential there), but boy there had to be a need for these cases. They also have room for a Raspberry Pi or a MiST FPGA board, which would not have been the case with the original cases.
Of course, I cannot leave out a mention of HD Retrovision's Component Video cables for the SNES and Genesis : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hdretrovision/sega-genesis-and-super-nintendo-component-cables?ref=discovery Even though component video is not the best way to connect a SNES or Genesis to a modern LCD or to stream footage from one, it is still useful for those of us with big screen CRTs with component video inputs. A hardware project I would have liked to see succeed was the hdmyboy, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507669971/hdmyboy-a-full-hd-power-up-for-your-game-boy-class?ref=nav_search
which is a HDMI adapter/converter for the original Game Boy. Unfortunately, 65,000 Euro is an ambitious goal and I believe that people were really expecting not just original Game Boy, but Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance support, especially with the Retron 5 out there. How much more processing power would have been required to convert 15-bit color instead of 2-bit monochrome? Also, the hdmyboy lacked stereo output support.
As you can see, this is a very small number of successful projects (14). Most people who have a product usually rely on pre-orders from internet forums like AtariAge, NintendoAge, VOGONS, Vintage Computing Forums, Sega-16, PCenginefx forums or assemblerforums. AtariAge has been extremely successful in allowing developers to publish new games for the Atari 2600 in cartridge form. On the other end of the spectrum, kevtris had to fund development of the Hi Def NES Mod out of his own pocket, for example. Currently, retro console and computer related kickstarters that keep their funding goals within the five figure mark stand a good chance of success. Six figures is most likely poison to just about any campaign.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Commodore 64 - No NTSC Love
Despite the Commodore 64 being the best selling computer model of all-time and being manufactured by a US company, all the major vintage enthusiasm for the machine seems to be centered on its presence in the UK and Europe. In NTSC countries like the United States and Canada, there is arguably much more of a vintage interest in the Apple and Atari 8-bit computers.
In Europe, software for the Commodore 64 came primarily on cassette tape. The Commodore 1530 C2N Datasette was competitively priced, the Commodore 1541 Floppy Disk Drive was not for what was came to be seen primarily as a games/hobbyist machine. Virtually all European software came on tape, while only the pricey US imports like Ultima and Wizardry came on disk. Cartridges, which were not dominant in the US after 1984, were seldom seen in Europe.
The tape medium imposed sharp limits on the varieties of games that could be played on a C64. A full load of the 64KB of RAM took several minutes from tape, and once loaded, that was it for the game. Since precise loading of data from one side of a tape was not very friendly to the player, one side of the tape equaled one load of a game. Platformers, shumps, soccer (association football) and fighting games were very popular genres. Turn-based strategy games, lengthy text-based adventures and RPGs were not popular on tape. Imagine having to fast forward a tape until the counter reached 200, 300 or 500 to load a town or a map. Wasn't going to happen.
The real problem is that most U.S. developers came late to the Commodore 64, having cut their teeth on Apple or Atari computers. To most developers, the C64 was just one more machine that would need a port of a popular game. Eventually U.S. developers did develop some games natively for the C64. Maxis' Raid on Bungeling Bay and SimCity was developed for the C64, as was Microprose's Gunship and Sid Meier's Pirates!. Activision contributed Little Computer People. Lucasfilm offered Labryinth, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and from Electronic Arts there was Skate or Die! and Interplay contributed Neuromancer. SSI developed its famous AD&D Gold Box engine for the C64 including Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. Epyx was prolific when it came to C64 development with Impossible Mission and other classics, but unfortunately that company foundered on what would become the Atari Lynx. By the end of the 80s, all these US developers had shifted their focus to the generic IBM PC Compatible platform.
Many US-originated games are popular with Commodore 64 enthusiasts, even in Europe. LucasArts' classics top many lists, and you can usually find an Ultima, M.U.L.E., Wasteland and others. On more than one list of the top C64 games, roughly half come from US companies. However, I have heard more than one commentator say that the NTSC C64 is crap and that you should get a PAL one instead. Most US games will work (18% more slowly) in a PAL machine, while most of the good PAL games rely on timing that will break in an NTSC machine.
Many European C64 games were not as widely ported. Some went to the Amiga, and some Amiga games like Turrican received very high quality ports to the C64. While many games were ported to the ZX Spectrum, no one was going to favorably compare a ZX version to the C64 version, except perhaps in price. Many companies decided develop their advanced efforts on the Commodore Amiga (the 500 was priced well in Europe) or the Atari ST instead of the boring PC clones. Other than Cinemaware, US developers did not really embrace the Amiga, and the Atari ST and Apple IIgs saw even fewer natively developed game titles.
One great advantage of the Commodore 64 is that virtually all the classic US PC games of the early and mid-1980s, and even many late 1980s games, found native releases or ports to the system. Some of the later Infocom games require a Commodore 128 to play (A Mind Forever Voyaging, Beyond Zork, Trinity) and some can take advantage of the 128's features (Ultima V, Hitckhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Developer interest virtually disappeared in the Atari 8-bit line after 1985 outside of Atari, and the Commodore offered far superior graphics and sound to the Apple II line. By 1988, PCs had come down sufficiently in price that game developers could target them. Decent graphics (EGA) and sound (Adlib) made the PC less of a chore to develop for than in the days of CGA and the PC Speaker. However, the advent of affordable hard drives, and the enormous increase in functionality they provided, really helped establish the PC as a programmer's best friend.
The use of cassette tape had its advantages as well as its drawbacks. Since the tape usually took some minutes to load, the programmers could send a static picture first and a musical tune to entertain the player while the game loaded. The disk was faster but servicing it seemed to require the computer's total attention, so this sort of thing was not common for disk games. Another advantage of the cassette game was that they were easier to copy and rip than disk games. Cassettes were cheaper than disk, and the games were generally much, much smaller. It's quite easy to distribute most of them as a simple Commodore executable file these days if you just want to play the game. It is not so easy to do that with, say, Ultima V, which came on four double-sided floppy disks.
If the C64 has an Achilles Heel, it is undoubtedly the speed of the disk drive. The standard speed was only 300 bytes per second. An IBM PC Floppy drive was faster by almost two orders of magnitude, and even the slower Apple II and Atari 8-bit disk drives were faster. Some have been converted from their slow floppy format to more mass-storage friendly solutions, but there is a great deal of work to be done in this area. But perhaps it is this reason, most of all, which tends to put off US gamers from the C64.
In Europe, software for the Commodore 64 came primarily on cassette tape. The Commodore 1530 C2N Datasette was competitively priced, the Commodore 1541 Floppy Disk Drive was not for what was came to be seen primarily as a games/hobbyist machine. Virtually all European software came on tape, while only the pricey US imports like Ultima and Wizardry came on disk. Cartridges, which were not dominant in the US after 1984, were seldom seen in Europe.
The tape medium imposed sharp limits on the varieties of games that could be played on a C64. A full load of the 64KB of RAM took several minutes from tape, and once loaded, that was it for the game. Since precise loading of data from one side of a tape was not very friendly to the player, one side of the tape equaled one load of a game. Platformers, shumps, soccer (association football) and fighting games were very popular genres. Turn-based strategy games, lengthy text-based adventures and RPGs were not popular on tape. Imagine having to fast forward a tape until the counter reached 200, 300 or 500 to load a town or a map. Wasn't going to happen.
The real problem is that most U.S. developers came late to the Commodore 64, having cut their teeth on Apple or Atari computers. To most developers, the C64 was just one more machine that would need a port of a popular game. Eventually U.S. developers did develop some games natively for the C64. Maxis' Raid on Bungeling Bay and SimCity was developed for the C64, as was Microprose's Gunship and Sid Meier's Pirates!. Activision contributed Little Computer People. Lucasfilm offered Labryinth, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and from Electronic Arts there was Skate or Die! and Interplay contributed Neuromancer. SSI developed its famous AD&D Gold Box engine for the C64 including Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. Epyx was prolific when it came to C64 development with Impossible Mission and other classics, but unfortunately that company foundered on what would become the Atari Lynx. By the end of the 80s, all these US developers had shifted their focus to the generic IBM PC Compatible platform.
Many US-originated games are popular with Commodore 64 enthusiasts, even in Europe. LucasArts' classics top many lists, and you can usually find an Ultima, M.U.L.E., Wasteland and others. On more than one list of the top C64 games, roughly half come from US companies. However, I have heard more than one commentator say that the NTSC C64 is crap and that you should get a PAL one instead. Most US games will work (18% more slowly) in a PAL machine, while most of the good PAL games rely on timing that will break in an NTSC machine.
Many European C64 games were not as widely ported. Some went to the Amiga, and some Amiga games like Turrican received very high quality ports to the C64. While many games were ported to the ZX Spectrum, no one was going to favorably compare a ZX version to the C64 version, except perhaps in price. Many companies decided develop their advanced efforts on the Commodore Amiga (the 500 was priced well in Europe) or the Atari ST instead of the boring PC clones. Other than Cinemaware, US developers did not really embrace the Amiga, and the Atari ST and Apple IIgs saw even fewer natively developed game titles.
One great advantage of the Commodore 64 is that virtually all the classic US PC games of the early and mid-1980s, and even many late 1980s games, found native releases or ports to the system. Some of the later Infocom games require a Commodore 128 to play (A Mind Forever Voyaging, Beyond Zork, Trinity) and some can take advantage of the 128's features (Ultima V, Hitckhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Developer interest virtually disappeared in the Atari 8-bit line after 1985 outside of Atari, and the Commodore offered far superior graphics and sound to the Apple II line. By 1988, PCs had come down sufficiently in price that game developers could target them. Decent graphics (EGA) and sound (Adlib) made the PC less of a chore to develop for than in the days of CGA and the PC Speaker. However, the advent of affordable hard drives, and the enormous increase in functionality they provided, really helped establish the PC as a programmer's best friend.
The use of cassette tape had its advantages as well as its drawbacks. Since the tape usually took some minutes to load, the programmers could send a static picture first and a musical tune to entertain the player while the game loaded. The disk was faster but servicing it seemed to require the computer's total attention, so this sort of thing was not common for disk games. Another advantage of the cassette game was that they were easier to copy and rip than disk games. Cassettes were cheaper than disk, and the games were generally much, much smaller. It's quite easy to distribute most of them as a simple Commodore executable file these days if you just want to play the game. It is not so easy to do that with, say, Ultima V, which came on four double-sided floppy disks.
If the C64 has an Achilles Heel, it is undoubtedly the speed of the disk drive. The standard speed was only 300 bytes per second. An IBM PC Floppy drive was faster by almost two orders of magnitude, and even the slower Apple II and Atari 8-bit disk drives were faster. Some have been converted from their slow floppy format to more mass-storage friendly solutions, but there is a great deal of work to be done in this area. But perhaps it is this reason, most of all, which tends to put off US gamers from the C64.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
SID and DOS - Unlikely but True Bedfellows
The Commodore MOS 6581 Sound Interface Device, the SID, is one of the most famous synthesizer chips of all time. Its inclusion in the Commodore 64 and 128 computers helped to popularize computer music, mostly in Europe. Like virtually every other popular synthesizer chip of the time, it made its way to the PC in some form. Commodore had no problem in selling its chips to outside and technically rival companies. During its market life, the SID appeared in two different but related PC sound cards.
I. The Entertainer
In 1987, Microprose was looking for a way to enhance the sound of some of its DOS games. These games had access to superior audio hardware on the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST, but the U.S. market was increasingly turning to the PCs. Unless a PC owner had a Tandy 1000 with its 3-voice chip, he had to settle for the PC speaker, as there was no popular and cheap sound expansion hardware available at the time. Since Microprose was still developing games for the Commodore 64, it seemed a natural idea to interface its SID chip with the PC. They advertised a PC sound board called The Entertainer, which included a 6581 and a joystick port on an ISA card. The only place this advertisement has ever been known to be seen is in an introduction screen and the readme to Gunship v429.04. The readme discusses the card with the following text :
Support has been added for the MicroProse Sound Board - "The Entertainer".
Presence of the board is detected by the program and enhanced sound is
automatically generated. Two additional control keys have been added to
control the volume. Ctrl-V turns the sound down one notch. Alt-V turns
it up. Just pressing "V" alone still toggles the sound on & off.
Microprose, according to the ad, sold the card directly and it was available through "your local retailer". Two high-level Microprose employees have been contacted and have no memory of selling the card at that time, so it probably was not actually sold and if it was sold, it did not sell well. The Entertainer card, if it was actually released by Microprose, was not supported by Microprose except in Gunship, v429.04 & 429.05 and Sid Meier's Pirates!, v432.1, 432.2 and 432.3. It may also be supported in 432.4, which was a DOS conversion of the floppy PC booter from a Best of Microprose CD. It was not known to have been intentionally supported in any other company's games. The in-game ad and the text quoted above was removed for Gunship v429.05, so it is very possible that this was an idea that Microprose considered but which it did not follow through to market.
II. The Innovation Sound Standard SSI-2001
Not too long after the Adlib Music Synthesizer Card began to be adopted by Sierra and other companies, and the idea (and more, as we will see) of a SID-on-a-chip card was resurrected by a company called Innovation. It released a card around April, 1989 called the Innovation Sound Standard SSI-2001, which is a 6581 plus a speed-adjustable gameport. It cost $129.00, but with discounts and coupons you could have purchased one for $69.00. It may have only been available directly through Innovation. Support was poor, the following games are the only ones known to support it :
Airball - SFX only, slow PC req'd
Bad Blood - Music only
Battle Chess II - SFX only
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge
F-19 Stealth Fighter
Falcon A.T.
Harpoon
Joe Montana Football - SFX only
Lord of the Rings Volume 1 - Floppy version only, SFX only
Red Storm Rising
Super Jeopardy
Ultima VI - Music only
Windwalker
I have verified that all the above games work with the Innovation emulation in DOSBox except for Super Jeopardy. While Mobygames claims that Lexi-Cross and Castles and its expansion Castles : The Northern Campaign support Innovation, I have personally verified that these programs do not have install options for Innovation, despite what the system requirements labels on their boxes may indicate. Asterix: Operation Getafix is also listed by Mobygames as supporting the Innovation, but it actually supports the InterSound MDO, a Covox Speech Thing-like device released by the French gaming company Coktel Vision.
The best informational article describing the card can be found in Computer Gaming World, Number 63, September 1989. It mentions that only Origin and possibly Mindscape were planning to support the card. Interplay and Microprose eventually did with more than one title. Although Commodore made PC clones, it never put its sound chips in them. The SSI-2001 is the only non-Commodore product I am aware of that used the SID chip prior to Commodore's failure in 1994.
I. The Entertainer
In 1987, Microprose was looking for a way to enhance the sound of some of its DOS games. These games had access to superior audio hardware on the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST, but the U.S. market was increasingly turning to the PCs. Unless a PC owner had a Tandy 1000 with its 3-voice chip, he had to settle for the PC speaker, as there was no popular and cheap sound expansion hardware available at the time. Since Microprose was still developing games for the Commodore 64, it seemed a natural idea to interface its SID chip with the PC. They advertised a PC sound board called The Entertainer, which included a 6581 and a joystick port on an ISA card. The only place this advertisement has ever been known to be seen is in an introduction screen and the readme to Gunship v429.04. The readme discusses the card with the following text :
Support has been added for the MicroProse Sound Board - "The Entertainer".
Presence of the board is detected by the program and enhanced sound is
automatically generated. Two additional control keys have been added to
control the volume. Ctrl-V turns the sound down one notch. Alt-V turns
it up. Just pressing "V" alone still toggles the sound on & off.
Microprose, according to the ad, sold the card directly and it was available through "your local retailer". Two high-level Microprose employees have been contacted and have no memory of selling the card at that time, so it probably was not actually sold and if it was sold, it did not sell well. The Entertainer card, if it was actually released by Microprose, was not supported by Microprose except in Gunship, v429.04 & 429.05 and Sid Meier's Pirates!, v432.1, 432.2 and 432.3. It may also be supported in 432.4, which was a DOS conversion of the floppy PC booter from a Best of Microprose CD. It was not known to have been intentionally supported in any other company's games. The in-game ad and the text quoted above was removed for Gunship v429.05, so it is very possible that this was an idea that Microprose considered but which it did not follow through to market.
II. The Innovation Sound Standard SSI-2001
Not too long after the Adlib Music Synthesizer Card began to be adopted by Sierra and other companies, and the idea (and more, as we will see) of a SID-on-a-chip card was resurrected by a company called Innovation. It released a card around April, 1989 called the Innovation Sound Standard SSI-2001, which is a 6581 plus a speed-adjustable gameport. It cost $129.00, but with discounts and coupons you could have purchased one for $69.00. It may have only been available directly through Innovation. Support was poor, the following games are the only ones known to support it :
Airball - SFX only, slow PC req'd
Bad Blood - Music only
Battle Chess II - SFX only
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge
F-19 Stealth Fighter
Falcon A.T.
Harpoon
Joe Montana Football - SFX only
Lord of the Rings Volume 1 - Floppy version only, SFX only
Red Storm Rising
Super Jeopardy
Ultima VI - Music only
Windwalker
I have verified that all the above games work with the Innovation emulation in DOSBox except for Super Jeopardy. While Mobygames claims that Lexi-Cross and Castles and its expansion Castles : The Northern Campaign support Innovation, I have personally verified that these programs do not have install options for Innovation, despite what the system requirements labels on their boxes may indicate. Asterix: Operation Getafix is also listed by Mobygames as supporting the Innovation, but it actually supports the InterSound MDO, a Covox Speech Thing-like device released by the French gaming company Coktel Vision.
The best informational article describing the card can be found in Computer Gaming World, Number 63, September 1989. It mentions that only Origin and possibly Mindscape were planning to support the card. Interplay and Microprose eventually did with more than one title. Although Commodore made PC clones, it never put its sound chips in them. The SSI-2001 is the only non-Commodore product I am aware of that used the SID chip prior to Commodore's failure in 1994.
Technical details about the Innovation card and its SID implementation are as follows. The card puts the SID chip and its 29 registers directly on the ISA bus. It can use ports starting at 280, 2A0, 2C0 or 2E0. 280 is the default, and it takes up 32 consecutive I/O ports (3 presumably mirrored or unused). The SID is clocked using the 14.318180 MHz clock from the ISA bus. This clock signal is divided by the counter and flip flops on the board by 16 to produce a base frequency of .89488625 MHz. By contrast, the base frequency of the SID in an NTSC C64 is 1.02272714 MHz and a PAL C64 is .98524851 MHz.
The filter capacitors on the Innovation board use a value of 1nF. This was proper according to the datasheet of the 6581, but in practice in the Commodore 64, different values were used. By comparison, the 6581 SID in a C64 uses 470pF capacitors and an 8580 in a C64C or C128D use 22nF capacitors (1nF = 1000pF). If Innovation had used the later 8580 chips in their card, the datasheet for the 8580 specifies 6n8/6.8nF/6800pF capacitors. The POTX and POTY pins are not connected on the Innovation board, so the two registers which correspond to the functionality provided by these pins are useless.
The gameport is addressable at the standard port 201, supports 4 axes and 4 buttons, can be disabled with a jumper and supports three levels of "sensitivity", also selectable by jumper. The Innovation card is the first sound card known to incorporate a standard gameport, a feature popularized by the Sound Blaster in 1990 and then ubiquitous on sound cards for the rest of the decade.
By using the joystick enable jumper and the four port range selections, one can install four boards and hence four SID chips in one computer, if you had the slots to spare. Two boards would provide fully-independent stereo channels, but no software was known to take advantage of this capability.
By using the joystick enable jumper and the four port range selections, one can install four boards and hence four SID chips in one computer, if you had the slots to spare. Two boards would provide fully-independent stereo channels, but no software was known to take advantage of this capability.
I know of exactly two Innovation boards known to be in existence, and each has minor layout differences compared with the other. Both boards clearly show the use of 6581 chips, not the later 6582/8580 chips. Here are images of both boards known to be in existence :
Earlier Board :
Later Board :
Earlier Board :
Later Board :
No one I know has ever seen a "The Entertainer" branded card. It works just like the Innovation board hard coded at port 280, but it also has autodetection port functionality at port 200. Gunship and Pirates! will only produce SID sound if they read a value of 45h from this port. The code string BA 00 02 EC in Gunship 429.05 executables EGAME.EXE/CGAME.EXE/TGAME.EXE and TITLE.EXE (the only version that uses unencrypted executables) must be replaced with B8 A5 00 90. Ditto for the disk images of Pirates! Once the code is bypassed and an Innovation card is in the system or the emulation is enabled in DOSBox, you will hear SID sound. Unfortunately, DOSBox uses the 1.02MHz frequency and 470pF Caps for the SID, so it will not sound exactly like the real boards would.
III. The Modern Replica SSI-2001
In 2015, the prayers of many were answered when members of the VOGONS forum produced a replica of the SSI-2001 using a redesigned ISA board built mainly from photos of the card. This is what my card looks like :
Improvements over the old card include :
Can use 6581 or 8580 SIDs.
Jumper based speed setting for NTSC clock frequency or canonical SID clock frequency
Audio input jack
4-pin audio output header (dual mono on pins 1 & 4, pin 2 is ground)
Plated holes for POTX and POTY inputs
Fully labeled jumper settings
The cards have been made by a VOGONS user named Fagear, who is based in the Russian Federation. His work is top quality and he had the good sense to use mini-jacks instead of the RCA jack on the original. This meant that you can use any old junky ISA sound card for a bracket instead of having to make a custom bracket. My card works great, although I had to find my 6581 SID chip from another source.
You may notice, if you order from a card from Fagear, that the markings on the ICs, except for the SID, are not the familiar 74 series designations. The chips on this card are clones or work-alikes of the 74 series from several manufacturers exported by V/O Elektronorgtechnica. This company was a part of Elorg, the Soviet state owned entity that controlled imports and exports of computer hardware and where Tetris was born. However, with one apparent exception, the Russian parts appear to be functionally equivalent and use the same pinouts as the western chips. The identifying information for every part, western or Russian is silkscreened underneath the part, as can be seen here :
The sole exception is the chip just below the silkscreened SID CLOCK on the replica board, hence the jumper if the Russian or Western part is used.
You cannot just swap a 6581 for an 8580 in these boards whenever you like. The 6581 uses +12v, which the ISA bus provides. The 8580 uses +9v, which is not present on the ISA bus. In order to use an 8580, you must install a 78L09 voltage converter. The location is just to the left of the POT X holes. You would probably need to remove it if you revert to a 6581.
Thanks to VOGONS user form member bristlehog, you can play back .sid files through this card through a DOS utility called SIDPLAY. However, you will need a fast PC, around at least a 500MHz Pentium III, for proper speed. This is because .sid files use 6510 CPU instructions and rely on the 6526 CIA or the 6569 VIC-II for their timing, so a fair amount of these chips must be emulated. That means CPU power.
If you want to order a Replica SSI-2001 and download the player software, you can find it in this thread : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=27045
With this Board, I was able to verify that Super Jeopardy does output digitized sound. The output volume is so low as to make it almost useless. Activision got it right in the BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge, the voice in the introduction is nice and clear with an Innovation.
III. The Modern Replica SSI-2001
In 2015, the prayers of many were answered when members of the VOGONS forum produced a replica of the SSI-2001 using a redesigned ISA board built mainly from photos of the card. This is what my card looks like :
Improvements over the old card include :
Can use 6581 or 8580 SIDs.
Jumper based speed setting for NTSC clock frequency or canonical SID clock frequency
Audio input jack
4-pin audio output header (dual mono on pins 1 & 4, pin 2 is ground)
Plated holes for POTX and POTY inputs
Fully labeled jumper settings
The cards have been made by a VOGONS user named Fagear, who is based in the Russian Federation. His work is top quality and he had the good sense to use mini-jacks instead of the RCA jack on the original. This meant that you can use any old junky ISA sound card for a bracket instead of having to make a custom bracket. My card works great, although I had to find my 6581 SID chip from another source.
You may notice, if you order from a card from Fagear, that the markings on the ICs, except for the SID, are not the familiar 74 series designations. The chips on this card are clones or work-alikes of the 74 series from several manufacturers exported by V/O Elektronorgtechnica. This company was a part of Elorg, the Soviet state owned entity that controlled imports and exports of computer hardware and where Tetris was born. However, with one apparent exception, the Russian parts appear to be functionally equivalent and use the same pinouts as the western chips. The identifying information for every part, western or Russian is silkscreened underneath the part, as can be seen here :
The sole exception is the chip just below the silkscreened SID CLOCK on the replica board, hence the jumper if the Russian or Western part is used.
You cannot just swap a 6581 for an 8580 in these boards whenever you like. The 6581 uses +12v, which the ISA bus provides. The 8580 uses +9v, which is not present on the ISA bus. In order to use an 8580, you must install a 78L09 voltage converter. The location is just to the left of the POT X holes. You would probably need to remove it if you revert to a 6581.
Thanks to VOGONS user form member bristlehog, you can play back .sid files through this card through a DOS utility called SIDPLAY. However, you will need a fast PC, around at least a 500MHz Pentium III, for proper speed. This is because .sid files use 6510 CPU instructions and rely on the 6526 CIA or the 6569 VIC-II for their timing, so a fair amount of these chips must be emulated. That means CPU power.
If you want to order a Replica SSI-2001 and download the player software, you can find it in this thread : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=27045
With this Board, I was able to verify that Super Jeopardy does output digitized sound. The output volume is so low as to make it almost useless. Activision got it right in the BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge, the voice in the introduction is nice and clear with an Innovation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)