Ha! I remember the VIC-Switch from my 3rd grade elementary school computer lab. 20 C64s, two VIC switches, 1 disk drive, and a teacher who instructed …login to view the rest of this post

I have two of them. Decent SID replacement, similar to ARMSID. They have different characteristics : To my ear, the Backsid sounds a little 'crunchier' than ARMSID which sounds slightly anti-alias filtered. Imagine the Amiga 500 sound filter turned on for the ArmSID and off for BackSID, though nowhe...

Yeah, that's an elderly CRT. There's no one magic fix for this, but a few things you will do in combination. The good news is that it's monochrome so purity and convergence, the two most frustrating factors in adjusting a CRT, are nonexistent. 1. Yoke position, rotation and angle. Loosen the clamps,...

It looks like MAME recently now incorporates the Z80 Video Pak in its Commodore emulation drivers. I can compare behavior and possibly find a "romlist" that includes the software. Disassembled ROM also maybe

Serious question: people have faith in these "dead test" cartridges? They seem cumbersome and not very helpful. Well.. They're not normally cumbersome. On a black screen 64 you just plug it in and go. It's not guaranteed to help, but it only takes a few minutes to use and if you do get fe...

I'm still convinced there's something wrong with the way the blue RAM socket is installed. I've stared and stared at the pics and I just can't see how it's physically possible for the pins to line up with the respective solder pads. It HAS to be offset one row downward. Probably the top row through-...

Kind of. I have all of the documentation for the non-Z80 version, and all of those SYS and pokes work so I can use it as a regular Video Pak 80-column device. What's missing is the Z80 hardware documentation. I have those two disk images from Mike's page: One of them is actually the 80-column applic...

My roommate has just laid a "Data20 Z80 Video Pak" on me and I'm looking for the manual and the CP/M disk for it. Does anyone have such things? I already have the 80-column manual and programs that came with the non-Z80 version. I had to repair some capacitor damage and replace a logic IC ...

An Ultimate II+ cart. Every day I flip on the C64 I am thankful I got one before the FPGA crisis cast the world into darkness.

Starting in the late 80s I used to frequent Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, in the same neighborhood as the original Fry's Electronics. For a good while, those two places were legit before the late 90s rolled around and the shine began to come off everything. I picked up an Osborne Executive wit...