main menu page .
This is from the manual for the POWER64 EMULATOR for the Mac
The following generous C64 software authors officially released their (once commercial) work into public domain:
Magnetic Fields -http://www.beam.com.au/play_games.html
Jeff Minter (Llamasoft) -http://www.magneticfields.co.uk/prevrelease.html
I. Bell (Elite) - http://www.magicnet.net/~yak/linx.htm
Scott Adams - http://people.netcom.co.uk/i.bell/elite/Default.html
Kris Hatlelid (Frantic Freddie) -http://www.pcii.net/~msadams/advent.htm
Hopefully others will follow their example... http://www.iceonline.com/kris/old/fred.html
3.1 Games on CD-ROM
If you want to purchase a C64 software collection on CD-ROM you can choose among the following:
High Voltage CD-ROMs: A set of two CD-ROMs.
Disk #1 contains 4400+ Games, 7000+ Demos and 650+ Utilities. Disk #2 contains 4000+ Games, 850+ Demos and 650+ Tools, along with the probably most complete collection of SID-Tunes.
Each disk costs 30UK£, the set is 50UK£ cash or 55UK£ Eurocheque. For more info see:
C64 CD'96: http://www.talent.demon.co.uk/64/
Contains games only, probabaly more than you can ever play.
Check out:
http://www.telebyte.nl/~gg/C64cd96.htm
Price: 40US$ (60 DM)
Contact address:
F. Coolen ,
Leyborch 33,
5247 SN Rosmalen ,
The Netherlands ,
Fairlight Collection: All the C64 games that the Fairlight cracking group ever 'worked' on (about 70MB). Also contains lots (280MB) of Amiga stuff.
More info at:
http://hem.fairlight.to/cd/index.html
Price: 170 Swedish Crowns or 25 US$ or 42 DM or 16UK£ plus shipping
Contact address:
Pontus Berg,
GlŠdjevŠgen 9b,
16575 HŠsselby,
Sweden,
Ultimate C64 CD: More than 3000 games, 2200 SID-Tunes, 1500 Demos
More info at:
http://www.cdworld.co.uk/mmcd/c64.html
Price: 8 UK£ (incl. shipping)
Contact address:
Craig Rothwell,
422 Denton Road,
Denton Burn,
Newcastle upon Tyre - NE15 7HB,
United Kingdom,
C64 Games CD by Mark Leadbetter
More info at:
http://www.zyworld.com/marksplace/home.htm
Epic Marketing sells a wide range of CD-ROMs. Most of them are centered around the Amiga or PCs. Still there is one devoted to the C64 games (C64 games archive - 30UK£), one C64 Audio CD (C64: Back in Time - 13UK£) and one with C64 music in MP3 format (C64 Trax - 10UK£).
It's address is:
http://www.epicdirect.co.uk/page86.htm
Or snail mail:
Epic Direct Ltd.,
BSS House Unit 22 Area 50,
Cheney Manor Trading Estate,
Swindon,
Wiltshire SN2 2PJ,
United Kingdom,
Brotkasten CD: A wide ranging collection of software and emulators for the C64 as well as the Atari 800, Apple2, TI99/4A, Amstrad CPC and Sinclair ZX81.
Check out:
64'er CD http://www.8bit.com/
: A very special case - This is the collection of all the floppy disks that came with the German 64'er magazine. A wide range of little tools, games and programming examples accompanying the courses from the magazine. Not all of them are useful without their (paper) documentation.
The 64'er CD-ROM is available from:
Pearl Agency,
Am Kalischacht 4,
70426 Buggingen,
Germany,
Tel. +49 7631 360 200
Fax +49 7631 360 444
WWW:
http://www.pearl.de/
or
Performance Peripherals Europe
http://www.ppeurope.de/
Input64: Pearl Agency (address: see above) also published a CD with all the disks from the Input64 magazine. Price: 10 DM">There is also a strictly legal CD that contains only public domain software for the C64. More info is available at:
http://www.8bit.com/katalog.htm
Price: 38 DM
Contact address:
Tanja Reiser,
Software Versand,
Bajuwarenstr. 19,
85435 Alterding,
Germany
An excellent annotated list of published CD-ROMs for various 8-bit computers is available at:
http://www.8bit.com/bkcmain.htm
3.2 Games on the Internet
If you are looking for C64 software on the internet, you might want to look at the following sites:
ftp://arnold.c64.org/
- One of the most complete game collections
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/cbm/
- Emulators and documentation
ftp://utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/c64/
- Digital Dungeon
ftp.replay.com/pub/c64- Digital Dungeon
ftp://ftp.scs-trc.com/pub/c64- Digital Dungeon
kwed.org/pub/kwed/triangle- Triangle cracking group
ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/c64/- Demos and Tools
http://stekt.oulu.fi/~mysti/the_sharks/Files/Games/Tested/- Lots of good games
- Emulators and demos http://ftp.giga.or.at/pub/c64
http://www.commodorezone.com
http://come.to/Commodore
http://home9.inet.tele.dk/jez- JEZ' page: rare games and unusual titles.
http://home.ptd.net/~faethor/c64class/c64class.htm- A small site with few games
http://www.poli.studenti.to.it/ftp/pub/c64/- Lots of games and SIDs
If the above is not enough for you than read the list of C64-FTP sites (Find-It-FAQ) that is posted weekly to news://comp.emulator.cbm. The Find-It-FAQ is also available at:
ftp://ftp.jbrain.com/pub/cbm/faq/cbm-game-ftp-list.txt
and
http://www.heechee.net/c64/cbm-game-ftp-list.txt
3.2.1 Downloading and Unpacking Hints
Here are some hints, that will seem trivial to experienced internet users and are meant to help newbies avoid the most frequent errors:
C64 games are always stored in binary, never in text (ASCII) files. If you are using a FTP program for downloading make sure it is switched to binary mode. If you are using a webbrowser such as Netscape Navigator or M$ Internet Explorer press the option key when clicking on the link of a game. Otherwise there is a good chance that you will end up with a file that looks fine at first glance but is internally corrupted and unusable.
Only few sites offer games in pure D64 or T64 format. Almost all archives offer their files in a compressed format, that saves disk space and network bandwidth. Common file extensions for compressed files are: ZIP, GZ, LHA and SIT. Power64 can use ZIP, GZ and LHA files directly - there is no need to waste hard disk space by decompressing them before use. SIT files need to be expanded before they can you can use such a game with Power64.
The easiest way to expand a compressed file is to drag and drop it on StuffIt Expander with Expansion Enhancer. Both StuffIt Expander and Dropstuff with Expansion Enhancers are available at your local info-mac archive or from Aladdin Systems at
http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/index.html
StuffIt Expander is freeware, Dropstuff with Expansion Enhancer is shareware and together they expand all the important file formats.
Some sites also offer SFX files. These are Self Extracting LHArchives, that need to be unpacked on an (emulated) C64. The easiest way to do this probably is to mount the folder containing the SFX file as drive #9 and place a new disk image (or a disk image with sufficient free space) in drive #8. Now LOAD and RUN the SFX file, just like any other C64 program. It will ask for a drive and a device number. Answer '0' and '8' respectively and stand by as the archive is unpacked onto the floppy. When expansion is completed, you have the playable game on the disk, that can now be used like any other D64 file. The SFX file is then no longer needed.
Note that the C64 is a slow computer (in comparison to your Mac). Decompression might take quite a while. Use the Turbo Boost mode (Cmd-B), or manually increase the CPU speed in the Options/Emulator Speed Dialog, to make this a little faster.
If the expansion tool complained about a bad file structure, checksum errors or similar problems, it is most likely cause is that you made an error in downloading. Remember: All C64 games are stored in binary files! When in doubt use an specialized FTP tool for downloading. Don't (ab-)use your webbrowser for FTP sessions.
Now you hopefully successfully managed to expand the downloaded games. Still the files look dull on your Macintosh desktop and double-clicking on them does not start Power64. Please remember that there are computer systems other than the Macintosh out there. They have no idea of the Type/Creator system that the MacOS uses to keep files linked to icons and applications. Thus such information is not stored in the compressed file and can therefore not be retrieved when it is expanded.
Still Power64 is able to use such files, if you manually start Power64 and use the Device menu to attach a D64, T64 etc. to an appropriate drive. If a file does not have one of the characteristic extensions, it is most likely a CBM program file and you should mount its folder as a hard disk. After a file has been successfully loaded Power64 will adjust the Type/Creator for this file, so that it can be opened Mac style by double-clicking.
3.3 Other Internet Resources
If you do not want to search for games yourself there are also internet search engines specialized on the C64:
http://www.pulse.no/~mepk/cfs.html
http://users.iol.it/fmaida/emusearch/
http://www.aniston-park.de/cocos
http://tomten.C64.org/hv2.html
http://www.c64.org/sidfind/
Lots of C64 related wisdom is accumulated in the Commodore Knowledge Base at:
http://www.retrobits.com/ckb/
Project64 attempts to gather all kind of documentation around the C64 in the form of plain text files. They are available for download at:
http://project64.c64.org
If you are stuck with a game, need a hint for an adventure or a POKE of invulnerability for an action game there are several sites, that will serve your needs:
http://www.jyu.fi/~np/c64cheats.html
http://www.velsen.net/daniel/c64/index.html
http://jsis.net/c64/cheats.htm
http://www.wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de/~themelid/welcome.htm
http://www.mainolfi.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.uni-mb.si/~uel024r1a/c64pokes.html
http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d93-alo/c64/tips_n_cheats.html
http://solutions.c64.org
http://hjem.get2net.dk/gunn
http://www.zyworld.com/marksplace/home.htm
http://www.talent.demon.co.uk/64/
http://jez.c64.org/c64_cd.htm
http://come.to/Commodore
http://members.tripod.co.uk/buster2/index.html
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/solutions
If you are looking for paper magazines for the C64, visit">GO64! - a brand new German paper magazine that can be found at:
http://www.go64.c64.org
or
http://www.cunet.de/go64/go64.html
There are WWW-Sites devoted to the general topic of Emulation on the Macintosh:
http://www.emulation.net/
excellent site for all kinds of emulators on the Mac.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/madjock.m/index.htm
http://home2.swipnet.se/~w-28929/
gives an overview on Emulation on PCs
There are also newsgroups that are devoted to Commodore computers (news://comp.sys.cbm) and their emulation (news://comp.emulator.cbm). Read them to learn about new CD-ROMs and game-sites. Before you ask questions in these newsgroups (or any other, for that matter) please be sure to read the FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) summaries that are repeatedly posted in the newsgroups and that are also available at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.sys.cbm/
and
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.emulator.cbm/ respectively.
3.4 Using original 1541 Floppy disks
If you have your own collection of documents and games that you wrote yourself, and that are not publicly available you can copy these from 5.25" disk to your Mac. Unfortunately this is not a straight forward job. Still there are several options:
Get a DOS PC, a 1541 disk drive, a cable to hook the 1541 to the printer port of the PC and Star Commander. The cable is a simple 5 wire affair that anyone with a soldering iron can produce for less than $20. Star Commander is a shareware program by Joe Forster, that lets you copy files and disk images between the 1541 and the PC very easily. The Star Commander manual also explains how the cable is to be built. Once you have the files on the PC you can easily transfer them to your Mac using 3.5" disks. The file formats are the same. Star Commander is available at:
http://sta.c64.org
There are 3.5" disk drives available that can be connected to the C64, and produce Mac compatible disks. Unfortunately I have no such drive nor do I have any experience with this method. I would welcome any reports on this topic.
Use the "Big Blue Reader" a commercial package, from SOGWAP software, that runs on either a 64 or a 128, will read and write MS-DOS format 3.5" (with a 1581) and 5.25" (with a 1571) disks. Note that it does not support 1541 disk drives.">There is also a freeware/shareware (?) package, called "Little Red Reader" that supposedly does about the same things as the "Big Blue Reader" at less cost.
Check section 7 of the news://comp.sys.cbm Frequently Asked Questions.The FAQ can be obtained at:
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/cbm/faq/cbm-main-faq.3.1.gz
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.sys.cbm/main-faq/part*
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.emulators.cbm/*
Jon Fullmer (j.brain@ieee.org) attempted building an interface that will connect a 1541 to the Mac serial port. Unfortunatly I do not know how much progress he made.