I haven't really looked at this. I will try to download an image and see if I can install it to a VM today.
The Commodore64 lives? Via Linux.
- Thread starter dos2unix
- Start date
I haven't really looked at this. I will try to download an image and see if I can install it to a VM today.
There are also emulators available. This is one that's easy to install and get running:
Ray, I saw this on distrowatch a couple of days ago, and it might be well placed in our Gaming section? (if so, I can move it)
The OS includes 200 old style games, package list can be viewed here
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=commodore&pkglist=true&version=3.0#pkglist
Cheers, Wiz
BTW - I thought briefly about the Pinball game, and Starfighter, but with the .zip being 30 GB or more, I would have to be keen, lol.
The OS includes 200 old style games, package list can be viewed here
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=commodore&pkglist=true&version=3.0#pkglist
Cheers, Wiz
BTW - I thought briefly about the Pinball game, and Starfighter, but with the .zip being 30 GB or more, I would have to be keen, lol.
Works for me, I wasn't sure where to put it.
I took care of it.
I have a VIC-20 but no 64. My VIC-20 is inopperable because it needs a new power supply. They're available online.
I've replaced it twice over the years, so I've gone through three of them. As I recall, it's the same power supply as the 64. That's why I knew there was a Flatpak available. Ah well...
I should replace the power supply. I have a printer, MODEM, cassette, (I forget the size) RAM expansion, and a bunch of game cartridges.
I have what appears to be a rare game. I've searched for it online and just did another search. I can't find it anywhere. It's on cassette and it's "Flog" - which is backwards "Golf". It's not a good game.
There are other games now called Flog but they're much newer. I can't find a reference for it anywhere, not even in 'complete lists' of all the software for any Commodore. I don't have it immediately to hand and would need to go find it, but not even the software vendor brings up results on a search engine.
It was given to me by a buddy who didn't like the game. Oddly, he also gave me a copy of his Zork transcript at the same time. I recall the gifts today because it was a odd situation.
I never upgraded to the C-64. I'm not 100% sure because this was many years ago, but I think my next computer was a TRS-80 Model 4. I had previously owned a TRS-80 II (or maybe the III).
I wonder if there's enough interest to warrant a 'retro computing' thread. Though, I do have a thread where I've shared some videos.
theLegionWithin
Well-Known Member
not sure why but I found this hilarious
I like golf games.
However, this one was terrible - and I love math. You had to do things like enter your swing angle and velocity with graphics that had nothing to do with the position you were from the hole. There were no real animated graphics that meant anything. It was an absolutely crappy game.
Which might be why there are no references to it online.
Is that hi-res graphics or what? After playing with this for a few days... well... I think this would mostly be for hard-core C=64 people with a lot of old game roms, or someone who could take the time to download these.
As a standalone Linux distro, it leaves a few things to be desired. I agree that "Vice" is much easier to use and install on most current distro's. I think I've gotten spoiled on waydroid, and I think for these type of games I prefer the android graphics and interface. Granted there is about 30 years between those.
There was a ton of improvements made with the C-64 that made it a temptation in its era. Even without any expansion, the 64 KB of RAM was about 7x what the Vic-20 had. It had 'HiRes' and 'multicolor roles'. It even supported sprites. That was very different than the business computers of the day.
It did well in the market. This meant that you had a lot of choices. I wasn't sure how many, so I cheated and looked. The C-64 had about 12x the number of games. There was also a bunch of commercial software sold for the C-64. I remember the Amiga also being pretty advanced for its day, though I never owned one of those.
You can buy a new C-64 if you want. I've seen a couple of options on the retro channels. I believe one of them runs on a Pi and the other runs on newly-made but period-correct hardware, but includes some advancements in storage and speed.
I can do some searching if needed, but I'm sure anyone here can reasonably navigate Google (or their search engine of choice).
The retro computer community is pretty strong. It's more popular than it used to be, though I suppose that's because there are now more retro computers. As we move forward, what we leave behind soon becomes retro. Given the rate of change we have seen in tech, there are often fairly well-defined categories of retro.
I still have both a C64 and an original Amiga that (possibly) still work - but no idea how I'd hook up a modern display to either. And I suspect the Amiga keyboard is gone. And its external SCSI HD was repurposed... Oh well.
Each of them was pretty amazing in in its day but the 64's "day" pretty much ended with the rest of the eight bit era. The Amiga was pretty much tied to the 68000 series which I though were pretty nice CPUs but apparently they had some technical limitation that basically locked the whole architecture out of progress into today's tech.
I fiddled around just a tiny bit with 68000 assembly language and it seemed to me like one could do a lot with it. Of course the same could be said of the 6510, but at an entirely different scale.
"VicE" (VIC Emulator) works well on linux as a C64 emulator. Too bad I don't have images of all those old floppies.
I'll definitely be interested in your critical opinion of it. From what little I've read of it, I don't expect a rave review - but I didn't spend a lot of time on such reading, so always hopeful.
Atari guy, the first computer that I bought with my own money was a 800xl, I bought it right around Christmas after the price came way down 1983, I think.
My Mom won a TI99/4 as a door prize when I was in high school, spent a little time with it but I was getting ready to fly the coop (US Navy) so my younger brothers got more use out of it than I did. They both grew up to be programmers, coincidence?
I downloaded and install Commodore OS vision yesterday, it's busy and flashy not really my style buy still its kinda cool. Really interesting to see how customizable the Linux desktop is. Its a version of Mate skinned with Commodore bling.
Bob
My Mom won a TI99/4 as a door prize when I was in high school, spent a little time with it but I was getting ready to fly the coop (US Navy) so my younger brothers got more use out of it than I did. They both grew up to be programmers, coincidence?
I downloaded and install Commodore OS vision yesterday, it's busy and flashy not really my style buy still its kinda cool. Really interesting to see how customizable the Linux desktop is. Its a version of Mate skinned with Commodore bling.
Bob
That's what they programmed the games in. It had all sorts of power.
They make adapters for all of those things. That's how some of the YT channels show the screen. They go through adapters and then capture it before it goes to the monitor. They tend to use OBS Studio to do the capturing thing, as far as I can tell.
On a lark, there was an electronics store dumping large CRT televisions for next to nothing. It was almost at the point where they were paying people to take them away, but not quite like that. I picked up a 38" (as I recall, I'd have to go look) TV with all the fixings. Many of those old computers could be attached to a TV, but I bought mine for an eventual MAME project that I still haven't done.
One of these days...
We don't condone piracy here.
But, there are people who are intro preserving old games for replay and archival reasons. You can find every single C-64 game to download, even as a single compressed file. The file will contain the "Commodore 64 Complete ROMS" and an option will be to download them all as a compressed file. The entire thing is less than 5 MB in size.
(If it's not obvious, PM me.)
You can revisit all those old games with just a few keywords and a search engine.
