Post by spannernick on Apr 25, 2018 18:01:01 GMT
ransom2 days agoEdited
Hi guys.
I have not received my c64mini yet but was wondering what file formats the c64 mini can play... is it only .d64?
Formats in question are
.t64
.g64
.CRT
.D81
.prf
.nib
If not is renaming the file to .d64 a possibility or do we have to convert only to .d64?
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Goclastninja2 days ago
At the moment only disk files are working
R ransom2 days ago
Can any non .d64 be converted to work as a .d64? Has anyone tried it yet?
MIK and tomxp411 replied to this.
MIK2 days ago
ransom Most commercial cracks are and were on floppy aka .d64 in the first place. The world would of been your oyster back in the last century for .d64 images online but over the last 18 years many sites have disappeared and those that are left offer a very limited range, believing what they offer is the best example.
So yeah, whatever it might be it may already exist on .d64. You can't ask here directly as the rules don't allow it but other commodore forums may be able to help.
Jammet2 days agoEdited
Well, technically most, if not all of these formats will work, because the VICE emulator is being used, and can open them in it's vanilla fork. I would assume that whatever fork is used for the Mini wasn't stripped of these. That would be time and extra work invested when you can just leave things as they are, and concentrate on the feature set you want.
So the question is probably: how can we make use of these files.
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spinal2 days ago
.d81 files work by renaming them (apparently), so I would just try renaming them and see if they load. Vice might be clever enough to read the file header rather than the extension to detect the file type.
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Aneira replied to this.
C chris19812 days ago
I use a program to convert t64 files to d64
A Aneira2 days ago
spinal
What is the point of choosing .d81 when you can use .d82 ?
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Jammet2 days agoEdited
Aneira
What's the point of choosing a C64 if you can use an Amiga?
Choice. And we like having several.
The point is, that we are trying to figure out just exactly how we can utilise all of these.
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A Aneiraa day ago
Jammet
The point of using .D82 would be to gain more space. I do not see a downside. It sounds like you know one?
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T tomxp411a day ago
Aneira What is the point of choosing .d81 when you can use .d82 ?
Because that format was never used by the C64. The CBM 8250 was only available for the PET, since it uses a parallel interface. That it works at all on the Mini is due to the way VICE emulates floppy drives. Even VICE won't emulate the 8250 with True Drive Emulation turned on; that has to be turned off for the 8250 to be available in the drive menu.
A more accurate and appropriate disk image would be the .d81, since the 1581 drive certainly did work on the 64 and the 128 (I had one. Loved it.) .81 images are also necessary if you plan to load the disk images onto a real Commodore using an SD2IEC.
I would suggest that people distributing Multi game disks stick to .81 images for the widest compatibility.
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T tomxp411a day ago
Aneira The point of using .D82 would be to gain more space. I do not see a downside. It sounds like you know one?
The downside is there was never an 8250 for the Commodore 64. It was a PET drive. As such, it doesn't work right with everything, and those images can't be loaded onto a real 64 or 128.
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Aneira replied to this.
T tomxp411a day ago
ransom Can any non .d64 be converted to work as a .d64? Has anyone tried it yet?
tape and cart files can often be converted; people use Freeze carts to do this on the real machines. I think VICE also implements a freeze cart, either directly or maybe through a virtual cartridge.
A Aneiraa day ago
tomxp411
Thank you for a great answer. So in other words if I find a few games not working on a .d82 image it might work if I throw them on a .d81
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tomxp411 replied to this.
W WABronzea day ago
I for one have had no problems with the .d82 images at all, I can put about 30 games on each, with a loader as well, which makes life easy, but with 5 different usb's have to remember which is which lol...bring on the update I say!
Jammeta day agoEdited
Aneira
The point of using .D82 would be to gain more space. I do not see a
downside. It sounds like you know one?
Nobody is contesting that one has advantages or disadvantages. At the moment we are trying to figure out how to use each of these. I already know which I will likely use a lot, but knowing how to work all these file types is something I find very useful regardless.
Aneira replied to this.
RetroBikera day ago
Most programs for the C64 would fit on a d64 image (or two, for multi-disk games). A d64 image is about 170k. The Mini supports memory sticks up to 64GB. You can fit well over 350,000 d64 images on a single 64GB device.
Once the firmware update that allows selecting disk images is released, I really don't think individual disk image capacity is going to be an issue. The amount of time it will take switching between disk images will be significantly less than it was all those years ago (and still is, for some) with physical media, and negligible compared with the time spent running the programs.
T tomxp411a day agoEdited
Aneira if I find a few games not working on a .d82 image it might work if I throw them on a .d81
If they don't work on a .d82, it's probably not the image but the lack of true drive emulation.
The thing is, most of the "fast loader" and most of the copy protection schemes were specific to the way the 1541 drive worked, and many of those things failed on the 1571 or even the 1541-II drive.
For games that do't work from a .d82, you should put them on a .d64 file, which the emulator can load with a cycle accurate 1541 emulation, then boot the machine straight to BASIC.
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A Aneiraa day ago
Jammet
Maybe I should state the intention of my initial question. English is not my first language so you should not read too much into my choice of phrasing. My knowledge of the C64 beyond playing games using a datasette is very limited. That's effectively all I did as a child. Well that and adjusting the tape heads position with a screwdriver all day long. I believe I earned the black belt in that particular category. I never got to floppy disks or any other disks during the Commodore era. I never owned an Amiga either. So I have no love for that.
My sole intention now is to get the most out of playing games on the Mini with as little effort as possible. Thus I'd love to know if there is any reason at all for me not to choose .d82 over .d81 when all I want is easy access to as many games as possible. I understand there are a lot of games which will only work on a .d64 disk image.
The best option is of course just to be patient and wait for a firmware update. If it works as planned there is no longer a reason to customize your game disks. I will not get my hopes of too high though. It might not work out as we all hope in the end. Therefore having our own options panned out is a good idea.
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Jammet17 hours agoEdited
Aneira I absolutely love and support the idea. Hakuna Matata! We are going to make the most with what we have, one way or another.
Thank you for your story. I started out in a somewhat similar way, although I inherited my dads Schneider/Amstrad CPC 464, when all my friends had Commodore home computers. That's how I started experimenting with re-organising games and files on my tapes, and made multiple backups, because the aging tape drive eventually couldn't read tapes I bought in stores anymore. So I too, kept adjusting the bloody thing all the time, sometimes to no avail. There was nobody around to help me. Later I got a DDI-1 3" Floppy drive, and it was so far superior that my software collection had a 300% growth in under a month.
These 3" disks are still amazing, today. Most of them still work, and they are built like tanks! Thick protective plastic casing, and sliding silvery gleaming metal doors.
One of the coolest looking media I've ever seen. The CPC didn't even have nearly as many different formats and media types, so the situation is very simple by comparison. Every time I see just how many different ways there are on the C64 for file storage, I'm just astounded.
Going back to customize game disks -- I actually love the thought behind it. Driven, as it used to be in the past, by actual need. That is something we totally lost by now! Today it's 1 disk (file), 1 game. All the time. Back then, our collections consisted off one disk or one tape, and as many games as we could cram in there. It was fun just ... getting new ones to explore what was on them. Some of my friends had so many C64 disks, and I went through them like a big box of fortune cookies!
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