Hi guys,

Can anyone give me any pointers on how I might build my own C64 machine, and what would be involved?

I am considering two options:

1) recreate the c64 as was using hardware;
2) recreate the c64 using part software emulation and part hardware.

I am leaning towards option 2. What I would like is to have an emulator that can make use of a real 6502 but do the rest in software - is this feasable?

Any thoughts?

Regards, Jamie.

Hi,

If you want to build your own C64, the complete schematic is waiting for you in the back of every Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide.

Otherwise, emulators are readily available. You might be better off talking about your ideas in the comp.sys.cbm newsgroup.

_________________
- Mike Naberezny (mike@naberezny.com) http://6502.org

My thoughts:
Option 1 is hard, because it's a lot of wiring, and some parts will be hard to find, and the total cost for parts will be high. Just get an actual C64 from a garage sale, thrift store, etc.

Option 2 can be done, but how would you handle the 'interface' between the real parts and the emulated parts?

Maybe you can describe what you would want it to do?
That is, do you want to run existing C64 software?
Or do you just want something that only runs custom software?

What I think is "more fun" and "more do-able" is to modify an existing C64 or VIC-20 or whatever, to give it new capabilities.

Pete

Hi,

Option 1.
Try to visit http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/ first.
You can find the CCS64 emulator for PC there. It's probably
the best C64 emulator.

Option 2.
The sound-card based on SID 6581/8580 is available through http://www.hardsid.com/ This card is compatible with CSS64.

Chris

I guess what I have been thinking about is building my own laptop C64 with a risc chip inside it, probably running c64 emulation code under linux.

I thought that if I could get a real 6502 inside my home made laptop then I could take a lot of the burden off the c64 emulation code (so the emulation would need less risc cpu power) meaning longer battery life, less expensive risc cpu etc.

Do you get what I mean?

Jamie.

Why not conjure up a generic system architecture and spend most of your time studying the specifics of the C64. You then can take code written for the C64 and find the C64-specific features and replace them with generic equivalents. This will be tedious and difficult on the first pass, but subsequent efforts will become increasingly easy, as you learn more about how this is best done.

I once had to convert a debug monitor from one system, with memory-mapped video and running at one rate, to another, simpler, system using a serial port and terminal as the console. This seemed terribly painful at first, but once I began to recognize the constructs used in the first system, it became easy to map out a strategy for making the conversion.

Uli