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M y 'bionic' C64 has reached another milestone. I wrote about it after I'd installed a PLAnkton , ARMSID and TOLB , and in the process resurrected a 'black-screen' computer. Although I have an external SD2IEC which is good for plugging into any C64, Vic20 or C16 that I am using, I'd always intended to put an internal SD card drive inside this machine, I had envisaged simply leaving the drive inside the machine, opening it up whenever I wanted to copy anything to the card. But I found that Gaz Marshall has designed a replacement side panel for the C64 which has an SD card slot and houses the SD2IEC. It's available as a model for 3D printing , or ready-printed direct from his Shapeways shop . I hadn't found the shop for ordering the printed version, so I asked a friend to print one for me. Here's the result. Note that there's an all-in-one version, and a 'modular' version where you have to screw the tray to the side panel.

I 've set up a YouTube channel for posting my music, mostly to give myself an incentive to keep writing and hopefully improve those skills. I recently posted a version of this eastern-sounding piece rendered by the notation software. An exercise in using the pentatonic minor for that eastern flavour. I've now made recordings of the C64 playing the piece. First of all I made a 3-voice version (not yet posted) and then an 8-voice version using multi-tracking. That's the first version you hear in this video, played on my 'bionic 64' which is fitted with an ARMSID. Curious about how this would compare with the same music played by a real 6581 SID, I did the same recording using an all-original 64 and made a video with one recording after the other. My observations are below but judge for yourself. In the 'pure' tones it's hard to hear a difference. But there is definitely a difference when there are many voices playing together and using pulse-w

P rogress has been slow, I've been caught up in ironing out a few problems. Debugging those was tiresome, which meant that I found it easy to do other things instead. But now we have smooth scrolling background, music, enemies that scroll in from the left at an angle (hopefully soon multiple enemies / collectibles) multiplexing sprites (the sheep are each made of two sprites, a multicolour and a hi-res outline overlaid. The clouds are also sprites).

O nce I'd started writing a game for the C64 and started playing some of the great new games available , I decided that I needed a 64 that I can switch on and use as much as I like without worrying about stressing 35-year-old components (at least one of which is destined to fail in time ). Emulation is fine, in fact when I'm spending a lot of time playing one game I like to use all of the mod cons; big chair, big screen, Duoshock controller and VICE which makes loading up and saving the game at any point a breeze. That's not the same as switching on a 'real' 8-bit computer and playing a game from the time. I had a 'black screen' C64 and so there was an opportunity with a few options. Fit the original case / keyboard with a Pi, or with one of the modern boards - Ultimate 64 or C64 Reloaded These boards are new boards which emulate the original components. So we're still talking emulation, albeit hardware rather than software. In the case of the