Re: Schematic for 80 Column Adapter for C64

From: silverdr_at_wfmh.org.pl
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 16:19:54 +0200
Message-Id: <CEE3A44D-7DCB-45AB-BC4A-326204BE8B47@wfmh.org.pl>
On 2013-08-18, at 15:57, Steve Gray wrote:

>> BTW - it reminds me like some years ago I put my hands on the XEP-80 (an 80-column add-on for Atari "8-bitters"). This thing plugs into... joystick port and joystick ports are the same in both C64 and Atari series! Since I always wanted 80 columns too, I immediately plugged this into my 64, spent a whole weekend writing a driver that would properly serialize data and handle required communication timings, then I bound it to the KERNAL so that the default screen I/O would go over the XEP, and... yeah.. "gotcha!". Only then, when trying to type-in the first LOAD command on the XEP display, I realized that no matter how hard I try, I shall never be able to use the 80-cols display AND the keyboard at the same time. I don't ever recall feeling as stupid as I felt that Sunday evening... ;-)

> 
> I also picked up an xep80 hoping to get it working on the c64. I suppose you could connect it to the user port instead of the joystick port... Perhaps to one of those userport joystick adapters.

After getting out of the mental hangover state I mentioned above, I made an adapter and connected it to CASSETTE port (USER PORT is constantly occupied by DolphinDOS parallel connection ;-) but my enthusiasm was nowhere close to the level when I still naively believed (and wondered why nobody has ever done this before! Imagine?) that it could be handled purely with software and without any modifications or extra adapters.

-- 
SD!


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Received on 2013-08-18 15:02:21

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