arlen
Offline

So I'm going to have a c64 in my possession soon but I'm not sure what route I should go for for running trackers on it. I'll have a disk drive, but no floppies. Been eyeing that kerberos cart for SID Wizard and Cynthcart MIDI but I don't think it supports d64 and I'm also curious about trying defmon on ntsc.

There's also that ultimate drive but that's kinda pricey. Easy Flash seems like another decent alternative but I haven't seen if it'll support d64 stuff.

So what's the general consensus? Should I just find some big old floppies or what?

Last edited by arlen (Jan 17, 2015 6:50 am)

scannerboy
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Poland, Gdansk

In my opinion if you go only for the trackers and not for demos I think that sd2iec is a good option. Especially since it's DIY friendly

arlen
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I thought there was another one but couldn't remember the name! I'll have to look into sd2iec a little more, but it is cheaper and handles prg and d64! Which is really my main concern.

rumpelfilter
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Italy

I have this thing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85BdxkfiiQ8 from this guy here: www.manosoft.it
Works really well with Sidwizard (though I haven't been using it a lot I must admit).

frantic
Offline

I don't have very much to add to the discussion other than just confirming that those SD thingies should work fine with defMON at least. Most likely with sidwizard as well.

ryba
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Czech Republic

SD2IEC or get some old floppies. But you also have to save some programs to them, so you have also get some cable between PC (with paralell port - LPT1) and C64 and run your C64 floppy drive as disc drive in Starcommander. So the easiest way is SD2IEC.

scannerboy
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Poland, Gdansk

There is also an upcoming project from Poland called uk1541

arlen
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seems like sd2iec is my best option. thanks guys! a sort of related question: has anyone used defMON on an ntsc machine at all? asked goto80 about it but he didn't know. I'm just curious because I know SID-Wizard supports ntsc machines so maybe running defMON will screw up the tuning or something.

Even in Goat Tracker ntsc is slightly higher pitched than pal. it kind of bothers me. actually it really bothers me! Why does Goat Tracker gotta do that??

xylo
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Holland

Is there a particular reason you like to track on the real thing? We mostly just use Goattracker for convenience and use SIDplay on the C64 to record our songs for albums and all (the actual sound can't be beat by anything!!!!). So if you just want to track I recommend Goattracker and maybe getting an SD-card reader for your C64 if you want to copy files and programs, it works flawlessly!

frantic
Offline
arlen wrote:

Even in Goat Tracker ntsc is slightly higher pitched than pal. it kind of bothers me. actually it really bothers me! Why does Goat Tracker gotta do that??

This is actually what happens per default if you use the same frequency table as you use for PAL. The same SID settings come out more high pitched on NTSC machines than on PAL machines. So, in essence: In order to have the "same" frequencies coming out in the speakers when using PAL and NTSC machines, you need to use different frequency tables. So it is rather a matter of what GoatTracker is not doing than what it is "doing".

Last edited by frantic (Jun 6, 2015 4:49 pm)

garvalf
Offline
France
xylo wrote:

Is there a particular reason you like to track on the real thing? We mostly just use Goattracker for convenience and use SIDplay on the C64 to record our songs for albums and all (the actual sound can't be beat by anything!!!!). So if you just want to track I recommend Goattracker and maybe getting an SD-card reader for your C64 if you want to copy files and programs, it works flawlessly!

I'm using SidWizard and I find it a bit easier to use (in an emulator) than GoatTracker, even if GoatTracker is great in itself, of course.
For my part I'm tracking in SidWizard and record it, like you, on a real C64. However, if the OP wants a cheap solution, a mp32C64 (search ebay for this) can cost only 15 € if you solder it yourself, so it's cheaper than the SD solution, even if  a bit less conveniant, first it's quite slow, and second you can't export back from the C64.

KNYP
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arlen wrote:

There's also that ultimate drive but that's kinda pricey.

still, the ultimate is the best, im afraid.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
arlen wrote:

So I'm going to have a c64 in my possession soon but I'm not sure what route I should go for for running trackers on it. I'll have a disk drive, but no floppies. Been eyeing that kerberos cart for SID Wizard and Cynthcart MIDI but I don't think it supports d64 and I'm also curious about trying defmon on ntsc.

There's also that ultimate drive but that's kinda pricey. Easy Flash seems like another decent alternative but I haven't seen if it'll support d64 stuff.

So what's the general consensus? Should I just find some big old floppies or what?

The Kerberos does support some d64 slots and prgs slots in it's flash; it also can hold a EasyFlash image. The down side is it doesn't save your SID Wiz tracks to it's flash, so you need a floppy or sd2iec. There are plans to update the firmware to include this.
Yogi

jefftheworld
Offline
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
yogi wrote:
arlen wrote:

So I'm going to have a c64 in my possession soon but I'm not sure what route I should go for for running trackers on it. I'll have a disk drive, but no floppies. Been eyeing that kerberos cart for SID Wizard and Cynthcart MIDI but I don't think it supports d64 and I'm also curious about trying defmon on ntsc.

There's also that ultimate drive but that's kinda pricey. Easy Flash seems like another decent alternative but I haven't seen if it'll support d64 stuff.

So what's the general consensus? Should I just find some big old floppies or what?

The Kerberos does support some d64 slots and prgs slots in it's flash; it also can hold a EasyFlash image. The down side is it doesn't save your SID Wiz tracks to it's flash, so you need a floppy or sd2iec. There are plans to update the firmware to include this.
Yogi

It'll work with the internal floppy emulation, though. So as long as you've got space on one of your two emulated floppies you're still saving to reliable flash memory.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
jefftheworld wrote:
yogi wrote:

The Kerberos does support some d64 slots and prgs slots in it's flash; it also can hold a EasyFlash image. The down side is it doesn't save your SID Wiz tracks to it's flash, so you need a floppy or sd2iec. There are plans to update the firmware to include this.
Yogi

It'll work with the internal floppy emulation, though. So as long as you've got space on one of your two emulated floppies you're still saving to reliable flash memory.

OK, good to know. I'm new to it and probably need to re-read the docs smile

jefftheworld
Offline
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

By default the first emulated disk contains a patched version of SID-Wizard and demo tunes and the second emulated disk contains lots of instruments for SID-Wizard.

Under the default configuration these two emulated drives will be set to 9 and 10, so simply select the drive you want with F8 and the load and save as normal.