C64 Emulator - CCS64, a dream come true!

So, I’ve had the old Commodore 64, disk drive, printer, joy sticks and a whole whack of games sitting in a box. One day about 10 years ago after moving to a new place, I had re opened the box and was sifting through it thinking to myself; it sure would be fun to get this machine working again. I did some searches on the internet on how to fix it, sell it for parts or port the games. All the searches were an interesting read but I came across something more curious-- a program which was a Commodore 64… could it be possible?

It was and still is! You can obtain the emulator from: http://www.ccs64.com. It was made by Mr. Per Hakan Sundell and had been revised and upgraded multiple times since his first release in 1995. Every revision seems to make things run smoother and he had added more features which I have yet to use.

I’ve been using the Commodore 64 now for a few years as an emulator. I find it works just the same including the signature wait time to load a program. The emulator has some enhancements to speed things up but the load time is still slow. I figure it is that realistic charm that we miss.

When you run the emulator it turns on exactly like how you would see the original Commodore 64 work. The real difference is a menu appears at the top of the window. From the menu you have different options. The nice thing about this program is that is is easy to use and you can read the manual too.

Okay this is great, we have an emulator but where are the games? Well, in my searches I also came upon a great resource for that: http://c64.com. A site just filled with games and dedicated to the preservation of the cause. I now have most of my collection back. The files used by the emulator are tiny, formatted as (*.D64) and you can also obtain cartridge images too (*.CRT).

Each file is technically an image of a floppy. In the emulator, select from the menu drop down options or the options found with F9 what your drive 8 is (you have drives 8,9,10 and 11 available) and select the disk file that you will use. Once the image is selected, the emulator will remember what disk is ‘in the drive’! At this point you can choose to load the game here or return to the main screen and manually do it – remember those old LOAD commands?

You’re probably going to want to configure a joystick or key set before you load anything up. This is done again through the menus or F9, options then input. When loading up different games it’s nice to know that ALT-F10 will switch the control from one port to the other on the fly. I haven’t used the 2-player mode so I have no idea what that looks like but I do use both the keyboard and the joystick depending on the games. As for the speacial C= keys, you will have to learn where they are. For example ESC is the RUN/STOP.

I have to say that the program-emulator is easy to use and easy to navigate in. Some menus will show extended features and settings. I was able to run through the system and make it play a game without referring to the manual but it is a good reference. There are all kinds of features and settings, if the games run fine I wouldn’t bother messing around.

Obviously this program emulates the Commodore but it does have some limitations being a virtual machine. Do experiment with it and see what can be done. Currently, I’m trying to figure out if I can run a virtual 1200bps modem in a terminal program or a BBS… Stay Tuned. Working with this apparent old technology is more of a hobby then anything else and its fun.

There are plenty of forums and other sites dedicated to the running and modification of this emulator and even attachments to port games. If you haven’t already dabbled with the emulator I implore you to do so, help keep the Commodore 64 alive!