Whispers of a hardware software combination emulating a Commodore 64 on an Amiga have been around for quite a while. My initial thoughts of such a device were positive. After all, it'll just be like plugging in a Sidecar and running a 64 as another window, right? No more mucking around connecting an Amiga to a 64 to use the Commodore Serial printer, I'll be able to plug the printer straight into the Amiga and use it just like another device.

Not quite. It's very difficult to place The 64 Emulator in the box of most used software, though this is where it should be. The possibilities for emulation of a Commodore 64 on an Amiga, are enormous. But ReadySoft have written the program so that it runs too slowly to be useful, and it won't allow any other program to run with it. It's not multitasking. Which means it's lost half its potential power before it starts.

The 64 Emulator comes as a single disk accompanied by a cord that connects to the Amiga's parallel port at one end, and a Commodore Serial device at the other end, such as a printer or a disk drive. Or you can daisy chain a disk drive and printer.

The program disk is heavily copy protected. None of the copiers I tried could copy the Emulator. This isn't such a great problem, as ReadySoft give you the option of buying a backup for around SA18 when you send in the registration card. ReadySoft are obviously considering upgrades The Emulator comes with a manual, which is only sixteen pages long, and, in some cases, is a little quick in describing the workings of the software.

The program boots up with a nice title screen, and then the familiar title screen of a Commodore 64, but no window around it. The program has a configuration screen which can be accessed by pressing Control and Help together at all times (except while the disk is being accessed).

The most notable feature of the configuration screen is the option to use a 1541 disk emulator on the Amiga's drives. Or you can use any Amiga floppy drive or hard drive or a 1541/1571/1581 with any of the device numbers 8, 9, 10, 11. In addition, device numbers 4 and 5 can be configured as a Commodore serial printer, the serial port of the Amiga, or the parallel port of the Amiga. The program keeps track of which device is plugged into the parallel port if you have a Centronics printer.

You may also select a monochrome or colour screen. I suggest you stick to monochrome at all times, otherwise the programs run too slowly.

I tried to test a good cross-section of programs on the Emulator, but there are quite a few that won't load. Mostly this is due to the protection of the individual programs or their fast loaders, but sometimes they run too slowly to be called working.

An example is Paperboy, On the 64, this runs with a smooth scroll that runs off the bottom left of the screen. On the Amiga using The 64 Emulator, the sprites don't show up properly. You can see the individual movements of the screen (one left, another left, eight down) so that the game is too slow to be called a game.

GEOS is one program with a fast boot that does run, although again, the graphics are terribly slow and you wait around ten seconds for the Desktop to draw the box for the icons. EasyScript does work, but cursor movement is slow and unbuffered. To get across the screen (40 columns) takes around 10 seconds.

The list of software I tested appears below, with any problems.

Printshop - Works, but updating the screen is slow.
Newsroom - won't load.
Doodle - won't load.
Pirates - works, and is only slightly slowed down.
Trio (word processor/spreadsheet/file manager) - works well, not slowed down too much.
Winter Games - won't load, and this is the case for all the 'Games' series.
Supersprint II - won't load.
Leaderboard Golf - loads, but too slow in drawing the course - around one minute per hit.

This is only a short list of programs, but The 64 Emulator is a non-event for most others with fast-loaders built in.

Hardware

The serial connector is the only piece of hardware that comes with the Emulator, and is optional. Be sure to order the right one for your Amiga, 1000 models have a different parallel port to 500/2000 models. It plugs into any Commodore Serial devices you may have, disk drives or printer.

The only complaint I have is that to plug in a printer, you must first plug in a disk drive. The disk drive must be the first thing accessed on the port, making it impossible to attach just a printer, and use an Amiga disk to hold your programs. Disk access is slowed to VIC-20 speed, to let the program cope with converting the 64 instructions to Amiga instructions.

Also, the serial driver is an integral part of the program, and is not found in the Devs: directory, or die L: directory of the program disk. This means you can't use Commodore Serial devices outside of the program, which would be useful.

The main use for a program of this type would be to move all your text files to Amiga disks. To do that, you'd need to convert those files from PETSCII (PET Standard Code for Information Interchange) to ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

Most terminal programs for the 64 do this automatically when speaking to computers that aren't 64s, But The 64 Emulator doesn't do this, so transferring files is impossible since it won't load any terminal program to do the job properly,

Graphics and sound

Graphics are slow and cumbersome and seem to be the main reason for the speed of The 64 Emulator. Sprites on Commodore 64s are 24 bits wide, but the Amiga's sprites are only 16 bits wide, so Emulator uses bobs, which are much slower, and tend to flicker badly. This is very noticeable in Leaderboard Golf.

Any program that splits the screen using raster interrupts should not be considered. It will run too slowly for all of the screen to be displayed. ESCOS, on Disk Magazine No 8 doesn't work at all: the top row of sprites flicker, and the other rows don't come on at all. GEOS is another program that the Emulator "works with", but it is too slow because it is heavily graphics based. Printshop, which is slow on regular 64s, is terrible, I don't recommend you use Printshop or GEOS with this program.

If you've ever listened to a tape that has a program recorded on it, you'll have a fair idea what the music that comes out of the Amiga's speakers is like. There is a legitimate reason for this, however.

The 64 usually runs music and sound as interrupts: i.e., every 60th of a second, the computer stops and updates the music. The 64 Emulator is simply not fast enough to get around to stopping every 60th of a second: this is demonstrated by the speed of the cursor. So any sound that does come out comes out garbled, and often doesn't have any pitch, it comes out as one tone.

A lot of thought and considerable programming talent has gone into creating The 64 Emulator and getting it to work up to the high standard that is expected of software these days. It could not have been easy designing the software, just overcoming the hardware differences of the two machines is a major feat in itself. And the program is very flexible, made possible through the configuration window which also allows the 1764 RAM expansion cartridge to be emulated by 256K of the Amiga's memory (only for 1 megabyte Amigas).

Some people think the idea of a C64 emulator is a bit of a joke .. .a copy of this program appears on issue one of Amiga- Live!

But I would have liked to have seen multitasking as at least an option. ReadySoft blame port clashes with other programs for making The 64 Emulator non multi-tasking. And the Commodore Serial port should be a device, so that it may be copied to other disks, such as word processors, to make use of Commodore Serial printers. The speed of graphics could also be improved if The Emulator used a 320x2(K) screen, instead of a 640x200 screen, then the program wouldn't have to draw two pixels for every one of the 64 program draws.

Maybe a bit more hardware should be considered. A board with a 6510 chip running the instructions, and an interrupt program that tells it how to communicate with the Amiga's 68000 chip and through it Agnus, Paula, Denise and Gary. And maybe a 6522 chip to emulate a Commodore Serial Port, and a Commodore User Port, to free up the Amiga's ports.

This would add considerably to the cost of the unit, but the improvements in speed would make The 64 Emulator a productive tool, and place it in the basket of most used software. Overall, The 64 Emulator is a good idea that seems to have gone wrong for a number of reasons. If you have a large number of text files to transfer, the program may be an option, but I would consider connecting the Amiga to the 64 through the RS-232 port as an easier method of solving the text-file problem.

The 64 Emulator is published by ReadySoft, distributed by Ozisoft (02) 211 1266 for $149.

ref: Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, October 1988, V5.10, pp.40-42

Andrew Baines
01.10.1988

Keywords: Commodore, Amiga, C64, Commodore 64, Emulator