Hi David! A number of the problems you mention here (Joystick ports, NTSC to PAL emulation switching) are actually managed in the current new firmware as well. Look at the instructions on the firmware download page. It works through renaming the files. Underscore is the prefix, and then for example, you end the filename with J2 to force the Joystick to be in Port 2. You can pick the PAL emulation, and you can map some of the joystick extra buttons to actual keystrokes, to press F or space, or I or Y and N. I think mentioning these is fairly important. Of course it's still more desirable to have these as options in the actual Mini and not requiring renaming of files through other means. Anyways, don't let anybody stress you out over this! Much love!
Agree, I guess he missed this page: thec64.com/file-loader/ Where it shows you how you can change file names or create a .CJM file with configuration options for each file.
As far as I remember, the more brown case is like the very first C64 that were manufactured in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany. The earliest of them even had a VIC 20 keyboard, because of a delayed delivery. I had one of those which I bought (my first one ever) in May 1982 at our local 'Quelle' department store for a freaking 1398,- DM.
Wow! That is a LOT more than mine cost in 1988 (bought in West Germany). It was 349,- DM, I guess + 299,- DM for the 1541. Yep, a different level of competition six years from your purchase...
There are computers made in Germany (the best), and others made in Britain. I have the two versions. But in France, C64 was very expensive and the market was directed by national need: computers at school, with french Thomson computers (TO7, TO9). Amstrad has taken the public market because Commodore thought that France would close its market with its own French computers and there were many adaptations to do for USA products to enter French market (France had a SECAM tv -better thant Ntsc: to explain, it's like to compare a DVD and a VHS and France already had the proto-internet with the Minitel, and was technologically more advanced than the United States at this point. Computers were not prepared to revolution and they don't want because it was french...).
Flippin awesome review David! I can't imagine what goes through someone's mind that they would send you hate mail or just be argumentative. I felt both reviews were extremely thorough and very enjoyable. Well done sir!
The makers of this pulled a Classic Commodore move... Announce a new product while immediately announcing a more exciting one! Now people will just wait for the functional keyboard version haha
Exactly the route I'll be taking, although supposedly the original backers of the C64 project will get the full size model when its released, I still want an original C64...I do have a C128 but still want a C64...course it would be more fun to have all the Commodore models but some are harder to find and expensive when you do find them.
Someone already crowbarred the Mini into a full size c64 case with a keyrah to connect the original keyboard via usb. th-cam.com/video/4f3pzuZA2As/w-d-xo.html
It's interesting about the difference in games that you recognise. Coming at it from from a UK perspective, I think we had a slightly different experience of the C64 than you, our US counterparts. That's not to say that either was better or worse, it's just that In the UK, disk drives were really expensive. Where as in the US, disk drives were a lot more affordable (or more common place). They were certainly well beyond anything I could afford at 13. So I think there were a whole lot of disk based games that never made it to the UK (I might be wrong). Vice versa, the tape games that were considered classics in the UK and Europe maybe had lesser impact in the US. Monty on the Run was huge here in the UK and yet you've never heard of Monty Mole. So I think that the original list of games came from a European point of view which is possibly why you were a bit perplexed that you recognised so little of the original list. As you say, now that files can be loaded via USB that issue becomes moot. Great that have done a follow up review.
@@dh2032 Yeah, it was something like $300 for the disk drive and $150 for the C64 in the mid-80's. I borrowed a friend's tape drive for several months, until I could afford the disk drive.
I had a Commodore 64C , the original 1541 was quite expansive , but i personally had a Oceanic OC-118N, it was a very small and light disk drive alternative and way cheaper, it was not relative to commodore company as far as I know, to tell the trust I have never been so glad about that thing, I had a lot of problems even with newly unboxed original games. The commodore 64 itself and the Oceanic Drive returned to repair under warranty always for about 2 months !, but no change, look like I was alone on an island with my C64C. Most of games worked but some as Eye of Horus, Carrier Command, Indiana Jones II ..., never worked sadly :-(
I think they didn't improve lag at all. Probably the "improvement" is because the old version was running at 720p 50hz (reason why the american tv wasn't working) , and the new one is at 720p 60hz.
Yeah a higher framerate will indeed result in lower input lag. On my 144Hz monitor, there's a noticeable difference when using it at 60 Hz vs 144 Hz in terms of latency. The difference in David's case isn't as big because of the smaller difference in refresh rate, but it is still noticeable.
I love this channel so much. I'm always waiting for the next vid big or small on here and 8-bit keys. I praise these videos and recommend them to anyone who likes retro gaming or electronics in general whenever I get the chance. I'm glad to hear they made some much needed improvements, shame about that sound delay what a pain. Oh well, I'm VERY interested to see the full sized C64 recreation come out. There's going to be so much more room inside the case to just make personal modifications and I'm super eager to see what you do with it.
I agree with both of you. Not ignoring criticism is important because some might be appropriate and viewers opinions are part of this business. Not letting the baseless criticism get to you is the more difficult part, but I think David manages that in the best possible way: with facts and respectful correction of people's mistakes. You're doing a fantastic job with this show, never doubt that, because that's what a very large majority of viewers think :)
@@GoatTheGoat Well, I've seen some actual hate for David over on places like Reddit. Seems like if he makes any sort of mistake, people are quick to jump on him about it. There were some comments that went so far as to say that David's videos on the RGB crt mod would get someone killed because he didn't make a disclaimer that it's dangerous to work on a CRT. It's absolutely ridiculous how far some of these people go.
Did some audio lag time testing here... Results: C64 Mini to HDTV game mode on = 223ms, Raspberry Pi 3b Combian 64 to HDTV = 225ms, Laptop running Vice x64 to HDTV = 94ms, Laptop running Vice using laptop screen = 39ms. Thanks for the video David.
Had to subscribe JUST BECAUSE of the C64 vids. It was my first/only computer growing up & you made me feel frk'n old. Keep up the awesome vids....it think.
The Vampire project claims to be working on a stand alone A1200 clone. Not sure where that is. But, there are many Amiga in an FPGA-type projects out there.
Actually I would prefer to get an Amiga 2000 full size. Of course it would have to support the classic Amiga 500/2000, the Amiga 600/1200 and the CD32. But that will be a lot harder, since many games come on multiple floppys. With the C64 mini/maxi it's a pain to change disk, the most common Amiga emulator WinUAE let's you do that in a more appropriate way, but it needs a mouse for that. So the best way to do that would be to convert the games to a hard disk installation which of course is not supported by all games or to have a Button to switch to the next disk in the set. Then of course some games support multiple floppy drives (my Amiga hat 2 drives), which reduces the pain a little which comes with games like Indiana Jones 4.
About the tv incompatibility, maybe the European version outputs a 720p50 signal, to keep the 50hz compatibility with pal games, and I hear that not all American TVs are compatible with 720p50 or 1080p50
linoxyard 720p is usually pretty widely supported in my experience, but 50Hz is not universally supported since ATSC/NTSC is 60Hz. I think a lot tends to come down to whether the particular chipset was singularly designed with international support so that the same model TV works anywhere versus whether the chipset and TV were designed specifically for the North American market.
I doubt it. In Europe everything from consoles to phones to pc's is 60fps or higher. There is no CRT hooked up directly to the mains in modern TVs/monitors. In fact, the power supply makes a DC current for the panel, which can be thought of as 0 Hz or infinite Hz. So there's no reason at all to stick with 50fps in Europe, and afaik, we don't.
@@thany3 I'm afraid we do still use 50Hz for some things, so yes 720p50 and 1080p50 are EU standards that exist for backwards compatability with PAL. If they didn't have these 2 standards your old DVD's and consoles would no longer be compatible with newer TV's.
I want to thank you for your videos. I usually watch them on my smart TV, so I don't get a chance to comment very often. I have loved to watch you restore the computers of my youth. My C-64 is long gone, but I never stopped playing c64 games as I have had VICE on my Linux box for several years. I've been collecting images for a while and even started downloading the homebrew stuff have found. Keep up the great work.
They are selling the PAL version for 39 Euro (here in Germany), and with the latest firmware update it"s totally worth it. The terrible lag is gone, and custom games are easy to set up and play. It even handles Easyflash files!
Older HDTV models do have a tendency to have an inherent delay, regardless of input. Would be worth using a single display for testing delay on both devices
HDMI has inherent delay. LCD has inherent delay. You can't just wish those away. New models are driving the delay lower, but it's still there. Old CRTs had no delay because the TV didn't "process" the signal. The signal was used to drive the circuitry while the TV displayed the image.
@@misterhat5823, even an CRT will have delay if you fit an video possessor in the middle. to many modern TV's just got to much stuff making the picture more "fancy" and usually a to weak CPU to do it.
Dont know if anyone mentioned this before, but when encountering titles like bruce lee thst requires joystick port 1. Rename and add _J1 after the title like this brucelee_J1.d64 And voila it works.
David - you can't please everyone - that is impossible. So make sure YOU are pleased with your videos - and ignore the kids and the haters :) Thanks for always putting out amazing content. I am gonna wait for the next version of the C64 - that sounds really interesting. Thanks from a 45 year old youtuber, with a background in C64 gaming, demomaking and programming. :)
Blind fanboy alert! That wasn't hatred, that was criticism. David made himself a hypocrite throughout the review and people called him out on it. You won't listen though. Just keep paying his paycheck for the month. ;)
Wow. I just find you today on TH-cam, but i used all day to look your videos. Now you give me blood on my teeth, to try some of my old machines. i have 3 C64, 2 Amiga 500/600, and a lot of other things, like NES ;) i never try some of them, i just buy every time i find some old 80´s and 90¨s consoles. Thank you Mr 8-Bit. Hi from a Danish guy, from the 80´s :)
Tons of Hewson games, just like you'd find on emulator compilation CD-ROMs with names like "C64 Classix GOLD IV". Presumably they couldn't just pick freely from the most popular or influential games and had to go with what they could licence. IMhO it wasn't/isn't that bad a lineup, though. Cybernoid, Boulder Dash, Monty, IO, Paradroid, Uridium, Mega Apocalypse, Zynaps, Impossible Mission, Nebulus... -- that's some pretty good stuff along with the so-sos. Maybe it's because of when and where I got to know the C64, or when I was reading which games magazines, but I recognised pretty much all of the original titles.
I recognized some of the titles, but I got my C64 in 1990 so I'm more familiar with the late games: Turrican II, Creatures I & II, Exile, Rainbow Islands, Turbo Out Run, Out Run Europa, Microprose Soccer, Commando, Rick Dangerous I & II, Dan Dare 3, Total Recall, Black Tiger, Bionic Commando, Golden Axe, Operation Wolf, Double Dragon, the Impossible Missions, R-type, Last Ninja, IK. These are just some games that I can remeber, but I'm sure there was more...
They could only get the rights to the games that CLOANTO owns the copyrights to The Last Ninja games were published by Activision here in North America. It would probably cost an arm and a leg to get the rights to put those games on the mini legally.
This kind of product knows that we will take the images of games to play them on the machine. So, they don't taken games from editors which are alive. I know near 600 games of the C64 (which have more than 2000 games I believe), I can tell you: the list has very good games. Not all the games desired but the copyright was 20 years before a law in USA (Clinton) has given 70 years of rights, and this is so ridiculous for those old games. The games must be in public domain, but the characters and the scenario can be under copyright, to make a modern version for example. A 1984 version of Boulder Dash must be in public domain, but the elements of the game can be under copyright for future modern adaptations, as it is actually: Boulder Dash have PC and Nintendo DS and 3DS version. But the problem is that the two DS versions in retro mode give the same levels of Boulder Dash I (it would be nice to give the levels of Boulder Dash 2).
yikes,, there are loads of iconic games.. Speedball, Cybernoid, all the Thalamus games were huge. i haven't even heard of the ones his playing in this video.
Gratz on sailing over the 800K mark! The mini is on my "maybe" list, fortunately I have some original C64's (plus a C128D and my A2000) to keep me busy this winter on restoration projects... Gonna be a long winter :)- Cheers, - Eddy
@@Hellwyck I`m very happy. That`s why I can`t imagine doing that. I`ve also got a TH-cam channel and I have received new toys today to review, so why shouldn`t I be happy. Greetings
@@Sonicfoxtrot Then why waste the energy to click on dislike? I only click like when I really like it. It`s too much effort doing that on every video I watch.
ANYTHING is a word really meanless. It's not a real word actually. It should never be used. Who invented that word? He should be put in jail right now ! (Complained about ANYTHING right now, you may kick me once.)
@@rollingtroll It's probably that the average age is higher (like me being 63 and a fervent user of a c64 back when it was new) which can lead to some crankiness and an attitude that as an original user type we feel like we know better about things or maybe it's a US versus UK feeling. I don't know. I'm just glad to hear about the c64 again. And I love the 8 bit guy even being from the US.
My first job in the computer business was working in a store that only sold commodore computers. Had a big school business and consumer business. We even did repairs in house. I remember the day the delivery truck showed up with the first disk disk drives. Had a list of waiting customers to call. Completion was Apple which usually could beat. Biggest problem was we could not get enough product to sell. Really enjoy your C 64 videos, brings back a lot of good memories.
This guy singlehandedly puts out some of the best content out there. 8 bit guy and techmoan are some of the best channels on TH-cam, stuff the hate mail.
not supporting switchable joystick port is a deal breaker even if there is a work around, the whole point of the device is for plug and play, if I had to fiddle around, I might as well use an emulator.
I have one (although it was a gift - personally I wouldn't have got one myself...I'm actually holding out for the full sized model) There is a fix for the port problem. All you have to do is put _J1 at the end of the file name (before the extension) same for switching between PAL and NTSC If you have a NTSC version, all you do is put _PN at the end of the filename to run a pal image Or you can create a a CJM file, which actually converts a the entire contents of a directory into these modes. For example I have all my Port 1 games in a single directory (at least the NTSC ones) and I created a CJM file which automatically makes all the games in that directory switch to port 1 Hopefully with the next firmware update they would add port switching
To be fair, expecting an emulator that almost certainly draws entire frames into a buffer (if not using double-buffering) and then outputs it over HDMI to an LCD television to have the same lag as a system that puts out a live analogue signal one pixel at a time as it draws it to a CRT is kinda unfair. I've done the calculations numerous times, and the simple act of switching from direct output to buffered output alone will introduce at least 16 ms of extra lag. Factor in the realities of how modern displays work and you can expect ANY such device, no matter how good, to lag at least 20 ms behind on the original, (and possibly in worst case as much as 200-300 ms) There's also that other factor I mentioned - buffering. If the emulator draws to an offscreen buffer then shows the result all at once, that is going to have a very obvious consequence compared to a system that draws pixels and scanlines individually in realtime (otherwise known as 'racing the beam'.) If you change something midframe on the second type of system, the change is instant. Do that on a system that has a frame buffer, and the result won't show up until the next frame starts to be drawn. I'm fairly sure it is pretty much impossible to mimic an old 80's or 90's system that outputs to a CRT this way on modern LCD display hardware without introducing at least SOME extra lag. I'm reasonably confident even something like the Super Nt, which is about as close as you're likely to get to a hardware perfect clone of an old system with modern features included has additional lag over the original console just because of having HDMI output and the implications of how modern TV's and monitors work. It's near enough to inevitable.
Great video, makes me want to get one... until you said they're coming out with a full sized full keyboard version, I'll absolutely be picking the up large version unless they price it insanely too high. Just hope they further refine the emulation in the meantime.
Based on the pricing of the existing mini, scaled up, I expect a full size, real keyboard modern C64 would be no less than $150 USD/$180 CAD/€130 if not higher. The mini doesn't have the same design costs a full-size unit with a functional keyboard would need. The price would need to reflect that.
horrible, i want the mini version with a mini built in keyboard. Full Size is DUMB, why a full size when i can simply use my original C64?. and Full Size will add to the cost enormously, like a $99 vs $130 or $140 difference. What Bullocks!. you have your nice glass case with NES Mini, SNES Mini, PS One Mini, AtGames Sega, and Atari Flashback 2, and then this big hulking massive Full Size C64 sticking out like a sore thumb. doesn't make sense.
@@nunyabaznus7851 I have two C64's here, neither of which work, saying why not just use my original C64... well gee, maybe that's because they don't work anymore. Anywho it's not about you, stop thinking everything is about you.
Thankfully since this review it's been updated so it's easy to change the joystick port now without having to hack the game itself, i'm pretty sure they've made it easier multi loaders too but haven't tried it myself. Oddly i don't seem to be getting much lag with my mini.. it's been running very well with the most up to date firmware. I agree it's a lot of faffing about with USB hubs, and keyboards, with plugs and wires but at least it's all playable, i like to think plugging in a usb hub is like plugging in a datasette lol
On top of that... puppets with "Cuba Baion" th-cam.com/video/3NpEqnBkF0w/w-d-xo.html as background music. I have a bizarre feeling David watches Techmoan´s videos once in a while just for relaxation :)
You realize that could increase the amount of ridiculous comments, right? The more the comments are featured on the videos, the more attention-grabbing people will make "fake hater" comments to be put in the videos. It's not funny and honestly pretty boring.
I do not understand the complaints personally about the games selection here....any Commodore fan should already know that the C64 and particularly the Amiga were more popular in Europe and Australasia. The European software scene was a vast part of its successes. Without such mainly British software houses the C64 would have died an earlier death for sure. While the selection here is most certainly not the top rated games of Lemon 64 they at least to a European market have a fairly balanced selection of C64 titles, although certainly not the best. With Centresoft (trading as U.S. Gold) importing US titles alongside others that did it alone not only did we have great titles from the likes of Epyx, Access, Sierra, Electronic Arts, Luscasfilms, Activision, Firebird and Microprose joining alongside the likes of Hewson, Gremlin Graphics, System 3, Ocean, Imagine, Melbourne House (Beam Software), Rainbow Arts, Thalamus, Electric Dreams to name but a few. Looking at Lemon 64 highest rated titles 4/10 of them are European. Looking at the list of games included within the C64 Mini we have software represented from First Star, Hewson, Epyx, Mikro-Gen, Gremlin Graphics, Thalamus, Odin, Software Projects, Firebird, Martech, 21st Century Entertainment, Microsphere, Imageworks, Electric Dreams, Alligata. First Star and Epyx being the only two NA software companies on both the European and NA C64 Mini. The North American switchout games are predominantly from Epyx (West Bank - Gremlin Graphics). I am presuming it is all down to what licensing they could get, there is a heavy bias on this game selection particularly to Epyx and Hewson and then Odin, Thalamus and Gremlin Graphics predominantly. It most certainly does not represent the best games from the US and elsewhere, it would need titles from Lucasfilm (Rescue On Fractalus, Eidolon, Maniac Mansion, Koronis Rift etc), Ocean (Sensible Software titles such as Parallax, Wizball, Denton Designs - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, alongside some of Ocean's/Imagine's coin-op conversions), Activision (H.E.R.O, Ghostbusters, Park Patrol, Hacker, Master Of The Lamps), more Thalamus titles (Creatures, Sanxion, Winter Camp etc), Access Software (Leaderboard, Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow)....the list could go on, but I think many would get the point, and licensing I am sure would have been problematic.
John Carmack has a great lecture during which he goes into great detail about I/O lag in modern computer systems (huge problem) vs. the near instantaneous response of earlier hardware - it basically boils down to the fact that while hardware is far faster, it is performing far more tasks for even simple things like hitting a spacebar and generating a tone.
Really just a toy for a bit of nostalgia, especially with that crazy lag. If you want a serious modern C64, an Ultimate64 or perhaps a MiSTer are the only real options but they're pricey.
Hi, David! I just got my C64 Mini Tuesday and I have spent some time tinkering with it. The latest firmware (1.2.0) helps with some of the issues mentioned. The File Loader page for the company product website instructs on how to change Joystick ports or NTSC/PAL emulation. You can actually make a .cjm file and put it in the main directory for games that use Joystick Port 1 or Joystick Port 2 and it will do that for all of them. I understand this is a more technical workaround, but I feel like most of the market for these are going to be people who remember using them in the 80's and have at least a little bit of knowledge of computers (and the C-64) beyond a basic user. I found it easy to spend the time to get my games working as intended. I am not a fan of the "cracked" games that make you do a million keypresses, either! I love watching your channel and I look forward to your next video!
Buy a Nintendo DS or 2/3DS, there are two Boulder Dash. The two games include Boulder Dash I. For modern version in this games, DS is better because it respects the gameplays. The new possibilities of the character in the 3DS game can't be removed or choiced, and those new things make the game easy.
I like your videos and i think you are very fair. And I love the visualizing the reaction time by Audacity. Just a recommendation: It would be great if there was also real c64 reaction time :)
You are measuring the delay (input lag of the C64 mini plus LCD controller shenanigans plus LCD crystal switching times) of the whole system in your test. And since you switched monitors, it is in no way comparable to the test you did with the C64 mini EU version. The signal also seems to be 60Hz vs 50Hz, which is a speed up for 20% right there. So "scientific" isn't the word I'd use for this test. It is a useful data point, sure. And you don't deserve to get "hate" for it. But some criticisim is valid and it is a good idea to look at that and improve your future videos and methods. :) And even CRTs aren't inherently lag free. Prad.de made a great article about it where they profiled several monitors using a high end oscilloscope. If you use an analog signal to drive the CRT, it is likely that it is lag free. But if you feed it a digital signal (especially later model CRTs accepted digital DVI and widescreen ones often have HDMI ports), the monitor will need to convert it to analog signals, since those drive the display (as opposed to LCDs, which work the other way around, simply speaking). I myself am too young to have fond memories of the C64. But this does not do anything for me. Without a keyboard, this is just a worse, more constrained android emulation box with some legit games. And overpriced at that. Even without tinkering you can get retroarch and similar on those machines and it works pretty well.
@Metagalactic Llama You don't know how many games were never release in Europe and I still know and even imported some of them back then. Also we send Ultima clear datas to the US to get certificates from Origin for completing them. Look at all the cracking groups all across the world, that were importing cracked versions from other groups. We had something called gaming mags that reported about game releases across the world even if many never were released in our countries. I still remember the outrage of lots of gamers when another game was not coming out in Europe, like Chrono Cross for example. PS: If Wikipedia is correct, Armalyte was released in the US. gamefaqs.gamespot.com/c64/564842-armalyte/data
All good to know. It would have been interesting to see the lag time comparisons against the real C64 too, though your examples do get the point across well enough to see that it's a real thing. Thanks again.
Hi David! Keep up the good work! I love your videos and appreciate your honest opinion and criticism. It's easy to flamebate anonymously from behind a keyboard. I hope the hate mails weren't to insulting.
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Any emulator has some delay especially with sound, since it has some audio buffer. Every emulators running on a "regular" OS, I mean, and here Linux was mentioned. To avoid this (and maybe other kind of delays as well?) some kind of real-time OS is needed, or even much better, kind of "bare metal" emulator construction (bare metal means a software - here an emulator - designed and developed to run without any OS at all, so it has absolutely precise control - at CPU clock level - on hardware resources, what are usually scheduled by the OS - if we have one - and does not allow the same level of precision). In theory it's possible to develop an emulator that way, though I haven't seen too much of them. Maybe Pi64 was a project like this, to run on the Raspberry Pi, but not using any OS, just the emulator itself directly interacts with the Pi's hardware, in that particular case. Surely, these kind of emulators are rare, since emulators are typically written for PCs using different hardware (different GPUs, sound cards etc etc). However a custom made hardware for a given emulator makes that possible to have a single hardware platform to develop for, thus problem solved.
I agree with you on the audio buffer. I actually wrote an Atari 2600 emulator for Windows. System and hardware limitations prevented precise timing of the frame rate, so had to create an algorithm to compensate to keep the average frame rate as steady as possible. Audio had to be buffered, it was not really an option. A short buffer increases risk of buffer overrun or underrun, due to the aformentioned timing irregularities, and underruns especially will result in gravelly audio which is much less pleasant than a delay.
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@@sa3270 Yes, yes, I also wrote some emulators, that's why I've mentioned, also from experience.
What you are describing already exists in form of FPGA based systems, which reproduce the original logic/chips in software with exact timing and behaviour. Just look for "Ultimate64" and "MiSTer".
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@@ThomasAbts Yes, I know, I also did some VHDL level stuff on FPGAs, including the implementation of a Z80 based computer (Primo, a Hungarian one, not so well known outside of Hungary, I guess). But now I discussed the possibility to write emulators with more exact timing, that's another question.
Awesome video as always. I was kind of hoping that you would tell people to go buy this thing. Even though it has some issues, I think people need to support these efforts.
Who would send _you_ hate mail? Criticisms, maybe, but are people that unnecessarily harsh? You're providing only your observations, and if an assumption is wrong, it can be acknowledged and everybody wins. But with hate mail, nobody wins.
@@jdbarker32 Given what I know about internet discourse, he probably left out the death threats and insults to his mother that were probably mixed in liberally with their pedantic criticisms.
I remember selling my C64 with 300+ games, heaps of joysticks, 5 1/4' drive, tape drive, gameshark cartridge that would allow cheats in almost any game. Was so much better then 286 and even most 386 computers
This is a great product. I would definitely buy one of these. I'm currently running an emulator called V.I.C.E. which has a ton of features. I'm waiting for the larger version to come out since it has a fully functional keyboard. I just hope they fix things in a way so that you can swap the joysticks and fix the disk swap issues. It's a step in the right direction, though and I'll be watching this channel whenever the larger version comes out. Great work!!
@@DeathPrevails77713 Just because someone suggested to play Planet X2 makes you that sensitive enough just to say "ShUT Up"? What kind of person would do that?
Love the video, never knew this product existed. I went from Vic20 to a 286 but at many friends places I played C64 games. Not sure if I would buy that but the full sized model has my attention. My working Vic20 is on display in our entertainment cabinet (and bleached so it's not yellow), I have a soft spot for that generation.
The input lag is most likely caused by the fact that the input devices are USB, USB devices don't cause interrupts, so the kernel has to manage them, which is a slower process.
@@davidmckean955 Not as much an excuse as the reason; the reason for the audio lagg is most likely because it's an emulator. Emulators have to emulate the sound hardware, pipe that through (usually OpenAL) in a X size buffer then that needs to get piped through the audio system (usually Pulse Audio), then to ALSA and finally to the sound card which does some processing before it hits the speakers. I think they've gone with a relatively large audio buffer due to the fact that it's such a low powered machine that needs to run an full emulator as well. emulating the sound at probably 4.1 ghz. which is a much higher bitrate than the output of the original hardware.
@@LunaTheFoxgirl I'm well aware, I still follow emulation and the latest versions of MAME have almost no input lag for years and no audio lag now either since they started supporting PortAudio. This C64 mini has emulation technology that's a decade out of date.
@@davidmckean955 Not only that, but also weak hardware which isn't top-notch for sound output and emulation in the first place when needed in realtime.
JustWasted3HoursHere: Yes, like the C64-in-a-joystick thing I had, designed by Jeri Ellsworth. But getting USB and HDMI support for a common SoC is a matter of commonly available code, while the original C64 did not support USB or HDMI, so an FPGA C64 would still have to have USB and HDMI support added. Using a common SoC would be the easiest way ... but then the FPGA is spending a lot of development effort just to cut back on the lag of what the SoC can do on its own.
@@brucemcfarling7810 I'm pretty sure there's already a fully developed FPGA core out there for the Commodore 64. When I talk about lag, I'm talking about input lag when playing games and such. A delay between the transmission of video from the unit and the TV displaying it must be virtually undetectable, I would imagine. As for Jeri Ellsworth, that woman is a freaking genius! There's a lecture from her on TH-cam somewhere that is fascinating to watch (although it's terrible quality: th-cam.com/video/g05Wfqv-8es/w-d-xo.html ). And her channel here on YT is very cool as well. She made a C64 electric guitar for _Maker Fair_ : th-cam.com/video/_kDhpFaf4EY/w-d-xo.html and a SoC Amiga (unfinished and never went into production: th-cam.com/video/5uaDzF99a80/w-d-xo.html ). She taught herself chip design.... Here's a more recent lecture from her with MUCH better quality: th-cam.com/video/tOb9BIYjvA0/w-d-xo.html Someone should make a movie about her.
I'm 100% sure there is ... but it replaces the chips in the C64. That is the point, after all, since while you can get 6502 processors that can act as a 6510 with a simple daughterboard, failing SID chips are harder to replace. And an exact replica of the functioning of the C64 chips also implies that USB support and HDMI support have to be added. In terms of engineering, it's straightforward to do that with the right SOC that takes the video output from the FPGA and outputs the HDMI digital output and handles the USB and uses its GPIO to drive the joystick ports and keyboard matrix. The issue is the business model ... that SOC can also be programmed to emulate the C64, and dropping the FPGA from the design simplifies the design, reduces development time, and reduces build cost, so both overhead and production costs are lower. So it's a lot more likely that a hobbyist with the resources (skills and finances) AND interest to do it does the FPGA+SOC design and a lot more likely that a commercial firm does an SOC-only design.
Thanks for another great video. I bought a 64mini but had not opened it. The same week my Ultimate 64 arrived. So I took the 64mini right back for a refund as the Ultimate 64 works great.
Hi David! A number of the problems you mention here (Joystick ports, NTSC to PAL emulation switching) are actually managed in the current new firmware as well. Look at the instructions on the firmware download page. It works through renaming the files. Underscore is the prefix, and then for example, you end the filename with J2 to force the Joystick to be in Port 2. You can pick the PAL emulation, and you can map some of the joystick extra buttons to actual keystrokes, to press F or space, or I or Y and N. I think mentioning these is fairly important. Of course it's still more desirable to have these as options in the actual Mini and not requiring renaming of files through other means. Anyways, don't let anybody stress you out over this! Much love!
Agree, I guess he missed this page: thec64.com/file-loader/
Where it shows you how you can change file names or create a .CJM file with configuration options for each file.
And it still does not solve the multidisk issue. If you need to use J1 with multidisk you need to plug in 2 usb joysticks.
@@kratafila It sure isn't where I'd like it to be, yet, fully agree there.
Also, Jammet, he does not know BOULDER DASH??? Maybe it was more popular here...hehe.
Jammet Leopard ,
Now THIS is the level of dialogue / monologue proper for this TH-cam channel.
Yes, my Belgian C64 was yellow-ish. They did both colours right specific to each region. Kudos to them!
As far as I remember, the more brown case is like the very first C64 that were manufactured in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany. The earliest of them even had a VIC 20 keyboard, because of a delayed delivery. I had one of those which I bought (my first one ever) in May 1982 at our local 'Quelle' department store for a freaking 1398,- DM.
Wow! That is a LOT more than mine cost in 1988 (bought in West Germany). It was 349,- DM, I guess + 299,- DM for the 1541. Yep, a different level of competition six years from your purchase...
So that means your C64 had a better keyboard built in, right?
There are computers made in Germany (the best), and others made in Britain. I have the two versions. But in France, C64 was very expensive and the market was directed by national need: computers at school, with french Thomson computers (TO7, TO9). Amstrad has taken the public market because Commodore thought that France would close its market with its own French computers and there were many adaptations to do for USA products to enter French market (France had a SECAM tv -better thant Ntsc: to explain, it's like to compare a DVD and a VHS and France already had the proto-internet with the Minitel, and was technologically more advanced than the United States at this point. Computers were not prepared to revolution and they don't want because it was french...).
Flippin awesome review David! I can't imagine what goes through someone's mind that they would send you hate mail or just be argumentative. I felt both reviews were extremely thorough and very enjoyable. Well done sir!
The makers of this pulled a Classic Commodore move... Announce a new product while immediately announcing a more exciting one! Now people will just wait for the functional keyboard version haha
That might be a risk, but I think the compact size could still be a selling point for people that want a plug and play more than a full sized unit.
The Osborne Effect
If people want a C64 with a keyboard, buy a real C64 on Kijiji or eBay. Cheaper and you get the full experience!
Exactly the route I'll be taking, although supposedly the original backers of the C64 project will get the full size model when its released, I still want an original C64...I do have a C128 but still want a C64...course it would be more fun to have all the Commodore models but some are harder to find and expensive when you do find them.
Someone already crowbarred the Mini into a full size c64 case with a keyrah to connect the original keyboard via usb.
th-cam.com/video/4f3pzuZA2As/w-d-xo.html
A lot of those games were huge on the C64 in the UK, such as Uridium, Paradroid and Monty on the Run.
School Daze too
Minastir1 a classic
Karehaqt : +1, I played hours on Alleykat and Armalyte.
The Tunes on em where epic as well!
That doesn't matter, if this is supposed to be for the North American market, most people in NA wouldn't recognize them.
Who actually sends David hate mail?
Haters, wait, does he have any?
I was wondering that too.
There are neurotic, autistic and/or schizophrenic dudes everywhere.
@@herrfriberger5 thats a bit offensive to special needs people
Hateful, entitled people I assume
It's interesting about the difference in games that you recognise. Coming at it from from a UK perspective, I think we had a slightly different experience of the C64 than you, our US counterparts. That's not to say that either was better or worse, it's just that In the UK, disk drives were really expensive. Where as in the US, disk drives were a lot more affordable (or more common place). They were certainly well beyond anything I could afford at 13. So I think there were a whole lot of disk based games that never made it to the UK (I might be wrong). Vice versa, the tape games that were considered classics in the UK and Europe maybe had lesser impact in the US. Monty on the Run was huge here in the UK and yet you've never heard of Monty Mole. So I think that the original list of games came from a European point of view which is possibly why you were a bit perplexed that you recognised so little of the original list. As you say, now that files can be loaded via USB that issue becomes moot. Great that have done a follow up review.
disk drives where almost one and a 1/2 times the price of the c64 machine, then there where the disks,
@@dh2032 Yeah, it was something like $300 for the disk drive and $150 for the C64 in the mid-80's. I borrowed a friend's tape drive for several months, until I could afford the disk drive.
I had a Commodore 64C , the original 1541 was quite expansive , but i personally had a Oceanic OC-118N, it was a very small and light disk drive alternative and way cheaper, it was not relative to commodore company as far as I know, to tell the trust I have never been so glad about that thing, I had a lot of problems even with newly unboxed original games. The commodore 64 itself and the Oceanic Drive returned to repair under warranty always for about 2 months !, but no change, look like I was alone on an island with my C64C. Most of games worked but some as Eye of Horus, Carrier Command, Indiana Jones II ..., never worked sadly :-(
Love this channel man! And I can't wait to see that big C64 Keyboard :D
Why are you verified and 33 likes
@@afan64 39 likes
"That's it for the moment"...have you suddenly become Techmoan?
For a moment there I thought he was gonna say the whole catch phrase. :D
Techmoan, LGR and the 8-bit guy. The freaking Holy Trinity
Haha.. yes, I was thinking of Techmoan when I said that.
was about to say the same thing haha
cjhoyle all he needs are some puppets ;)
I think they didn't improve lag at all. Probably the "improvement" is because the old version was running at 720p 50hz (reason why the american tv wasn't working) , and the new one is at 720p 60hz.
The video lag looks pretty typical but the audio lag is horrible.
Yeah a higher framerate will indeed result in lower input lag. On my 144Hz monitor, there's a noticeable difference when using it at 60 Hz vs 144 Hz in terms of latency. The difference in David's case isn't as big because of the smaller difference in refresh rate, but it is still noticeable.
Maybe that's why the tone sounded different between the NTSC and PAL models.
Exactly what I was going to say - it's just the change from 50 - 60hz. So the delay is software and it's just running ~15% faster.
Daniel V. Ikr
I love this channel so much. I'm always waiting for the next vid big or small on here and 8-bit keys. I praise these videos and recommend them to anyone who likes retro gaming or electronics in general whenever I get the chance.
I'm glad to hear they made some much needed improvements, shame about that sound delay what a pain. Oh well, I'm VERY interested to see the full sized C64 recreation come out. There's going to be so much more room inside the case to just make personal modifications and I'm super eager to see what you do with it.
You spend too much of your time worrying about the "hate" from people in the comments section! Just don't pay attention to them, they don't matter.
I think he has to pay attention to it beings it is his livelihood and public opinion can make or break his endeavor.
amen. for every piece of hate mail there are literally a thousand viewers who don't feel that way.
I agree with both of you. Not ignoring criticism is important because some might be appropriate and viewers opinions are part of this business. Not letting the baseless criticism get to you is the more difficult part, but I think David manages that in the best possible way: with facts and respectful correction of people's mistakes. You're doing a fantastic job with this show, never doubt that, because that's what a very large majority of viewers think :)
8-Bit Guy (and other youtubers) seems to interpret every critical comment as "hate". Just take the feedback (or don't) and move forward.
@@GoatTheGoat Well, I've seen some actual hate for David over on places like Reddit. Seems like if he makes any sort of mistake, people are quick to jump on him about it. There were some comments that went so far as to say that David's videos on the RGB crt mod would get someone killed because he didn't make a disclaimer that it's dangerous to work on a CRT. It's absolutely ridiculous how far some of these people go.
Did some audio lag time testing here... Results: C64 Mini to HDTV game mode on = 223ms, Raspberry Pi 3b Combian 64 to HDTV = 225ms, Laptop running Vice x64 to HDTV = 94ms, Laptop running Vice using laptop screen = 39ms. Thanks for the video David.
In his previous video I commented that the board inside looked suspiciously close to Raspberry Pi
@TheGame455 Thank you.
Great video once again. Just a joy to watch; will be breaking out my TheC64 tonight to check the new firmware out!
Had to subscribe JUST BECAUSE of the C64 vids. It was my first/only computer growing up & you made me feel frk'n old. Keep up the awesome vids....it think.
I just wanna know if i can still write Basic programming on it :D
They should make an amiga 500 mini
Or just Amiga Mini, which would include AGA chipset emulation as well. Damn, I'd buy it!
@Actional Gamer It was in Europe. Especially the UK and Germany.
The Vampire project claims to be working on a stand alone A1200 clone. Not sure where that is. But, there are many Amiga in an FPGA-type projects out there.
Actually I would prefer to get an Amiga 2000 full size. Of course it would have to support the classic Amiga 500/2000, the Amiga 600/1200 and the CD32.
But that will be a lot harder, since many games come on multiple floppys.
With the C64 mini/maxi it's a pain to change disk, the most common Amiga emulator WinUAE let's you do that in a more appropriate way, but it needs a mouse for that. So the best way to do that would be to convert the games to a hard disk installation which of course is not supported by all games or to have a Button to switch to the next disk in the set. Then of course some games support multiple floppy drives (my Amiga hat 2 drives), which reduces the pain a little which comes with games like Indiana Jones 4.
@lukalispl Sadly, the ARmiga is quite impossible to get these days.
About the tv incompatibility, maybe the European version outputs a 720p50 signal, to keep the 50hz compatibility with pal games, and I hear that not all American TVs are compatible with 720p50 or 1080p50
linoxyard 720p is usually pretty widely supported in my experience, but 50Hz is not universally supported since ATSC/NTSC is 60Hz. I think a lot tends to come down to whether the particular chipset was singularly designed with international support so that the same model TV works anywhere versus whether the chipset and TV were designed specifically for the North American market.
IIRC that's exactly the reason stated in the previous review of C64 mini. Many older American TVs did not support 50 Hz properly
@@ethanpoole3443 Yep, even though I don't get it. I mean, is it really so hard to implement 50Hz in digital TVs worldwide in this day and age?
I doubt it. In Europe everything from consoles to phones to pc's is 60fps or higher. There is no CRT hooked up directly to the mains in modern TVs/monitors. In fact, the power supply makes a DC current for the panel, which can be thought of as 0 Hz or infinite Hz. So there's no reason at all to stick with 50fps in Europe, and afaik, we don't.
@@thany3 I'm afraid we do still use 50Hz for some things, so yes 720p50 and 1080p50 are EU standards that exist for backwards compatability with PAL. If they didn't have these 2 standards your old DVD's and consoles would no longer be compatible with newer TV's.
Your videos are one of the very few I even bother letting play till the end.
I want to thank you for your videos. I usually watch them on my smart TV, so I don't get a chance to comment very often.
I have loved to watch you restore the computers of my youth. My C-64 is long gone, but I never stopped playing c64 games as I have had VICE on my Linux box for several years. I've been collecting images for a while and even started downloading the homebrew stuff have found.
Keep up the great work.
"That's it for the moment....thanks for watching!"
David channelling his inner Techmoan at the end there :)
We're benchmarking c64s
, what a great time to be alive
Great video! I appreciate your testing, and you are doing a review so these are real concerns! Looking forward to the full sized C64 review.
Your videos are really great. You cover the topic really well and cover interesting points. Thanks,
They are selling the PAL version for 39 Euro (here in Germany), and with the latest firmware update it"s totally worth it. The terrible lag is gone, and custom games are easy to set up and play. It even handles Easyflash files!
Where can i buy them for 39 euro? Mediamarkt has it for 60. 39 Euro is a decent price indeed
Yes, i looked too, and the cheapest one i found today was 49 euros, some weeks before, it was 39€, that's right!
@@tstrike79I bought mine on Saturn Online for 39 EUR a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it's now back to 60 EUR.
@@chiclone-tests71 maybe it was a Black Friday thing
The European C64 (or at least the german one) was indeed that slightly more yellow-ish color. ;)
Awesome transition from the static to the package sliding sound at the start! :D
wow the effort you put into this review! so awesome. thank you
Older HDTV models do have a tendency to have an inherent delay, regardless of input. Would be worth using a single display for testing delay on both devices
Or perhaps even an HDMI PC monitor
HDMI has inherent delay. LCD has inherent delay. You can't just wish those away. New models are driving the delay lower, but it's still there.
Old CRTs had no delay because the TV didn't "process" the signal. The signal was used to drive the circuitry while the TV displayed the image.
All HDTVs have delay. It's just part of the nature of the TVs design.
True. Everything that isn't a CRT will have delay.
@@misterhat5823, even an CRT will have delay if you fit an video possessor in the middle.
to many modern TV's just got to much stuff making the picture more "fancy" and usually a to weak CPU to do it.
I WAS LOOKING AT THE C64 MINI VIDEO ONLY YESTERDAY AND YOU DROPPED THE US THANK YOU DAVID WE STAN
Hope you get to the 1 million subs, keep up doing this !!!
Love the intro man. Music is spot on ;)
Dont know if anyone mentioned this before, but when encountering titles like bruce lee thst requires joystick port 1. Rename and add _J1 after the title like this brucelee_J1.d64
And voila it works.
does this work any one? (is it part of the built in c64 emulator) or any one now which emulator it is running?
David - you can't please everyone - that is impossible. So make sure YOU are pleased with your videos - and ignore the kids and the haters :) Thanks for always putting out amazing content. I am gonna wait for the next version of the C64 - that sounds really interesting. Thanks from a 45 year old youtuber, with a background in C64 gaming, demomaking and programming. :)
Blind fanboy alert! That wasn't hatred, that was criticism. David made himself a hypocrite throughout the review and people called him out on it. You won't listen though. Just keep paying his paycheck for the month. ;)
@Metagalactic Llama I never said he was a moron, but a hypocrite. You probably need to read that a bit slower next time.
Wow. I just find you today on TH-cam, but i used all day to look your videos. Now you give me blood on my teeth, to try some of my old machines. i have 3 C64, 2 Amiga 500/600, and a lot of other things, like NES ;) i never try some of them, i just buy every time i find some old 80´s and 90¨s consoles. Thank you Mr 8-Bit. Hi from a Danish guy, from the 80´s :)
Brilliant review! So detailed. And beautifully presented.
Tons of Hewson games, just like you'd find on emulator compilation CD-ROMs with names like "C64 Classix GOLD IV". Presumably they couldn't just pick freely from the most popular or influential games and had to go with what they could licence. IMhO it wasn't/isn't that bad a lineup, though. Cybernoid, Boulder Dash, Monty, IO, Paradroid, Uridium, Mega Apocalypse, Zynaps, Impossible Mission, Nebulus... -- that's some pretty good stuff along with the so-sos. Maybe it's because of when and where I got to know the C64, or when I was reading which games magazines, but I recognised pretty much all of the original titles.
I recognized some of the titles, but I got my C64 in 1990 so I'm more familiar with the late games: Turrican II, Creatures I & II, Exile, Rainbow Islands, Turbo Out Run, Out Run Europa, Microprose Soccer, Commando, Rick Dangerous I & II, Dan Dare 3, Total Recall, Black Tiger, Bionic Commando, Golden Axe, Operation Wolf, Double Dragon, the Impossible Missions, R-type, Last Ninja, IK. These are just some games that I can remeber, but I'm sure there was more...
Hasn't got Last Ninja 2 or Maniac Mansion, so I agree with your opinion about the lack of iconic games :)
Copyright reasons, I assume. This company probably doesn't have close to the money to get those games.
@@jdbarker32 Let's just wait for the Soulja boy edition.
They could only get the rights to the games that CLOANTO owns the copyrights to
The Last Ninja games were published by Activision here in North America. It would probably cost an arm and a leg to get the rights to put those games on the mini legally.
This kind of product knows that we will take the images of games to play them on the machine. So, they don't taken games from editors which are alive.
I know near 600 games of the C64 (which have more than 2000 games I believe), I can tell you: the list has very good games.
Not all the games desired but the copyright was 20 years before a law in USA (Clinton) has given 70 years of rights, and this is so ridiculous for those old games. The games must be in public domain, but the characters and the scenario can be under copyright, to make a modern version for example. A 1984 version of Boulder Dash must be in public domain, but the elements of the game can be under copyright for future modern adaptations, as it is actually: Boulder Dash have PC and Nintendo DS and 3DS version.
But the problem is that the two DS versions in retro mode give the same levels of Boulder Dash I (it would be nice to give the levels of Boulder Dash 2).
yikes,, there are loads of iconic games.. Speedball, Cybernoid, all the Thalamus games were huge. i haven't even heard of the ones his playing in this video.
Really one of the best channels on TH-cam!
Gratz on sailing over the 800K mark!
The mini is on my "maybe" list, fortunately I have some original C64's (plus a C128D and my A2000) to keep me busy this winter on restoration projects...
Gonna be a long winter :)-
Cheers,
- Eddy
Who the hell dislikes a video of the 8-bit guy? How frustrated must you be. Is it worth living when you`re so bitter? I loved it as usual.
Sociopaths.
are you dumb? Why do people always assume that disliking a video means you're a bitter person or you have something wrong with you? Mindblowing.
NicoD - if anything, your reaction makes you look frustrated, not the people with a different opinion to you.
@@Hellwyck I`m very happy. That`s why I can`t imagine doing that. I`ve also got a TH-cam channel and I have received new toys today to review, so why shouldn`t I be happy. Greetings
@@Sonicfoxtrot Then why waste the energy to click on dislike? I only click like when I really like it. It`s too much effort doing that on every video I watch.
"I got hate mail for this", "I got hate mail for that".
Wow, some people can really complain about ANYTHING. :-/
ANYTHING is a word really meanless. It's not a real word actually. It should never be used. Who invented that word? He should be put in jail right now !
(Complained about ANYTHING right now, you may kick me once.)
Player1 True!
Player2 ready!
I was like 'is this normal or are C64 users just assholes?' :D.
(I am a Philips MSX user yeah. Obviously)
@@rollingtroll It's probably that the average age is higher (like me being 63 and a fervent user of a c64 back when it was new) which can lead to some crankiness and an attitude that as an original user type we feel like we know better about things or maybe it's a US versus UK feeling. I don't know. I'm just glad to hear about the c64 again. And I love the 8 bit guy even being from the US.
@Joe Redd You care too much.
My first job in the computer business was working in a store that only sold commodore computers. Had a big school business and consumer business. We even did repairs in house. I remember the day the delivery truck showed up with the first disk disk drives. Had a list of waiting customers to call. Completion was Apple which usually could beat. Biggest problem was we could not get enough product to sell. Really enjoy your C 64 videos, brings back a lot of good memories.
This guy singlehandedly puts out some of the best content out there. 8 bit guy and techmoan are some of the best channels on TH-cam, stuff the hate mail.
not supporting switchable joystick port is a deal breaker even if there is a work around, the whole point of the device is for plug and play, if I had to fiddle around, I might as well use an emulator.
I have one (although it was a gift - personally I wouldn't have got one myself...I'm actually holding out for the full sized model)
There is a fix for the port problem. All you have to do is put _J1 at the end of the file name (before the extension) same for switching between PAL and NTSC
If you have a NTSC version, all you do is put _PN at the end of the filename to run a pal image
Or you can create a a CJM file, which actually converts a the entire contents of a directory into these modes.
For example I have all my Port 1 games in a single directory (at least the NTSC ones) and I created a CJM file which automatically makes all the games in that directory switch to port 1
Hopefully with the next firmware update they would add port switching
The lag is a deal breaker.
Hopefully they'll use a more powerful SOC with less USB latency in the larger version.
It's awesome to see this was improved. I might even pick one up now.
Excellent video. Thanks Dave!
Can't wait to see the new C64 "not so mini" with working keyboard reviewed…..
Same. It'll be so much better!!
@@retrodreams2428 🤒 Sick
Ur wish iz tru
To be fair, expecting an emulator that almost certainly draws entire frames into a buffer (if not using double-buffering) and then outputs it over HDMI to an LCD television to have the same lag as a system that puts out a live analogue signal one pixel at a time as it draws it to a CRT is kinda unfair.
I've done the calculations numerous times, and the simple act of switching from direct output to buffered output alone will introduce at least 16 ms of extra lag.
Factor in the realities of how modern displays work and you can expect ANY such device, no matter how good, to lag at least 20 ms behind on the original, (and possibly in worst case as much as 200-300 ms)
There's also that other factor I mentioned - buffering. If the emulator draws to an offscreen buffer then shows the result all at once, that is going to have a very obvious consequence compared to a system that draws pixels and scanlines individually in realtime (otherwise known as 'racing the beam'.)
If you change something midframe on the second type of system, the change is instant.
Do that on a system that has a frame buffer, and the result won't show up until the next frame starts to be drawn.
I'm fairly sure it is pretty much impossible to mimic an old 80's or 90's system that outputs to a CRT this way on modern LCD display hardware without introducing at least SOME extra lag.
I'm reasonably confident even something like the Super Nt, which is about as close as you're likely to get to a hardware perfect clone of an old system with modern features included has additional lag over the original console just because of having HDMI output and the implications of how modern TV's and monitors work.
It's near enough to inevitable.
Great review, keep up the good work! :)
Dude, I'm glad you're so thorough and honest. I hope they send you the bigger one. I'm interested in it.
Really nice! I'm actually thinking of buying one...
Great video, makes me want to get one... until you said they're coming out with a full sized full keyboard version, I'll absolutely be picking the up large version unless they price it insanely too high. Just hope they further refine the emulation in the meantime.
Based on the pricing of the existing mini, scaled up, I expect a full size, real keyboard modern C64 would be no less than $150 USD/$180 CAD/€130 if not higher.
The mini doesn't have the same design costs a full-size unit with a functional keyboard would need. The price would need to reflect that.
horrible, i want the mini version with a mini built in keyboard. Full Size is DUMB, why a full size when i can simply use my original C64?. and Full Size will add to the cost enormously, like a $99 vs $130 or $140 difference. What Bullocks!. you have your nice glass case with NES Mini, SNES Mini, PS One Mini, AtGames Sega, and Atari Flashback 2, and then this big hulking massive Full Size C64 sticking out like a sore thumb. doesn't make sense.
Yep. Nice idea, but the fake keyboard turns me off. Working keyboard = deal!
@@nunyabaznus7851 I have two C64's here, neither of which work, saying why not just use my original C64... well gee, maybe that's because they don't work anymore. Anywho it's not about you, stop thinking everything is about you.
@@PJBonoVox Agree, while I want the full sized model, I'd have bought this one in a second if the keyboard had been a working one.
more 8 Bit Gold from our favorite 8 Bit Guy!!!!
There needs to be a longer version of that intro music. I love it!
What would happen if a relatively graphics and sound heavy game like the C64 version of Dalek Attack were played on it?
Excellent review. I like that you point out the good and the very BAD of this console. That lag is awful. Deal breaker IMHO.
I liked the fact that you gave measurements for the audio and video lags. So it's not just your imagination.
Wow, that's a really deep review! Thank you!
Thankfully since this review it's been updated so it's easy to change the joystick port now without having to hack the game itself, i'm pretty sure they've made it easier multi loaders too but haven't tried it myself. Oddly i don't seem to be getting much lag with my mini.. it's been running very well with the most up to date firmware. I agree it's a lot of faffing about with USB hubs, and keyboards, with plugs and wires but at least it's all playable, i like to think plugging in a usb hub is like plugging in a datasette lol
Guess we're really keeping up with the Commodore!
Whenever i notice that there's a new 8-bit guy video, i get a smile on my face 😁👍
13 minutes of The 8-Bit Guy goodness!
Your handling of critical people with rational facts and evidence is hilarious. A true artist.
You should consider using puppets to recreate silly viewer comments. I hear puppets are very popular.
I would get behind that 100%
On top of that... puppets with "Cuba Baion" th-cam.com/video/3NpEqnBkF0w/w-d-xo.html as background music.
I have a bizarre feeling David watches Techmoan´s videos once in a while just for relaxation :)
I think midgets would be easier to work with =)
Man a puppet mashing on a keyboard while voicing comments in a silly voice would be jokes.
You realize that could increase the amount of ridiculous comments, right? The more the comments are featured on the videos, the more attention-grabbing people will make "fake hater" comments to be put in the videos. It's not funny and honestly pretty boring.
Awesome video as always :)
Love your channel.
I would love to buy the full size version.
i want a Mini Version with a working Mini Keyboard.
@Michael Anthony and deal with old c64 hardware? Most non-enthusiasts aren't looking for that sort of headache.
@@NLGoose SD card disk drive isn't old hardware.
I do not understand the complaints personally about the games selection here....any Commodore fan should already know that the C64 and particularly the Amiga were more popular in Europe and Australasia.
The European software scene was a vast part of its successes. Without such mainly British software houses the C64 would have died an earlier death for sure.
While the selection here is most certainly not the top rated games of Lemon 64 they at least to a European market have a fairly balanced selection of C64 titles, although certainly not the best.
With Centresoft (trading as U.S. Gold) importing US titles alongside others that did it alone not only did we have great titles from the likes of Epyx, Access, Sierra, Electronic Arts, Luscasfilms, Activision, Firebird and Microprose joining alongside the likes of Hewson, Gremlin Graphics, System 3, Ocean, Imagine, Melbourne House (Beam Software), Rainbow Arts, Thalamus, Electric Dreams to name but a few.
Looking at Lemon 64 highest rated titles 4/10 of them are European. Looking at the list of games included within the C64 Mini we have software represented from First Star, Hewson, Epyx, Mikro-Gen, Gremlin Graphics, Thalamus, Odin, Software Projects, Firebird, Martech, 21st Century Entertainment, Microsphere, Imageworks, Electric Dreams, Alligata.
First Star and Epyx being the only two NA software companies on both the European and NA C64 Mini.
The North American switchout games are predominantly from Epyx (West Bank - Gremlin Graphics).
I am presuming it is all down to what licensing they could get, there is a heavy bias on this game selection particularly to Epyx and Hewson and then Odin, Thalamus and Gremlin Graphics predominantly.
It most certainly does not represent the best games from the US and elsewhere, it would need titles from Lucasfilm (Rescue On Fractalus, Eidolon, Maniac Mansion, Koronis Rift etc), Ocean (Sensible Software titles such as Parallax, Wizball, Denton Designs - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, alongside some of Ocean's/Imagine's coin-op conversions), Activision (H.E.R.O, Ghostbusters, Park Patrol, Hacker, Master Of The Lamps), more Thalamus titles (Creatures, Sanxion, Winter Camp etc), Access Software (Leaderboard, Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow)....the list could go on, but I think many would get the point, and licensing I am sure would have been problematic.
Can’t wait for the next 8-bit keys video!
John Carmack has a great lecture during which he goes into great detail about I/O lag in modern computer systems (huge problem) vs. the near instantaneous response of earlier hardware - it basically boils down to the fact that while hardware is far faster, it is performing far more tasks for even simple things like hitting a spacebar and generating a tone.
Really just a toy for a bit of nostalgia, especially with that crazy lag. If you want a serious modern C64, an Ultimate64 or perhaps a MiSTer are the only real options but they're pricey.
3:52 Why the game *Street Sports - Basketball* is wrote twice?
Think he did a typo, if you look at the box 3:23 you can see it says “street sports baseball” and “street sport basketball”
Hi, David! I just got my C64 Mini Tuesday and I have spent some time tinkering with it. The latest firmware (1.2.0) helps with some of the issues mentioned. The File Loader page for the company product website instructs on how to change Joystick ports or NTSC/PAL emulation. You can actually make a .cjm file and put it in the main directory for games that use Joystick Port 1 or Joystick Port 2 and it will do that for all of them. I understand this is a more technical workaround, but I feel like most of the market for these are going to be people who remember using them in the 80's and have at least a little bit of knowledge of computers (and the C-64) beyond a basic user. I found it easy to spend the time to get my games working as intended. I am not a fan of the "cracked" games that make you do a million keypresses, either! I love watching your channel and I look forward to your next video!
Am i the only who always enjoys headbanging to that intro?
Yes more 8 bit guy :)
I'm still shocked you never played Boulder Dash.
Buy a Nintendo DS or 2/3DS, there are two Boulder Dash.
The two games include Boulder Dash I.
For modern version in this games, DS is better because it respects the gameplays. The new possibilities of the character in the 3DS game can't be removed or choiced, and those new things make the game easy.
I was surprised he had never heard of Armalyte. It's a great shooter :)
Awesome! I am so buying this now!
I like your videos and i think you are very fair. And I love the visualizing the reaction time by Audacity. Just a recommendation: It would be great if there was also real c64 reaction time :)
You are measuring the delay (input lag of the C64 mini plus LCD controller shenanigans plus LCD crystal switching times) of the whole system in your test. And since you switched monitors, it is in no way comparable to the test you did with the C64 mini EU version. The signal also seems to be 60Hz vs 50Hz, which is a speed up for 20% right there. So "scientific" isn't the word I'd use for this test. It is a useful data point, sure. And you don't deserve to get "hate" for it. But some criticisim is valid and it is a good idea to look at that and improve your future videos and methods. :)
And even CRTs aren't inherently lag free. Prad.de made a great article about it where they profiled several monitors using a high end oscilloscope. If you use an analog signal to drive the CRT, it is likely that it is lag free. But if you feed it a digital signal (especially later model CRTs accepted digital DVI and widescreen ones often have HDMI ports), the monitor will need to convert it to analog signals, since those drive the display (as opposed to LCDs, which work the other way around, simply speaking).
I myself am too young to have fond memories of the C64. But this does not do anything for me. Without a keyboard, this is just a worse, more constrained android emulation box with some legit games. And overpriced at that. Even without tinkering you can get retroarch and similar on those machines and it works pretty well.
You never played Armalyte ?? best shooter on the system
Yeah, it's a classic next to Katakis.
@Metagalactic Llama alright, easy fella
@Metagalactic Llama You don't know how many games were never release in Europe and I still know and even imported some of them back then. Also we send Ultima clear datas to the US to get certificates from Origin for completing them. Look at all the cracking groups all across the world, that were importing cracked versions from other groups.
We had something called gaming mags that reported about game releases across the world even if many never were released in our countries. I still remember the outrage of lots of gamers when another game was not coming out in Europe, like Chrono Cross for example.
PS: If Wikipedia is correct, Armalyte was released in the US. gamefaqs.gamespot.com/c64/564842-armalyte/data
All good to know. It would have been interesting to see the lag time comparisons against the real C64 too, though your examples do get the point across well enough to see that it's a real thing. Thanks again.
Excellent review! I wouldn't mind having one. Doesn't look too bad.
Hi David! Keep up the good work! I love your videos and appreciate your honest opinion and criticism. It's easy to flamebate anonymously from behind a keyboard. I hope the hate mails weren't to insulting.
Any emulator has some delay especially with sound, since it has some audio buffer. Every emulators running on a "regular" OS, I mean, and here Linux was mentioned. To avoid this (and maybe other kind of delays as well?) some kind of real-time OS is needed, or even much better, kind of "bare metal" emulator construction (bare metal means a software - here an emulator - designed and developed to run without any OS at all, so it has absolutely precise control - at CPU clock level - on hardware resources, what are usually scheduled by the OS - if we have one - and does not allow the same level of precision). In theory it's possible to develop an emulator that way, though I haven't seen too much of them. Maybe Pi64 was a project like this, to run on the Raspberry Pi, but not using any OS, just the emulator itself directly interacts with the Pi's hardware, in that particular case. Surely, these kind of emulators are rare, since emulators are typically written for PCs using different hardware (different GPUs, sound cards etc etc). However a custom made hardware for a given emulator makes that possible to have a single hardware platform to develop for, thus problem solved.
I agree with you on the audio buffer. I actually wrote an Atari 2600 emulator for Windows. System and hardware limitations prevented precise timing of the frame rate, so had to create an algorithm to compensate to keep the average frame rate as steady as possible. Audio had to be buffered, it was not really an option. A short buffer increases risk of buffer overrun or underrun, due to the aformentioned timing irregularities, and underruns especially will result in gravelly audio which is much less pleasant than a delay.
@@sa3270 Yes, yes, I also wrote some emulators, that's why I've mentioned, also from experience.
What you are describing already exists in form of FPGA based systems, which reproduce the original logic/chips in software with exact timing and behaviour. Just look for "Ultimate64" and "MiSTer".
@@ThomasAbts Yes, I know, I also did some VHDL level stuff on FPGAs, including the implementation of a Z80 based computer (Primo, a Hungarian one, not so well known outside of Hungary, I guess). But now I discussed the possibility to write emulators with more exact timing, that's another question.
i used to hook this with my VCR and made intro Titles of programs or movies and the station ID at the end very useful
Awesome video as always. I was kind of hoping that you would tell people to go buy this thing. Even though it has some issues, I think people need to support these efforts.
If it was a worthwhile product, he would have...
Who would send _you_ hate mail? Criticisms, maybe, but are people that unnecessarily harsh? You're providing only your observations, and if an assumption is wrong, it can be acknowledged and everybody wins. But with hate mail, nobody wins.
It's just part of being a TH-camr. Everyone gets hatemail.
@@The8BitGuy I think all the more a reason for me to be appreciative. Thanks for all of this!
You Tube Pendant, of course!@@The8BitGuy
@@The8BitGuy It wasn't hate mail. It was criticism. Grow up and take the hit.
@@jdbarker32 Given what I know about internet discourse, he probably left out the death threats and insults to his mother that were probably mixed in liberally with their pedantic criticisms.
I remember selling my C64 with 300+ games, heaps of joysticks, 5 1/4' drive, tape drive, gameshark cartridge that would allow cheats in almost any game. Was so much better then 286 and even most 386 computers
This is a great product. I would definitely buy one of these. I'm currently running an emulator called V.I.C.E. which has a ton of features. I'm waiting for the larger version to come out since it has a fully functional keyboard. I just hope they fix things in a way so that you can swap the joysticks and fix the disk swap issues. It's a step in the right direction, though and I'll be watching this channel whenever the larger version comes out. Great work!!
Still looks neat. Thanks for sharing.
But you didn't plug in your keyboard and play Planet X2 :(
shut up
@@DeathPrevails77713 Just because someone suggested to play Planet X2 makes you that sensitive enough just to say "ShUT Up"? What kind of person would do that?
Still waiting for The AMIGA mini .........
Buy an Amiga 600.
there is one the Armiga
I'm building one myself: shell and keyboard of an Amiga 600 + keyrah V2 + raspberry Pi 3 B+
Great video thanks for the effort
Love the video, never knew this product existed. I went from Vic20 to a 286 but at many friends places I played C64 games. Not sure if I would buy that but the full sized model has my attention. My working Vic20 is on display in our entertainment cabinet (and bleached so it's not yellow), I have a soft spot for that generation.
The input lag is most likely caused by the fact that the input devices are USB, USB devices don't cause interrupts, so the kernel has to manage them, which is a slower process.
The audio lag is inexcusable on this device though.
@@davidmckean955 Not as much an excuse as the reason; the reason for the audio lagg is most likely because it's an emulator. Emulators have to emulate the sound hardware, pipe that through (usually OpenAL) in a X size buffer then that needs to get piped through the audio system (usually Pulse Audio), then to ALSA and finally to the sound card which does some processing before it hits the speakers.
I think they've gone with a relatively large audio buffer due to the fact that it's such a low powered machine that needs to run an full emulator as well. emulating the sound at probably 4.1 ghz. which is a much higher bitrate than the output of the original hardware.
@@LunaTheFoxgirl I'm well aware, I still follow emulation and the latest versions of MAME have almost no input lag for years and no audio lag now either since they started supporting PortAudio. This C64 mini has emulation technology that's a decade out of date.
@@davidmckean955 Not only that, but also weak hardware which isn't top-notch for sound output and emulation in the first place when needed in realtime.
It's too bad this is not FPGA based, as that would totally eliminate the lag in both video and audio.
Modern TV TV's still slow things down compared to CRTs
JustWasted3HoursHere: Yes, like the C64-in-a-joystick thing I had, designed by Jeri Ellsworth. But getting USB and HDMI support for a common SoC is a matter of commonly available code, while the original C64 did not support USB or HDMI, so an FPGA C64 would still have to have USB and HDMI support added. Using a common SoC would be the easiest way ... but then the FPGA is spending a lot of development effort just to cut back on the lag of what the SoC can do on its own.
@@brucemcfarling7810 I'm pretty sure there's already a fully developed FPGA core out there for the Commodore 64. When I talk about lag, I'm talking about input lag when playing games and such. A delay between the transmission of video from the unit and the TV displaying it must be virtually undetectable, I would imagine.
As for Jeri Ellsworth, that woman is a freaking genius! There's a lecture from her on TH-cam somewhere that is fascinating to watch (although it's terrible quality: th-cam.com/video/g05Wfqv-8es/w-d-xo.html ). And her channel here on YT is very cool as well. She made a C64 electric guitar for _Maker Fair_ : th-cam.com/video/_kDhpFaf4EY/w-d-xo.html and a SoC Amiga (unfinished and never went into production: th-cam.com/video/5uaDzF99a80/w-d-xo.html ). She taught herself chip design....
Here's a more recent lecture from her with MUCH better quality: th-cam.com/video/tOb9BIYjvA0/w-d-xo.html
Someone should make a movie about her.
I'm 100% sure there is ... but it replaces the chips in the C64. That is the point, after all, since while you can get 6502 processors that can act as a 6510 with a simple daughterboard, failing SID chips are harder to replace. And an exact replica of the functioning of the C64 chips also implies that USB support and HDMI support have to be added.
In terms of engineering, it's straightforward to do that with the right SOC that takes the video output from the FPGA and outputs the HDMI digital output and handles the USB and uses its GPIO to drive the joystick ports and keyboard matrix. The issue is the business model ... that SOC can also be programmed to emulate the C64, and dropping the FPGA from the design simplifies the design, reduces development time, and reduces build cost, so both overhead and production costs are lower. So it's a lot more likely that a hobbyist with the resources (skills and finances) AND interest to do it does the FPGA+SOC design and a lot more likely that a commercial firm does an SOC-only design.
FPGA hardware would raise the price immensely, making it useless to buy this unless you are just a loser.
Perfect timing for me to watch some 8-bit guy!!!
Thanks for another great video. I bought a 64mini but had not opened it. The same week my Ultimate 64 arrived. So I took the 64mini right back for a refund as the Ultimate 64 works great.