Category Archives: Ultimate 64

Commodore Rebooted

If you are reading this blog, you probably already know that Christian Simpson (known as Peri Fractic on his Youtube channel) is acquiring the Commodore brand. However, it’s such huge news that I felt like a blog post was certainly justified, regardless of how well-known this is.

Take a look at their first advertisement:

Commodore 64 Ultimate

You can review Christian’s first two videos about acquiring the Commodore trademarks on YouTube:

Actually rather than watching those videos you might read this article on Tedium and then this one for a good understanding of what is going on.

Suffice it to say that he and some partners are purchasing the Commodore trademark from its current owners, with the intent to reboot the Commodore brand. Their website is live.

I am going to organize a few of my thoughts in Q&A form, because these are the questions I have pondered for a few weeks before ultimately deciding I want to support the new Commodore company.

Is this new Commodore really Commodore?

Of course it’s not! But also, Yes!

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Benchmarking the Ultimate 64 Hyperspeed Kernal

About a year ago Gideon updated the Ultimate firmware with support for a new C64 Kernal which allows for DMA loading and saving using the standard LOAD and SAVE Kernal routines. I’m a bit behind on this as this has been out for a while, but I finally got around to testing the load and save times using the CBM Disk Transfer Benchmark tool I wrote in 2020.

Basically what Hyperspeed does is hook the soft-IEC into the Kernal LOAD and SAVE routines but uses direct memory access from the Ultimate 64 (and 1541 Ultimate 2+). As you’ll see, this provides for a near-instantaneous load time, due to the fact that the data is transferred directly into memory, bypassing the IEC bus entirely. The obvious down-side is that it requires a custom Kernal, which is not a big deal, and that it only works for the standard Kernal load and save routines, which is a pretty big deal since that essentially rules out anything that needs real 1541 emulation to work.

Update: I’ve added additional testing data. It was suggested to me that I would get even faster scores than I originally posted if I used the Ultimate 64 RAM disk, which resides in system memory rather than attached storage. This is indeed the case. Also, I repeated the same tests on a 1541 Ultimate-II+ and included those scores in the tables. The 1541 U2+ is not as fast but still beats any other option for load speeds by far.

Testing was performed on an Ultimate 64 in NTSC mode and a 1541 Ultimate-II+ on an NTSC Commodore 64, both using the 3.10a Ultimate firmware with the matching UCI KERNAL.

The bottom-line speed comparison

With attached USB storage, Ultimate 64 Hyperspeed is 26 times faster at saving than the baseline 1541, and a whopping 562 times faster loading than the baseline 1541 with stock Kernal. Using the internal RAM disk is even faster: 102 times faster at saving and a blistering 1124 times faster loading than original hardware.

In fact, it is likely faster than this. Hyperspeed loaded 44,956 bytes (177 blocks) from the Ultimate 64 RAM disk in less than one decisecond (<100 milliseconds). The smallest time interval the TOD clock can return is one decisecond. Once we get faster than 300 milliseconds, these differences are not really possible to measure with precision. 1124 is the maximum possible DTB load score. For all intents and purposes, Hyperspeed can achieve instantaneous load times from the internal flash memory utilizing the UCI KERNAL.

A real C64 with a 1541 Ultimate-II+ cartridge is no slouch either. The U2+ can be configured to use the UCI KERNAL matched with Soft-IEC storage just like the Ultimate 64. For attached USB storage, I measured a 11x save score and 161x load score. The internal RAM Disk of the U2+ increased these to a 13x save and 225x load score.

Read on for the detailed comparison tables.

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My Ultimate 64 and a Commodore SX-64

I finally got my new C64C case from Pixelwizard Retro Shop. If you don’t know about these: these are new cases made from original Commodore C64C molds. They are a perfect fit for real hardware because they are from the real molds. And they make a great option for pairing with a new Ultimate 64. And if you don’t know about that: the U64 is a modern FPGA implementation of the C64 (and then some), with network, USB storage, and HDMI output.

I chose the SX-64 style case. I happened to come across an Aldi C64 keyboard, actually pretty rare in the USA. I like this keyboard because it is nearly white, making a good style match to the original SX-64 colors.

So here are some pics!

Getting Stereo sound from mono SID tunes on my Ultimate 64 (Retro Ruminations Video)

I recently acquired an Ultimate 64 Elite board. After I configured it for stereo sound using one of the internal emulated SIDs, and a real socketed SID, I posted a video to facebook showing it off. I got a few requests for screen shots of the settings, and thought a full video would be fun, demonstrating the actual sound as well as the settings.

Also, I have been planning to post short “ruminations” on my thoughts about Commodore and other vintage computing/gaming hardware. I figured this would be a good first video. Please use the YouTube subscribe button if you’d like to see more… and like the video, too!

Seen in this video:

Ultimate 64 Elite
Ultimate 64 A/V Breakout

SID file for this music: Bombo.sid (tune #2) (I prefer having it play back at NTSC speed.)