More JiffyDOS upgrades

Since removing the soldered kernel chip on my Commodore 64c I’ve been attempting, and sadly failing, to remove the residue solder from the chip holes on the PCB which has stopped me from fitting a new IC socket and JiffyDOS rom.

I have JiffyDOS installed in my other breadbin C64 and coupled with the sd2iec interface makes for a fantastic high speed, high capacity storage device. However, i find that the model ‘C’ is a much nicer keyboard to type on during prolonged sessions compared to the original c64 and so with a replacement kernel chip supplied by my friend Jon, it’s an upgrade I’ve been itching to see completed.

Ideally I need to get a better iron and thanks to a visit from Jon and his wonderful gifts I now have an adjustable iron and desolder station. Can’t thank you enough!

Watching a pro at work in my makeshift workshop-kitchen Jon had the old solder removed, IC in and kernel chip prepped.

I also had a JiffyDOS rom for my VC-20 to install but went for the easy option with another VC that has a socketed chip. Here’s both of my VC’s side by side. One socketed, the other soldered.

Jon’s super-duper 28-26 pin adaptor and kernel switch.

Here me giving it a quick test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm-JuM4k36E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Just got my Plus/4 to do next..it’s socketed but think I’ll have a go myself.

Thanks again Jon!

C64 JiffyDOS installation.

Well tonight, I thought, I’ve got a bit of free time to install the first of two JiffyDOS roms for my Commodore 64′s. The first, would be installed in my beloved ‘breadbin’ c64 which requires a special 28-24 pin adaptor which I received yesterday from Jon – see post http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/dual-booting-jiffydos-for-classic-c64/ )

Now this particular computer is very dear to me as it’s my very first C64 that I’ve owned since the early eighties and has provided countless hours of fun over the past 30 odd years. As you can image, i was a little nervous working on it and not wanting to stuff this one up.

After work I dropped by my local Maplins store and picked up a couple of two-way toggle switches for each C64. With these attached to the new rom chip, I’ll be able to flip between original and JiffyDOS kernels.

Lid off, keyboard and power LED header disconnected….kettle on.

I found this rather handy JiffyDOS manual (.pdf) and had it to hand loaded in iBooks on my iPad. Tablets are great!

With the correct ROM chip identified for removal, I carefully (yep sweating a lot now) removed it with an IC removal tool. Surprisingly, it popped out without too much of a fight.

Next I dremelled out a small hole in the side of the c64 case to house the new toggle switch and also soldered the JiffyDOS fly leads to said toggle switch.

Lining up the JiffyDOS rom chip pins over the IC socket, checking Jon’s notes to see which way around it went and popped it into place.

I’ve left the fly leads loose inside the c64 case for the time being, and if all is o.k will wrap these into a neat line later on.

Everything put back together and ready for testing, and the original rom chip wrapped up in my spares box.

I won’t say how long I had my finger poised over the c64 on button

Woo hoo, all is working and testing shows everything is good…I hope?

I was playing Flimbo’s Quest via my SD2IEC yesterday evening so i thought I’d try it again with JiffyDOS installed. Whoa, it’s quick. I’m guessing here, but I’d estimate approx 300 – 400% quicker to load.

So that’s my older breadbin C64 completed, next is my late model C64c. This has the rom chip soldered directly onto the pcb board so removal isn’t as easy this time around. I’ve already had one attempt at desoldering it, but so far no luck. I’ll keep trying and as a last resort will cut away the chip and desoldering the remaining chip legs.

Huge thanks once again to you Jon.

##edit – thanks to my friend on Facebook for pointing out that something appeared to wrong. If you look back at the picture above the amount of free bytes is wrong, it’s missing about 25k. Strangely enough, it rectified itself and is back to the expected 38911 free bytes.

Weird!

Dual booting JiffyDOS for classic C64

Thanks go out to my good friend and fellow RCM’er Jon for building me another JiffyDOS rom complete with his custom 28-24pin adaptor so that it can be installed into earlier (and the best) Commodore c64 ‘breadbin’ models.

This is a dual booting Rom therefore by adding a switch I’ll be able to select between the new JiffyDOS kernel or flip to the regular C64 kernel depending on whether i want to load games/files very quickly via my SD2IEC or switch back to regular C64 kernel mode.

Thanks Jon, they both survived our mail man See you at the weekend.

You can read all about how these where made over at Jon’s site.

http://www.jammarcade.net/2011/c64-breadbin-jiffydos-dual-boot/

Commodore 64 EasyFlash Cartridge and JiffyDOS rom

When I got back home from work not one, not even two…but three parcels had arrived for me. Christmas has arrived early as each little package contained a new toy to spruce up my rediscovered Commodore 64 (well two and the other for my other c64).

Here they are -

From all the way from the US, we have a homemade EasyFlash cartridge.

A new composite A/V cable.

…and from my good friend and fellow RCM-er Jon(http://www.jammarcade.net/) a JiffyDOS rom complete with dual boot toggle switch. I Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine on holiday Jon, you’re not missing much weather wise back here!

The new A/V cable provides a huge difference in picture quality than the standard RF cable and on my desktop LCD TV it looks fantastic. This cable is also compatible with the my other Commodore computers too.

I’ve been looking forward to getting hold of an EasyFlash cartridge since the release of the new Prince of Persia release just a few weeks ago because so far, this is the only device that allows it to be played on a real C64.

The EasyFlash cartridge is a flash storage cartridge for the C64. With this cartridge I can store multiple C64 cartridge games, tools and utilities and have them load almost within an instance. It also supports .prg files as well so even non cartridge based games can be installed too and with 1mb of flash storage there’s plenty of room for quite a few files.

I’ve since, swapped out the Australian slim style casing that has housed my C64 for many years and have now restored it to it’s former glory with a classic original ‘bread bin’ case. Much, much better in my opinion.

I’ll be taking a closer look inside the EasyFlash cart and posting how it all works in another post, but here’s a few pictures taken during this initial test.

Well, at least after all these years the cartridge port still functions!

Writing the cartridge game file using Easy Prog running on the c64 loaded via my SD2IEC.

Easy Prog

Once completed, switch on the cartridge and hit the built in reset switch – which is also rather handy as it can be used as a regular reset switch.

Yay!

I may be some time….60 minutes to be exact

Moving on to the JiffyDOS Rom, once this is installed, it will dramatically increase disk loading times when using my SD2IEC (including file transfer to the Easyflash cart) and Jon has kindly installed a toggle switch so that I can turn off this feature when loading software from tape. This particular chip is for my other (model C) C64 and look forward to seeing Jon’s custom made JiffyDOS adaptor for my original C64 in the near future.

I’m aiming to have the ROM installed this weekend….that’s once I’ve put my C64c back together again (currently in the process of cleaning/RetroBriting).

I’ll be back with more on these new toys (and hopefully better daytime photos) over the next few days.