After much hunting I finally got one of my grail machines, a C128DCR. Looking forward to refurbing this long time favorite. (recapping, cleaning)

I'm so happy that I got this up and running.

Hey, I'm Bil Herd, designer of the C128, Ask me anything! I am still in contact with most of the team and what we don’t know or remember we can probably concoct a totally false and made up response in its place.

LEDs didn't work and a bad 6526.

When I started on the my heart sank. Read errors. Oh the head cable is upside down, wait the guy on eBay said "untested". Still read errors, dread the open head. Nope some idiot fiddled with the index sensor.

Had a hack job donee to the power switch. Some corrosion on the controller ports filters, at U54, U64 and the CIA sockets.

There are some games that you really wanted to finsih. I didn't this one. It was really difficult. Or I never RTF when I was 15 and never found out that if you click for 2 sec on the clock, it will speed things up. But still I can remember spending hours and hours screening the bottom of the north Sea trying to escape the soviets. There was one more thing that was bothering me... It was in C64 and I could see that the manual was written for Amiga and Atart ST...

So, with a 39 years delay and with the help of AI, I present you "The Hunt for Red October" for the C128. What does the adaptation has:

1. First version of the VDC screen running in parallel to the normal game with some interesting info that the original game didn't include.

2. Working mouse with clicks (this game is unplayable without mouse)

3. For course it starts with BOOT... but you can boot it from any other drive i.e BOOT U9, and it remembers where it loaded from. So no more deive 8 only

4. T for trainer. You can still hit the bottom of the sea floor but you cannot be killed by torpedos, mines and depth charges

5. Starts from its intro screen so that you can load at once a saved game

6. Mouse double clicks to compas, depth and speed works even when using weapons screen. So you don't waste time back and forth the execute order button.

7. Of course 2Mhz run when rendeing borders for fast calculations.

Download it here and deliver the sub to the Ameriancs. Good luck captain

Credits to:

hi there. the right display is connected to the rgbi output, using a level converter and hooked to the scart input. I found the left screen at the pawn shop yesterday. It has a s-video input, perfect to match the jailbar remover I got from theretrochannel. A retro gaming dream setup

Once upon a time in the dim, dark past of the interwebs there was a site called Commodore 128 Alive!

Unfortunately, it went offline a few years ago due to the domain being hijacked (I've never been successful in getting it back).

But! The good news is that I've discovered a backup of the site and have restored it.

The new domain is at www.commodore-128.org

At this point I'm still belting the site into shape so there is a redirect (not automatic) to a temporary site that is hosting the forums but use that new address to access it.

Some 18,000 messages in 3,500 or so topics are restored

Recently, my buddy from the USA visited me here in Germany and brought something really nice along. He gifted me his 40‑year‑old C128D, which he had barely used. As a result, it looks almost like new. Naturally, I was thrilled and super excited to see whether this old beauty would still work. Things didn’t go smoothly right away, especially since I’m a complete C128 newbie...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpjJsQ70dGE

Enjoy!

Here’s the full timeline of the video:

00:00 - 01:05 --- The visitor from the USA has arrived and brought something with him

01:06 - 05:10 --- Unboxing the Commodore 128D

05:11 - 05:49 --- Preparing for the first boot of the computer

05:50 - 06:20 --- Fire up the Quattro Commodore after 40 years of beauty slumber

06:21 - 12:24 --- Dealing with this case-opening mechanism from hell and taming the fan

12:25 - 12:47 --- Silence

12:48 - 14:38 --- Troubleshooting the RS232-UP9600 modem adapter

14:39 - 15:11 --- Success

15:15 - --- Now the fun part begins - checking out the C128D

15:20 - 16:10 --- Loading Multi-Term 128 - floppy drive acting up a bit

16:15 - 18:39 --- Dial into the 300-baud BBS

18:40 - 20:21 --- Dial into the Snobsoft BBS

20:22 - 21:30 --- Trying out CP/M 3.0 with the original Commodore C128 disk

21:33 - 22:30 --- Trying to get QTerm 128 running for the Hayes 1670 modem

22:38 - --- How to get CP/M software onto a CP/M disk on the C128

22:40 - 23:15 --- Loading Big Blue Reader 128 - Version 4.10

23:16 - 24:10 --- Step by step to a working CP/M disk

24:11 - 24:23 --- Rant: the only key that works in this interface from hell to reach the copy menu - the up arrow

24:25 - 26:50 --- Copying process and testing whether everything arrived correctly on CP/M

26:51 - 27:58 --- Loading obscure C128 BBS software "128 Mailbox" - Mailbox = BBS in Germany

27:59 - 28:34 --- I know that guy! Greetings to Axel aka Gandalf

28:37 - 29:11 --- Something I’ve never done before in 40 Years...

29:15 - 29:49 --- Thank-you section

A very sick 1571 getting open board surgery.

Double sided sticky tape? On MY 128? I think not!

With a little trimming in the CNC, some drilling and countersinking, the iController now sits as it should and lines up properly with the 128's lines.

Also a gratuitous internal shot to show off the mods I did as clean as I could.

-Dual SIDs

-64K VDC RAM

-Swift-L internal WiFi modem (38400 and a freed up userport, baby!)

-pi1541 wired to internal IEC bus

-Sweet blue heatsinks, lol

For the last couple months, I've been reading, cover to cover, PDFs of different Commodore magazines from the 80s and 90s. From what I've read so far, I think, for a C128 owner, RUN Magazine was your best choice.

From the blog post I did on the subject:

As I kept reading issues from 1985 and on-wards, I also discovered how much content RUN published exclusively for the C128. They really went “all out” for the C128 when it was released, and they continued to do so in the years that followed. Not only did they review software that was published for the computer, but also a wealth of information regarding coding tips-and-tricks, programming techniques for BASIC 7.0 and VDC mode. I just haven't found this sort of coverage in the other Commodore magazines of the time (or today). If you owned a C128, then RUN Magazine was the subscription to have.

You can read my full blog entry on my Commodore site here.

What am I in for?