Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga

               An article by Richard Hewison

The Spectrum isn't the only old 8-bit micro to be emulated on the
Amiga.  Commodore's own C64 has been emulated for quite some time,
but it's only been in the last year or two that the emulators have
proved to be of any use (especially on the A1200).

A64 v3.01 (Shareware version) - On Disk 877
-------------------------------------------

A64 is one of those emulators that has been around for a few years
now. This latest shareware version only allows you ten minutes
use, but it does give you the chance to assess how well it
emulates the Commodore 64. Finding C64 files to run is another
matter entirely. In my case I was fortunate that I registered the
IBM PC C64 emulator C64S, and had transferred a number of my own
C64 programs over using the lead that came with it. The other
great thing about both the PC emulator and A64 on the Amiga is
that they can share files without any real hassle at all. More
about this in a moment.

Running on an A1200 with an extra 4Mb of RAM, A64 runs a little
slower than a real C64 would. As with any of the other 8 bit
emulators, this is most noticable when you try running arcade
games. However, it isn't slow enough to render them unusable so
don't be put off. The real problems come to light when you start
seeing sprites flickering like mad (or not appearing at all), and
screen splits (for game panels etc.) looking badly corrupted,
jerky etc.  You do have the chance to change the way that the
emulator behaves. Pressing F9 firstly takes you to the
debug/monitor function. I haven't looked at this side of the
emulator at all, but from here you can call up the A64 preferences
screen. This gives you access to a large number of features via
drop down menus. You can change the way the emulator scrolls the
screen, treats sprites, rasters, colours, sound, drives, joysticks
etc. Fiddling around with these settings might improve some of the
more obvious problems, but some games will never look exactly the

way they should. However, it is at least encouraging to see that
the emulator will try and run anything that is thrown at it.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, A64 is capable of sharing
files exported from C64S on the PC (or PC64, also on the PC!). You
may well find a number of these files floating around on magazine
cover disks or Internet sites if you keep your eyes peeled. The
legality of these files is a very grey area. Some
publishers/authors do not object to these files being passed
around as long as nobody is making money out of it. However, some
definitely do not want their files treated like PD. I know some
programmers who are only too pleased to see their old games
running on the PC after all these years, and they have a fair
collection of emulated files themselves!

Getting the files to run on the A64 is easy. You can run them
directly if they are plain C64 files (exported from C64S or PC64)
or run them through a few Amiga utilities that will extract them
from the PC disk (.d64) or tape (.t64) files.

Registering for the full version of A64 will give you a full
version with a proper printed manual and all sorts of extras, as
well as having the ten minutes restriction removed. If you own a
C64 with a disk drive, this could be the program for you!















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