C64 DTV

Travis Bryant moore · Wed Jun 02, 2021 11:03 pm

The C64 DTV or Commadore joy stick had something like a vic processor and 30 games. I wonder has anyone modded that devices with key board or other devices?

x16tial · Post by **x16tial** » Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:17 am

Yes, there has been much done around the C64 DTV (Direct-to-TV). A little Google searching should give you vast amounts of information regarding it. It was designed by Jeri Ellsworth

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:18 am

Yeah, it's basically a full Commodore 64 on a chip.

And people have indeed modded it to add keyboards, disk drives, and nearly everything that was on the original C64. There are some hardware limitations, so a DTV system isn't a 1:1 replacement for an original C64, but it can get pretty close.

EMwhite · Post by **EMwhite** » Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:06 pm

I have a few of those and met Jeri a few times while on the West coast. She is awesome.

The game lineup was good, not great but similar to the Mini C64 in that EPYX games seem to be very easily licensable or maybe in the public domain by now? Jumpman and JMJr. was always fun to play but more quirky than I remembered. Pretty sure it was just the game itself rather than the emulation.

But how did she get that platform on a chip well ahead of even VICE being any good and well before FPGA was affordable, or was it back then? I think I took it apart and there was epoxy on it? Maybe I'm confusing products. Anybody know?

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:55 am

12 hours ago, EMwhite said:

I have a few of those and met Jeri a few times while on the West coast. She is awesome.

The game lineup was good, not great but similar to the Mini C64 in that EPYX games seem to be very easily licensable or maybe in the public domain by now? Jumpman and JMJr. was always fun to play but more quirky than I remembered. Pretty sure it was just the game itself rather than the emulation.

But how did she get that platform on a chip well ahead of even VICE being any good and well before FPGA was affordable, or was it back then? I think I took it apart and there was epoxy on it? Maybe I'm confusing products. Anybody know?

I was not paying attention to things like the development of the FPGA market, so I wouldn't GUESS whether it was or not. I would not be SURPRISED if it was FPGA, but not with embedded RAM or any of those more recent bells and whistles, but rather driving a surface mount RAM chip also underneath the epoxy blob. If a 6510 is around 4,000 transistors, it would be one of the easier processors to simulate in FPGA, so it wouldn't be surprising if it did not need a high end FPGA even for that time. And I read at the time the composite output was done with a resister ladder, but I would have learned that after I got one in any event, since I was in Oz at the time so I got one of the PAL ones with the wrong resister in one part of the ladder so the colors were messed up.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:49 pm

20 hours ago, EMwhite said:

I have a few of those and met Jeri a few times while on the West coast. She is awesome.

The game lineup was good, not great but similar to the Mini C64 in that EPYX games seem to be very easily licensable or maybe in the public domain by now? Jumpman and JMJr. was always fun to play but more quirky than I remembered. Pretty sure it was just the game itself rather than the emulation.

But how did she get that platform on a chip well ahead of even VICE being any good and well before FPGA was affordable, or was it back then? I think I took it apart and there was epoxy on it? Maybe I'm confusing products. Anybody know?

The DTV is an ASIC. The usual process is to start with an FPGA, then transfer the design to an ASIC, and the necessary hardware for that kind of development was available in the 90s. Jeri had already designed the C-One computer, which was FPGA based, so I’m sure she based the DTV on the C-One design

this was also not the only “game in a joystick” design. I recall seeing an Atari VCS unit in that time period, and I had a similar unit that played NES games.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:30 am

15 hours ago, TomXP411 said:

The DTV is an ASIC. The usual process is to start with an FPGA, then transfer the design to an ASIC, and the necessary hardware for that kind of development was available in the 90s. Jeri had already designed the C-One computer, which was FPGA based, so I’m sure she based the DTV on the C-One design

this was also not the only “game in a joystick” design. I recall seeing an Atari VCS unit in that time period, and I had a similar unit that played NES games.

Yes, that would make sense ... developing it in FPGA really speeds up the development time and cuts the development cost, even when they cost too much for a cheap 8bit system simulator. That'd be why it was a one and done release in both NTSC and PAL versions ... they booked their run of the ASIC, put all of them in boards and that was that.

Travis Bryant moore · Post by **Travis Bryant moore** » Sat Jun 05, 2021 5:14 pm

Having a graphical user interface would be a good start for any C64 rig.

EMwhite · Post by **EMwhite** » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:16 am

Some pics, in case you forgot what was inside...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Mon Jun 07, 2021 4:29 am

Somewhere in those resister was the one that has the wrong value for the PAL version, making the colors on my wrong.