Captured live from a "flat" C128 in C64 Mode w/ SID Symphony Stereo Cartridge For best results play at a good, loud volume on quality STEREO equipment, not cheap crap.
Back in 1985, before a stereo SID cartridge was available (or at least, unknown to me to be available), and me being only a teenager without enough money to own 2 C64s, the only way I could get this in stereo was to play the left half onto a stereo cassette's left-channel, then try to synchronize the right half with the cassette. It was difficult, but after a *LOT* of experimentation, and a *lot* of re-recording, I finally got both halves recorded on a single stereo cassette, and I could listen to it whenever I wanted to. ;-)
Haha! It sounds as if you were as creative with cassettes as I used to be in those days! I remember them well. In 1981 I discovered how to "reverse" them by turning the tape inside-out on the reels. I would record myself speaking backwards (which required writing out the phonetics on paper and practicing). Then I would reverse the tape back to normal and listen to how well I did. I never owned a C64 until 1988 but I recorded the sounds of a friend's in February 1986. I loved it. He only had games, though. Nothing for playing music. I still have the tape.
@@kylehill3643 Explain what you mean by "our collection of songs". I don't understand. And how do you find it? Do you mean the original files? Or recordings of them being played as I have provided here?
I've always loved the earliest video games ... vector graphics, etc... Asteroids, Tempest, Defender... by 1989 I'd noticed how the focus in games had shifted away from original concepts and towards visual realism. Even then I was turned off by that.. and it's only continued ever since.
Please do more of the SIDS I grew up with. I was 4 when Dad showed me this! We were in Paradise California in Butte County. I have Asbergers a bit and this helped me a lot. Dad programmed a menu for me to navigate easier for my things I liked. I had a lot of educational content too. C64 was very good for that. :)
Kyle Hill, Hello! I have many more to post and will add them soon. I'm glad you enjoyed this. I just bought a custom cable which enables me to capture the C64 in action with high quality.
@@LordHasenpfeffer Which Sidfest did you get these from as I can't find them anywhere online and I have a bunch of sidfests from C64Music.co dot uk but they hold no more then 15 sids such as All American Sids.etc
As the video shows this is the "Left Half" of the song, its one part of a whole...with two computers, the other one playing the "Right Half" and running synchronized (by hitting the enter key to run them at the same time) the entirety of the song plays.
Precious Roi Home Shopping Network I believe it uses a modification to add a second SID chip to the C64. The 8-Bit Guy has a video on the mod. Search Sid2sid.
C64s have one, mono, 3-voice SID chip built into them. There is a cartridge called "SID Symphony" which plugs into the expansion port on the back side of the computer. That cartridge has a 2nd 3-voice SID chip inside it plus an additional RCA-audio out connector. These videos are, therefore, captured from *one* C64c with a SID Symphony cartridge plugged into it. 6-voice music files are being played here (3 voices on the left + 3 voices on the right) to produce the 6-voice stereo result. I believe before the SID Symphony cart was invented, though, some people *did* use 2 computers playing (hopefully) in sync with one another.
Oh yeah. I remember at BBS parties if there were two Commodore 64/128 users present, they'd invariably synchronize "Axel F" on the Stereo Player! (Never understood why so many 8-bit renderings of this tune are a half-step higher than the actual tune, btw...)
These videos were recorded straight from my C64c using a special, hand-made cable which is capable of capturing and converting the separate chroma/luma video signals into what you see here. The quality of the video is, therefore, much more true to the actual Commodore display. I am uncertain at this time as to what was causing that "wobbly effect". I too would like to see it disappear. These videos were actually test videos - proofs of concept, if you will, that high-quality, videos of a C64c in stereo action was even possible. I'd been trying to find a way to capture the separate chroma/luma video signals like this since 1988 and I finally found a way. While unfortunate, that slight wobble is really a small price to pay for the experience this video delivers.
