Exploring the SuperCPU Accelerator for C64

[@AlphaFox78]

I worked at CMD in 1996, it was my first real job. I installed JIFFYdos in 1541 drives; I would desolder the ROM and put in a socket, then wire in the toggle switch. it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it! but sadly they laid me off about 6 months later and never called me back in. I met Mark Fellows, the guy who designed this, a real nice guy. not sure what happened to him, CMD is still a thing here but they have nothing to do with commadore any more, just make PC clones and servers from what I know. ( I live in east longmeadow and still work right down the road from where they started). I remember a line of SuperCPU cases all lined up and ready for assembly, I would put the cases together and the stickers on. Maybe the one you have is one I worked on! ha. I had a SX-64 that someone gave me and I didnt know what to do with so I sold it to them, they had a whole warehouse full of old commadores... wish I knew then what I know now! I would have grabbed some of that stuff.

[@8_Bit]

That's really cool, it would have been a dream job for many of us then! Were there many other employees there, besides the owner/manager people like Doug Cotton, Mark Fellows, and Charles Christianson?

[@AlphaFox78]

@@8_Bit there was this guy, I think his name was Chris,(maybe it was Charles?) idk his last name. he was the man tech / assembly guy. Mark just dropped off the map, hes on FB but never accepted my friend request from years ago. I saw Doug a few years ago, I think hes still with CMD since he was in town still. It was my favorite job, loved the hands on soldering action.

[@AlphaFox78]

@@8_Bit Mark had an apple IIC, the portable one, he would use it to take from work to home haha

[@AlphaFox78]

@@8_Bit Its funny, the IT job I work at now has another client at 15 Benton drive, the whole layout is different and sadly no C64s!! They are in the front and CMD was in the back, that could be why its different. same address though! thought it was cool going back there.

[@greatkingrat]

I had an SX64 too but recently. I couldn’t afford one back in the day! I grew up with an Apple 2e but always wanted a Commodore 64.

[@fluffycritter]

Robin: "It came out in 1995 or 1996" me: Oh that isn't that old, that's after I graduated high school Robin: "So that's 25 years old, I hope that qualifies as old enough" me: [shrivels up and dies]

[@00Skyfox]

Class of ‘93 here!

[@Sinn0100]

Hey...stop it! You're making me feel like some wretched old decrepit thing. I was still in school in 1995-1996...I graduated in 1998. ;)

[@squirlmy]

@@00Skyfox class of '93 university. I had only a VAX account as a freshman and email was within the school only, and by the time I graduated, every department had PCs and student emails were proper internet accounts The PC revolution, then the internet revolution, happened quickly. Seems like overnight to me, now!

[@00Skyfox]

@@squirlmy I was high school class of '93, but the very next fall I was taking computer classes which used the college's VAX mainframe for compiling programs. Try as I might I just could not get my C64 to connect to it to remote in over the modem.

[@Vector_Ze]

Alright you whippersnappers! I graduated two years before the Altair 8800 was available. :-p

[@ojbeez5260]

My Aunt used to work for Caledonian Airlines in the 80's to early 90's and she used a Commodore 64...in fact that's what all the US airlines apparently used at the time for thier employees working at home - with UPlink modems. It was pretty cool you could log on to thier 'telnet' system and book yourself a flight to Rio De Janerio...on a C64!!

[@Slaanesh2011]

Would like to see this software running now… booking a ticket,etc just to see what it was like

[@jgrimsley2000]

I was CMD fanboy back in the day. I had a C-128D, 1541II and 1581 with JiffyDos, CMD HD-40, RamLink with 16 megs and Hd serial cable, SwiftLink cartridge and CMD mouse that gave my system a real-clock. I subscribed to their magazine, too. I used GEOS-128 until about 2005. I had IBM compatibles since 1989 and got a Amiga 600 in 1993, but love using the C-128 more. CMD was the best! My Aprotek 2400 baud modem was my only non-CMD, non-Commodore peripheral.

[@totophi]

jgrimsley2000 : Me too! At one point, I had three C-128‘s, two RAMlinks with battery backup, one custom CMD HD with a “humungous” 350 MB, SwiftLink with a USRobotics modem, and various 1541/1571/1581 drives with JiffyDOS. GEOS was really fun like this! Unfortunately I didn’t have any more loose capital by the time the FD-2000 and SuperCPU were released. But for a few brief years, 8-bit computing felt like heaven.

[@MarkReed-smokindeist]

Those little blue modems were nice but a Swiftlink or Turbo-232 cartridge with a high-speed modem was really nice.

[@StevenSmyth]

I have a friend who used the C64 as his main computer up to the point his mom got him a Mac Classic and an HP Deskwriter for his birthday. We were both in a Doctor Who fan club in Southern California (way before anyone in America knew what Doctor Who was) and the club had an Amateur Press Association or APA. It’s like a club zine; everyone in the APA would type up a few pages, copy or print up however many they needed to contribute, in our case 8-10 each month, bring them to the meetings, then collate them together and distribute the zines to the members. My friend did his in GEOPublish. In order to get a physical copy he would send the GEOPublish service his floppy disc with the files, they would laser print it and send him the hard copy and his disc back. As a desktop publishing platform, GEOPublish rocked. His output looked just as good as the stuff i was doing on my SE/30 at work (I didn’t have my own Mac yet either). If my friend had managed a SuperCPU back in the day, I think he could have limped along until he could afford a better Mac on his own hook, but the sad thing is the GEOPublish service shutdown shortly after that and there was no way for him to preserve the files in any other format other than hard copy and raw text. But, there’s a prime example of a productivity use case for the C64.

[@Derision667]

Awesome video, Robin! Where I think the SuperCPU really shined was amongst the diehard C64/128 users in North America that refused to switch to anything else, even as Commodore shriveled up and died and software developers vanished from the platform. These are people for whom Commodore was a way of life, something they used every day, and were often not gamers. These were the guys who were LOADSTAR subscribers 'til the very end. I think we all knew people, primarily older folks, that used the C64 or C128 as their primary computer well into the late-2000s (what is that, the aughts?), and the SuperCPU (and other CMD hardware) made stuff like GEOS useable enough to actually perform work and do tasks with (though GEOS 128, in 80 column mode, with an REU and a CMD HD (or even just a 1581), was also a very usable platform even without acceleration). Many people did just that, really, using their Commodore rigs for day-to-day stuff until the internet arrived. Specifically the web, because even I used to use my C128 to send email for a number of years. Even the mighty SuperCPU couldn't compete with the web, unfortunately. I also feel like that's why there's such a dearth of these remaining, despite several thousand of them being built and sold: a lot of them stayed with their older Commodore users and, when those users were no longer with us, they ended up getting lost or thrown out by family or estate liquidators or whoever does that sort of thing, to the point where there's a handful left, all of which command preposterous prices on eBay. Anyway... TL;DR: Where the SuperCPU did succeed was that it helped Commodore users (not gamers, not developers, just regular ol' users) keep chugging along into the new millennium. AJH

[@exidy-yt]

I really was a shameless power-user as a teenager. I went from my yearned for and saved up for 2 years Commodore 64 in 1985 to an Amiga 500 in 1988 to a 386DX-40 PC clone in early 1992. I was chuckling at my friends who stuck with the 64 and were trying to show off GEOS to me (which really was amazing in hindsight) when I was rocking WorkBench 1.3, and was enraged at the slow pace of Commodore R&D letting the PC clones get ahead of them with 32 bit CPUs and 256 colour VGA graphics that I jumped ship to PC land after comparing games like Wolfenstein 3D and Wing Commander to the by then completely outclassed Amiga offerings. I kinda wished I had slowed down to smell the roses then, there's a lot of satisfaction to be gained by eking the most out of limited systems and pushing them beyond those limits. I love videos like this. I would love to have seen Mercenary: Escape from Targ running on a 20MHz C64!

[@ScrapKing73]

My C64 was my main computer for productivity well into the early 90s, because as much as I wanted an Amiga I couldn’t afford one. I used GEOS 64 as my office suite, and also used a terminal programme for getting online (with local BBSs, as there was a vibrant board scene where I loved). I did also play games on my C64, but I spent more time doing productivity and online communication. I remember reading Compute!’s Gazette about all sorts of cool C64 upgrades like this that I couldn’t afford.

[@Starchface]

I had never heard of the SuperCPU before. Nevertheless I want to recognize the time and effort that went into making this video. You left no stone unturned. Excellent.

[@Vector_Ze]

I remember seeing the SuperCPU advertised, but I didn't buy one. By then, I'd moved on to the C128, and the Amiga, before Windows 95 ushered in the internet for me. I'd fiddled with bulletin boards a little on my Amiga before 1995. But, my first IBM compatible was an AT&T Globalist in 1995. I recently received my The C64 Maxi, and am having a good time with it, refreshing my memories that have faded over the past three decades or so. I was never much into games, but more into seeing what I could figure out in the programming department, and that's why I bought the The C64. There were really only two games I spent any time with on my original C64s; Jumpman and Fort Apocalypse. And I saw end screens for both of them. The primary game I played on my Amigas was Test Drive II. I actually, physically broke a joystick on that game trying to make a curve.

[@taragwendolyn]

Re still using old/obsolete hardware - I was still using an IBM XT in 1995. As a family we had a much faster computer that I was able to go on the Internet or play games on, but we kept our decade-old XT running and I had it in my bedroom so I could type documents for school in WordPerfect. :) It was the 90's equivalent of giving your kid a tablet or chromebook today

[@MegaManNeo]

Still not an Amiga or 486 by a long shot but seeing GeoPaint running that smooth and Metal Dust on that C64 blew me away. Not that there were stunning things happening on stock hardware before but this SuperCPU stuff is in a league on its own.

[@rodneylives]

I was one of those people who ended up using a Commodore 64 long after the expected expiration date. But part of that was lack of alternatives, and there's no way I could have afforded an accelerator device that cost as much as the machine itself. I really wish I had had one though.

[@the.real.a-volpe]

What about the Amiga..

[@maxxdahl6062]

@@the.real.a-volpe If he couldn't afford this, the Amiga would have been way too expensive.

[@DavidRomigJr]

I was still buying brand new games for my C64 from my local Electronics Boutique as late as 1994, when apparently corporate told them to reclaim that shelf space. That was the year I graduated high school and the year an article appeared in my local paper, The Mercury, saying local business Commodore Business Machines was filing for bankruptcy. That article hung on my bedroom door for 10+ years. Had I known then that CBM was only 30 minutes away from me, I would have have visited. But that is hindsight. I didn’t even bother to get my driver’s license until 1994. Sigh... memories.

[@SteveGuidi]

My ideal setup was to run my C64c with a SuperCPU, SwiftLink and appropriate modem, an FD2000 and CMD hard drive. I remember debating with my friends in 1996 on how this could keep up with PCs and Macs of the time, but I was always stumped by the software support problem.

[@MrGoatflakes]

Oh, damn, didn't realise this came out in 1996. I was thinking what an amazing product it was with the w65c816 and 16MB of RAM, and all the awesome things you could do with that, what with zero (direct) page relocation, stack relocation and a 16 bit stack pointer not bound to a particular page boundaries, stack relative addressing, but then I remembered all the things I was doing on a PC in 1996 ._.

[@jjeeeekk]

Everything with some minor limitations. Stack and Direct Page is bound to bank 0, the Direct Page not page-aligned demands 1 extra cycle (e.g. for usage as high-level language frame-pointer). ;)

[@DasIllu]

Cross Assembler, i remember building a parallel port to userport cable back in '96 or '97. The userport's D0--D7 weren't able to drive the printer port directly but it worked vice versa. IIRC there was one line from the userport to the (i think it was) paper sense line (or something) that i used for a very dirty handshake. Wrote the transfer program in QBasic on the PC and in Assembly in the C-128's built in monitor. Worked like a charm. Made it so it would boot and wait in the background for the transfer to start. After the transfer was complete, the receiver routine wound just jump to that new program.

[@8_Bit]

Cool! I had built a cable like that too. I found schematics online, and there was some file transfer program. I might have even written it myself too... I can imagine I used Turbo Pascal? Very distant memories now :)

[@jamesragsdale3069]

Epic. You guys got REALLY creative.

[@perfectfutures]

That metal dust game is amazing. Glad someone made the most of this opportunity.

[@maxsmarts8210]

Wow look how awesome runs the Test Drive, I love that game .

[@timmooney7528]

When I bought my first 486/33 after college, I got rid of my C-64. I learned later the freeze ups and reliability issues it had would've been solved if I knew where to buy a replacement power supply. Sounds like the SuperCPU was a great product, but just a little late to the market

[@MarkReed-smokindeist]

My former co-worker ran a 128-based BBS for our user's group as far as the mid 2000's. His C128D had the Super CPU, some CMD drives including a CMD HD and JiffyDOS-equippped 1571 drives. It's sad how all the old CMD stuff sort of evaporated when the then-owner was going through some drama that I don't know the full story on. I believe that a Turbo232 and a CMD RAM-Link were also part of his setup. He was also a big GEOS fan. He also played with the GEOS-based web browser...

[@stupossibleify]

Would be good to get someone from CMD/Berkeley Softworks on a future episode as a retrospective on the impact their products had.

[@DougCotton1]

Not a bad idea.

[@MindFlareRetro]

Such a fascinating device -- I have never actually held one. It's a shame it came on to the scene near the end and never really gained too much traction. It would be great to have one for any Commodore enthusiast's collection. Hmm, I do have boxes of potential goodies I have acquired from people who were going to throw away old retro stuff. I should probably dig out that stuff and see if any treasures await. Another great demo. Thanks again for sharing.

[@1337Shockwav3]

It's not ... one of the amazing things about the Commodore community is how they stuck to the original setup (c64 + 1541) for a long, long time ... well reaching past 2010. I know 4 people who own a SCPU and one of the devs for one of the very few pieces of software specifically designed for this accelerator. Never even cared about asking if I could have a SCPU on loan. If you want hardware expanded beyond any reasonability better go with the Amiga or Atari XL lines.

[@tuanbe]

Red turbo light was and is a must to show off vast amounts of power to your friends.

[@CommodoreGreg]

I absolutely LOVE slang, but the problem is as soon as I tried to use it in any serious way I found it had show-stopping bugs. I still think there's desire by people that own these SuperCPUs to have a dev kit. At least I would! If you do ever finish a SuperCPU game, I am buying it! FWIW, there's also Wolfenstein 3D for the SuperCPU. I have run it. It's very strange to see it run on a C64. That should count as a second game for it. I wonder if we could petition for a C64+SuperCPU mode in the upcoming Mega65...

[@kloakovalimonada]

Best SuperCPU video on KZbin!

[@VulpisFoxfire]

CMD was a great company. I had their RS232 addon that let me uses a 2400 modem back in the day (connected to the local college VAX...amusing trying to tweak things that were written for 72 or 80 columns to run on 40-col. Did try the 80-column terminal program that came with the adapter..NovaTerm, I think it was?...but since I was using a TV rather than a monitor, it looked too aweful to read) Also, I remember reading somewhere..BYTE magazine, perhaps?...about someone who had made an expansion-port board that allowed them to run an enviromental control system via the C64 (lights, thermostat, and such) for an office building. It always amazed me just how well-documented the C64 was, for both hardware and software..you could do things with it that were very obfuscated on the PC side of things. And are even more so these days. Edit: Oh man, the quiet 'chuckling' of the disk drive as the stuff loaded...even if it was a 3.5" rather than a 5.25"...talk about a serious hit to the nostalgia. :-)

[@Kris_M]

4:00 I had the Final Cartridge III. Man I loved it. It allowed me to hack several games with its built-in dis-/assembler.

[@nebular-nerd]

That is a cool bit of kit, silky smooth performance on the stuff you demoed. Also seeing the Altera in the prototype begs the question, maybe a 2020's update based on an FPGA (or a Pi)? That would be hilariously fast. 🤓😁

[@AdamSommer70]

Great video, thanks for posting! The SuperCPU is very interesting!

[@Moonfreeze]

Wow, had I seen Test Drive like that back in the day, I would've freaked out!

[@m1kkole1nonen]

I'd like to see how this performs with Stunt Car Racer

[@totophi]

Mikko Leinonen : Grand Prix Circuit! Karateka! Elite! Echelon!

[@theyamo7219]

The Freescape games would finally get a good framerate

[@BaumInventions]

So basically it is something like the Pentium Overdrive CPUs for the PC World. A very specific product to solve a very specific problem for a very short period of time. I just love stuff like this.

[@Damaniel3]

A Pentium Overdrive released in 2010 that pushed your 66MHz 486 to a 1GHz Pentium III equivalent. I could totally have seen myself using one of these back in the day if I still had a C64 laying around.

[@Franksey180]

Thanks for making this video :) I own one of these that I bought from eBay maybe 10 years ago. C64 fans will shudder with horror but to this day I've never actually attempted to power it up or test it, so it could be dead for all I know.. I still have all my C64 hardware/software but it will be a bit of a project to get up and running, I assume the C64/C128s I have may need re-capping and PSUs replacing. Great to see Metal Dust in action, I think that gives a sort of preview of what C65 games could have looked like.

[@vcv6560]

Dang, somebody needs to be making these again! I bought a RAMLink in 1997, should have sprung for the accelerator too.

[@GrymsArchive]

Out of all the things I bought for my C64 set up I wish I still had, I wish I still had my *CMD HD 20*

[@xaGe__]

I wish I had one of those back then. Fascinating video.

[@fourthhorseman4531]

It's very impressive! Can you imagine if we had this back in like 85 or 86? It might have made some of us put off moving up to 16 bit systems.

[@johnsimon8457]

I forgot how slow flood fills were in paint programs on the Apple II and C64

[@spavatch]

I so much regret I was unable to obtain the SuperCPU 128 with a set of compatible accessories back in the day. I learned about its existence - I think - around 1999, just before they folded their Commodore line, but even though they still had all the hardware in stock, as a student I couldn't afford it. And I'm afraid not much has changed since then really, I suspect the prices skyrocketed way beyond a mark set by common sense so in a way they're still out of reach.

[@KasumiKenshirou]

I didn't know anything like this existed at this time, or that people were still using Commodore 64s. My family upgraded from c64 to a 486 in 1995, and I thought we were one of the last people still using Commodore 64s back then!

[@rannugblah4251]

I'm interested in hearing more of your rants about "using what you have and know" vs always going for the latest and the greatest in technology. If you'd consider making a video about how you feel about the modern age of computing compared to when you were growing up, the in my opinion sad changes in how coding is done (each megahertz and megabyte costing fraction of a dollar and in turn coders tend to forgo any discipline for optimization) and so on; I'd be very interested. Keep up the good work.

[@DanSanderson]

It's mind bending to try to put this into the chronology of late '90s computing. I graduated high school in '96 and had already gone through many years with an A500 and a year or so with a 386 laptop by then. Those were both 16 MHz machines. A 20 MHz accelerator for a C64 would be a neat trick and the benefits for GEOS are obvious, but if my goofy kid self had already moved on years earlier, where would this live? (You address this, just sayin'. :) )

[@NeilRoy]

I would have loved to own one of those back in the day. But, I upgraded to my Amiga and never looked back. I am surprised that did as well as it did to be honest. The Amiga 500 was pretty reasonably priced in the 90s (in Canada for me). I think of all computers I ever owned, my Amiga was the absolute best. I used to run a BBS on my C64, I wonder if that would have improved it. I had the same Super Snapshot you owned and loved it. It's how I learned to program assembly for it. Good times, I miss those days A LOT.

[@elmariachi5133]

Amiga was THE computer and there still is nothing else in history that has ever seen do far ahead of it's time. Too bad Commodore messed it all up. Amiga is what should have been the survivor instead of those shady Apple products.

[@garyhoffmann1615]

@@elmariachi5133 I played around with an apple emulator on my Amiga, it was way faster than an apple with the same 6800 CPU thanks to the Amigas co-processors.

[@bjrnen8505]

Another reason the SCPU failed was feedback on tech demos. The community want very impressed with these and told the scenes where to stick it and thus the releases were very few indeed. Maurice Randall promised an extended SCPU, a cartridge that would boot up on a C64 aswell as a C128. I would have loved to see that.

[@d_vibe-swe]

3:46 For me this was my Amiga 1200/060 which I used as main computer to around Y2K, when I finally switched to PC.

[@d_vibe-swe]

Btw. Anyone knows if the SuperCPU works with the MSSIAH cartridge?

[@8_Bit]

Unfortunately I don't have a MSSIAH or I'd try it!

[@coltoncraft2047]

Just subscribed to your channel! I really enjoy the technical and depth content you have here. Thank you!

[@nicholas_scott]

When I worked on IT in the 90s, I’d see obsolete machines all the time. Especially in factories which would have some proprietary equipment hooked to a c64, or apple 2, or cp1, etc, using proprietary software. They can’t replace the computer without replacing the machine.... so...

[@rogerlong5585]

GEOS really benefited from the SuperCPU. Anyone who played Elite will remember that when another ship entered the system, it took forever to get to the space station. Activating the auto-pilot and switching it into Turbo mode meant you could get on with playing the game again, with only the occasional system crash when switching the speed.

[@AndrewHelgeCox]

So it couldn't stay in turbo all the time and just provide smoother animation? Turbo affected the passage of game time? I see how that's useful but it would have been sweet to get a smooth fps too.

[@rogerlong5585]

@@AndrewHelgeCox Theoretically, you could have kept it in turbo mode all the time, if your reflexes were also 20 times faster than normal. The reality is that the first time you tried to dock without the autopilot, you'd crash, and the first time you encountered a pirate, they'd hit you with so much firepower so quickly that it would be like they had a Gatling gun laser cannon and your ship would be vaporized.

[@AndrewHelgeCox]

@@rogerlong5585 Maybe if you could have stepped up one megahertz at a time you could have gotten to play at that level eventually 🤩.

[@nO_3Xcuses]

I had a Commodore 64 as a child back in the mid 80's. Had a lot of memorable experiences with it. I used mine mainly for playing RPG'S like AD&D Pool or Radiance series and niche type games like Spy vs.Spy. By 91-92 the Commodore 64/128 had become dated. By 96 to 2000 Windows 95 and 98 had become the new rage in computing and although the SuperCPU was a great product that had plenty of potential had it come out years earlier, by 96 most people had moved on to PC's and the Commodore 64/128 was considered an old relic from the 80's.

[@talideon]

This is one of those times I wish the Mega 65 wasn't so very, very expensive...

[@richiebrux]

Impressive piece of kit. Thanks for sharing.

[@darrenjkendall]

What an amazing piece of technology, thank you for sharing this and your memories with us.

[@madyogi6164]

Looks like a very cool tool/solution. I wish, I had a knowledge about it back in the 90's. (97 is when I sort of gave up on C64 and switched to x86). Thanks for sharing!

[@bitset3741]

There were a lot of games back in the day that just need a little boost. Overclocking the Sega Genesis shows that pretty well. Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin' show that really well. At stock -7.16mhz they are just playable, overclock to 10 they are a lot smoother, and at 12 or so they are silk. I'd like to see Mercenary for the C64 on the SuperCPU.

[@wimwiddershins]

It's an enigmatic device. I remember seeing the superCPU in mags back in the 90s and thinking wow! But by then I had an A500... Someone needs to make a modern clone. :)

[@BertGrink]

I would certainly buy one if only this someone would make it.

[@heavysystemsinc.]

It would be interesting to wrap the superCPU into a new c64, i.e. make it built in, sort of like how the Spectrum:NEXT can operate in classic or Next mode, but the CPU speed increase can be used with classic games similarly to the Test Drive demo here.

[@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343]

icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/produkt-details/product/Turbo_Chameleon_64.html#filter=*

[@CiociariaStorica]

@@heavysystemsinc. Now Ultimate 64 have turbo mode... From 1 to 48Mhz🙂

[@RetroMarkyRM]

@@BertGrink I did a bunch of tests here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaSll6WpobKrjZI

[@bitset3741]

I did 2 yrs of college with my C64 - all papers, all games etc. Then I built a pc and used both. Starting in '94 or so.

[@dwculp]

Im only years late on this comment, but I knew multiple people that ran small businesses on the C64 back in the 80's. My girlfriend in college (1988) used my C64 with dual 8050 drives and GEOS for her desktop publishing stuff in her journalism classes in college and I used mine in high school and college as a word processor. Finally about 5 years ago I bought a complete C128 on eBay and it came with a load of disks and software and I went through it all. It appears the machine was being used by a couple who lived in Oklahoma to run their business all the way up to the early 2000's on that C128. Found on the disks were tons of documents relating to the business, spreadsheets, ledgers, letters etc.... I looked up the couple as I wanted to see if I could return the disks/documents. Both had passed away recently, so the machine was probably purchased in an estate sale and resold on eBay by a reseller. BTW - All the software they were using was C64 software and not C128.

[@dustinc64]

A fun fact.. this runs in 13-14 jiffies on a U64 in turbo mode :) The basic optimizations do not seem to make a difference.. the same value returns.

[@krnivoro1972]

That device is fascinating, but now I understand how and why IBM PC won the race: One size fits all...

[@petrusscott3038]

I created my own expansion board that supported 8 cards. Each expansion slot had 2 switches. The 1st switch enabled/disabled the slot. The 2nd switch set the NMI or the IRQ (can’t remember) to reset the computer. When I plugged in a game cartridge and turned on the computer and pressed reset button, the computer would go to the run prompt, then I could save the cartridge to the disk.

[@Oliver-l1c]

I really enjoyed seeing what your 'daily driver' was. I'd love to hear more about how you used this setup in the 90's.

[@csbruce]

0:13 I mentioned before that I recycled an FD-4000 and an HD-200 the last time I moved. I also threw out a SuperCPU for the C64 and a SuperCPU for the C128. You're welcome! (That questionable choice makes yours more valuable!) 0:43 The 65816 just gives me heartburn, like the 3K gap in the VIC-20's RAM. They had the potential to make a great extension to the 6502, but they made several bad design choices that makes it painful to think about programming. E.g., they decided to make 8- and 16-bit operations into different CPU modes rather than different addressing modes. Consequently, you can't LDA #$1234 : STA var16 : LDA #$56 : STA var8 without awkwardly switching modes. You can't even disassemble this code without knowing what mode it's for. 3:38 I used the C128 as my main computer until 1996, when I switched to Linux. 4:21 You might be preaching to the choir. 6:45 Running Warp mode in VICE on my i7 desktop only gives the equivalent of 92 jiffies. Of course, its internal Jiffy timing gets messed up by the Warp mode. I wonder if VICE has a mode that speeds up the CPU without speeding up the I/O chips. 7:43 The direct speed-up factor between an unencumbered 1.023-MHz 6510 and the 20.000-MHz 65816 would be 19.55×. 9:38 You could also mention the C64 Super Mario Bros. game you made a video about. Did Nintendo ever drop the hammer on that? 9:49 What the heck? An Atari joystick with two fire buttons and a woodgrain finish? LGR would like it! 17:59 "This game is presented in BB Bolby Mono"! I guess that's like a Bolex watch that's a Certified Ceronometer. 24:44 I made sure my own programs were compatible with the SuperCPU, RAMLink, and CMD REU products, since that's what I had. 26:12 When you plug two SuperCPUs into each other like that, do you get 40 MHz or 400 MHz?! 26:24 Add video to the SuperCPU and you pretty much have a new computer. Around 1997, CMD contacted me about writing a multitasking operating system for their next 65816-based computer. I had to turn them down since I had just gotten the job that I still have today. They didn't tell me much, but they talked about Mensch Computer ( wdc65xx.com/mensch-computer-solid-state-computer/ ), so I guess it was going to be a similar idea: a solid-state battery-powered mobile computing device (why does that sound familiar?). I didn't hear anything about C64 compatibility. CMD sent me a third-party C cross-compiler that ran on DOS for the 65816 in that time frame, for the multitasking OS. The 65816 is much better suited to a C compiler than the 6502, with its 16-bit stack pointer and the stack-relative and stack-relative-indirect addressing modes. Also, the 16-bit Direct Page (zero page) can be used as the first 256 bytes of the current C stack frame for greater efficiency. 28:25 "We're living here in the future - 2001!"

[@8_Bit]

Sorry for putting you through the trouble of updating your comments for the new edition :) That woodgrain joystick is a Hyperkin "Trooper" which was just made a couple years ago, I believe. It's pretty good. The buttons are wired together. Since the SuperCPU splits each CPU cycle into 20, plugging a second one in multiplies the effect, for an incredible 400 MHz. If only I owned a 3rd, I'd have a 8 GHz Commodore 64, I'm sure of it! That's amazing about CMD's planned computer. I wonder how far they got with the design.

[@BertGrink]

@@8_Bit I bet you'd have to write special, multithreaded software in order to achieve such speedups ;)

[@csbruce]

I just heard that the two SuperCPUs and some other items I recycled are for sale again (with my name on them), which means the recycler didn't just shred them.

[@HummelJaeger]

"Around 1997, CMD contacted me about writing a multitasking operating system for their next 65816-based computer". That would have been their proposed GUS computer. They were unable to raise venture capital so the idea didn't go beyond a prototype.

[@TransCanadaPhil]

I'm really enjoying your videos the past few days, I just discovered your channel. Fellow Canadian here and from the sounds of it, you sound like you might be near my neck of the woods here in Winnipeg. I was a Commodore fan back in the 80s too as a kid. More recently I backed the kickstarter to get myself one of the new Sinclair Spectrum Next 8-bit computers (can't wait to receive it this August)! Cheers!

[@8_Bit]

Yeah, I'm just down the road in Thunder Bay :) The Spectrum Next looks great. I wanted one but had just spent a lot of $$$ on other retro computer stuff and couldn't justify it. Maybe later. Have fun with it!

[@TransCanadaPhil]

@@8_Bit ahh yes the references to the road trips you made down to Duluth made me wonder. Back in the 80s we used to make road trips down to Grand Forks and Fargo, North Dakota. It was fascinating then because you'd often find completely difference Commodore software available at the local shops down there compared to what you'd see at the typical Zellers or Canadian Tire store here. There was a lot more 3rd party cartridges for both the Vic and C64 that my bro and I were able to pick up that simply weren't available here.

[@Nukle0n]

crazy to make an addon for a computer like this 13 years later. It's def cool but also very head scratching.

[@kooziesan]

Every c64 video you post makes me happy

[@silverywingsagain]

Must have been amazing for c64 users at the time when this was released. Jumped processing speed forward 10 years at the flick of a switch.

[@Okurka.]

The Amiga 1000 was faster than this and was released only 3 years after the C64's release. The same year the SuperCPU was released you could buy a Pentium II 300 that was 20x faster.

[@allan.n.7227]

High quality content.. well done.. thx for sharing

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

What a fascinating view of what could have been if Commodore did not hold the C-64 static for so long. I could imagine if Commodore had a useful expansion bus like ISA we could have had a home brew Commodore architecture movement, that would have fit hand in glove with the Linux movement. Much like the Raspberry Pi movement today.

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

if we look closely we have to say that commodore only developed two good home computers - the vic-20 and the c64. the c128 was just an expensive c64. plus4, c16, c116 etc was crap. commodore never developed a cpu. MOS did until they have been bought by commodore. after bob yannes developed the SID chip they separated. why did Jack Tramiel not keep him? Was he completely deranged to let the designer of the best sound chip in this area go???

[@tarstarkusz]

I can remember when this first came out. I had Geos, a mouse and the 1581 drive and I thought it was too expensive and not really worth it.

[@jase1438]

I bought Metal Dust just because of this demo... I don't have a SuperCPU, however it works well enough in VICE!

[@djdublo]

Fascinating look at something I'd never heard of before.

[@yohojones]

You could narate my death sentence and I would just sit there with a dull grin. So calming.

[@00Skyfox]

He’s like the Bob Ross of retro computing.

[@BillAnt]

​@@00Skyfox < In Rob Ross' soothing voice "For GEOS maybe we'll use a happy little FD-2000 along with a SupercPU... there!" ;D

[@00Skyfox]

@@BillAnt Perfect!

[@Kyanzes]

Excellent demonstration, thank you!

[@loganjorgensen]

I liked your mini-rant, hard to get people to acknowledge that value is subjective.😉 Yeah the RAM increase problem is something I ran into with my hardware speculation projects Eg. retro webcam, trivial now but a real make or break matter in the past for unit price. Mainly the best work around was defaulting to the lower memory amount but leaving empty spots/slots to expand. Always been curious about it and this was a good demonstration and overview of what the goal of the module was. Quite impressive performance in the early typically sluggish 3D game genre. I think the Amiga fared better with acceleration interest while the C64 scene as you said had cooled during the time the SuperCPU came out.

[@-Jakob-]

18:04 that part of the credits is about the release of a remix of the soundtrack on an album which has a weird title: "Nur tote Frauen sind schön" which translates to "Only dead women are beautiful".

[@paddycoleman1472]

What an amazing addition to the C64.

[@JohnnyLutz]

This is really great work. Thanks for expanding my mind even just that amount!!! :D

[@Phunker1]

C64s were also used for businesses in Europe quite a bit, especially in Germany. Yet, 1996 is really fairly late. That's Pentium MMX territory.

[@gameonlinux]

Why is the Dual SuperCPU configuration showing 400 mhz? (26:22)

[@8_Bit]

It's just an April Fool's joke I worked on but never did release :) The idea is that if a SuperCPU multiplies the C64 speed by 20x then a second SuperCPU would again multiply it by another 20x. I actually don't know what would happen if I plugged two in together like that, and I'm scared to try.

[@8_Bit]

@@AndrasMihalyi Yes, I have two. The one shown was my original I purchased from CMD for around $200 + $60 for the RAM card. The second one I bought for around $200 total used, in those years before the prices started climbing.

[@8_Bit]

@@AndrasMihalyi I think a second SuperCPU would either be ignored or cause the system to just not boot at all, but someone better at hardware might have a more certain answer :)

[@darrylteichroeb9132]

Thanks Robin! Takes me back to the old days! Did you ever run a BBS? The CMD SuperCPU would have rocked serving up telecommunications...

[@8_Bit]

I never did run a BBS but I know some people did run them on a SuperCPU. In fact, I think this one is STILL online: www.triad.se/antidote

[@zledwon]

Great piece of hardware and great video! Thank you!

[@budman85]

wow I wished they had that in the late 80's when I had a BBS running. I wonder how fast the Abacus P-Code compiler would run, and if it made pcode compiled programs any faster. I used to dread compiling, it was 8 separate programs chained simulated "doors", each had to be recompiled. Spend like 8 hours compiling. LOL. then you find you forgot one change. That looks really cool. CMD had so many things I wanted... I just didn't have the $$$. :)

[@the8bitbarn836]

Never a truer statement Rich! there was so many things that I would have loved to had back n the day if I would have just had the money. And the information was so hard to find on products. Here I am 35 years later and trying to scrape up all of the things that I wanted back then. (Still hunting some of the stuff I lost)

[@LtCdrRoyFokker]

Thanks for the video! In one of the ads for the SuperCPU, it compares the product to other apparent C64 boosting products. Were any of those available in the 80s? Was upgrading the CPU a thing during its heyday or did most folks just expect to completely switch computers at that time? Although I was a child of the 80's (and born in the 70's), my family couldn't afford to get a computer until the mid 90's so I mostly missed the c64 era.

[@8_Bit]

Hi Roy! Those other C64 CPU accelerators were very uncommon. I didn't know of anyone with one at all, and when people outgrew the C64, they generally either bought an Amiga 500 or some type of IBM PC-compatible. I bought an Amiga 500, but still kept my C64 set up and running too, which was unusual.

[@LtCdrRoyFokker]

@@8_Bit Thanks again. It seems like a golden missed opportunity for a mid-life refresh in the mid-80's. Something that boosted the c64 by a factor of x8 like your testing showed with your custom micro-program would have been appreciated likely at that point by both gamers and productivity users. I'll have to add that to my bucket list of things to do if I ever get a time machine. :)

[@hunter_college]

Fun fact: The German Dark-Electro Band "Welle:Erdball" provided the sound track for the game Metal Dust and even produce a copy on CD - (those guys are also active in the C64-Developer-Scene of today). kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqKmmqR8j62sbtk

[@robsku1]

They're awesome!

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

Isn't it amazing how nowadays we need to explain why it is OK to have opinions and personal preferences? Thanks for the video, I always have been curious about this particular device. Wasn't there a similar interface with a hard drive inside, around 1992-1995?

[@antonphibes4924]

"nowadays we need to explain why it is OK to have opinions and personal preferences" Yeah it's like in the past you never had to justify your actions, theories or beliefs. People just accepted them without question. Especially the Church, they welcomed all ideas and preferences with open arms.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

@@antonphibes4924 today someone's opinion is somebody else's reason for being offended. Of course this somebody else also thinks s/he is entitled to have opinions and the right not to be offended. Like a sort of one-way free speech right.

[@aafjeyakubu5124]

I used my C64 to write all of my papers in high school. I made flyers for fundraisers. We had a little underground C64 community at my school. Those were the best of times.

[@The_Wandering_Nerd]

This would be the equivalent of something coming out today that would turn a 14-year-old Core 2 Duo desktop into a 12th generation i9 workstation with 48 cores and a terabyte of RAM.

[@rabidbigdog]

IMHO, the death of these machines was the lack of 80-column support. It's existence is fascinating however. Western Design Centre had an 8Mhz 65816 at launch I believe, which Apple didn't use because it would have threatened the Mac.

[@olmann3913]

I used my C64 in a commercial printing shop until about 06. I can't remember the name of the software I used . However it allowed me too print @ 1200x600 on a Panasonic KXP 1124 dot matrix printer. worked great for making plates for the AB DICK 360 offset press. this was used for the small count printing jobs, also saved time and $ from having to use the commercial font machine.

[@8_Bit]

The KX-P1124 is what I used too! And I have no idea what happened to it; I've been searching my basement for it tonight for my next video but it appears to be gone :(

[@jm131719]

Well done video. I think I briefly saw something on your screen about a dual SuperCPU being enabled. Could you please give a little background on that? Thanks.

[@MagesGuild]

You should try TopDesk/MegaPatch v3. it was the European alternative to Wheels, and quite a lot better. It had reasonable popularity in Germany and in the UK. I seem to recall a few more games that ran on that SuperCPU module. note that terminal software with a fast modem was reasonably boosted, particularly on the 128 with the appropriate CMD module.

[@AllGamingStarred]

CPU: "ok, lety's get-" (6502 steals a cycle) CPU: "AS I WAS SAY-" (6502 steals yet another cycle) CPU: *screams*

[@mickmickymick6927]

Would love to see Mercenary playing on the c64 with this.

[@lxm2600]

Super Schweeeeet!! Waited for over a year to get a modern version of this from individual computers! This is a nice platform for writing new c64 and c128 software, because it can be emulated by a large audience even the original is Super CPU Rare! Programming for this is super fun with cbmprg studio ide and emulator!

[@dougjohnson4266]

I gave away my C64 in I think 87 or 88 and bought a 1024 ST because it had 68000. I had no idea about JiffyDos or the SuperCPU were even made until a few months ago. I messed around with Assembler on the 6502 and then the 68000 and I can't imagine all the design hell of swapping mem in and out on the 6502. The SuperCPU is a great product but advancing technology killed it.

[@herrpez]

18:00 Bolby Mono :D Had me cackling like a madman!

[@andrewroberts5988]

I think it was Protovision (or GO64?) that create the Turbo Assembler for the 65816. Awesome feat of brilliance!

[@armoredmike8740]

I remember playing Test Drive 2 on those slow fps rates and seeing it running now on different cpu its like night and day.