NTSC and PAL on the same C64?!

Meet the new FPGA-based VIC-II Kawari for the Commodore 64! History, features and capabilities reviewed.
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00:00 Introduction
00:46 History of the Project
08:13 Unboxing and Install
11:39 Compatibility
12:22 NTSC and PAL Switching
15:12 Nuvie Videos (PAL)
15:47 Stereo SID Player (NTSC)
16:46 .SID Files (PAL)
17:59 Demoscene (PAL)
18:57 Games: A Pig Quest (PAL)
19:55 Games: Kung Fu Master (NTSC)
20:41 80-Column Text in BASIC
21:24 80-Column Text in NovaTerm/StrikeTerm
22:32 CRT Monitor Comparison
23:51 Custom Palettes & Swapping
24:32 High Res Graphics Modes
25:23 Blitter
25:40 Math Coprocessor
26:02 Limitations
27:04 Conclusion
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[@retrobitstv]

Slight correction - it turns out it was not the piezo buzzer that was causing the signal issues but rather the SD2IEC's GraphIEC function.

[@ChrisCromwellHP]

I read the Karawri (whatever), isn’t compatible with the Commodore Reloaded Mk II, is that true?

[@retrobitstv]

@@ChrisCromwellHP That is correct, the Kawari will specifically not work with the Mk II.

[@ChrisCromwellHP]

@@retrobitstv ok, thanks for the confirmation. I’m curious as to why however. But now that I spent well over $300+ on the Reloaded Mk II, I will enjoy it with the original VIC 2 chips for as long as possible. I’m looking to get to Luma Fix adapters for my NTSC and PAL VIC 2 chips I have.

[@RacerX-]

@@ChrisCromwellHP Maybe it has to do with the further modern integrations that were changed vs the MK1? The MK1 was very close to an original C64 board so it works with most everything, I have not had a problem with mine, once I replaced the iComp clock chip with a genuine 8701. You can't do that on a MK2, nor change the PLA as they are all built-in to the MK2.

[@ChrisCromwellHP]

@@RacerX- yes, the built in PLA was my main reason for buying the MK II. As you pointed out in your video, there’s a new replacement for the CIA, hopefully that will work with the MK II after I buy it later.

[@C64EVO]

Another great Retrobits video. This recap of Kawari's development really brings Randy's passion and resolve into perspective. We couldn't be happier with the level of support and consideration he was willing to lend to get the best results and compatibility with EVO's SRAM, in both PAL & NTSC modes. You guessed right that the form factor and fit with the NuTube64 module were a happy coincidence, but who's complaining? :-) Amazingly the Kawari Large fits just as well. A big contribution to the C64 retrosphere...

[@taakelur]

I really like how you go into the details of this stuff, presented in such a great way! Really love your channel!

[@bradnelson3595]

Really nice job on the summary of the development.

[@retrobitstv]

Thanks!

[@meneerjansen00]

Did you say "hardware 80 column"? That opens the door to a whole new mother-load of possible Office and Scientific software. Like the software for CP/M (i.e. written for 80 columns, a modest CPU and max. 64 kB of RAM): WordStar, dBase, Spreadsheets, MuMath, etc. The 40 columns always held me back on using the C64 for something serious. It was a machine for gaming and learning how to program. Maybe an emulation of the Kawari might make it into Vice. I hope...

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

Word of warning - if you live in NTSC video land like me and buy a Kawari from an overseas vendor in a PAL video country, the Kawari is probably set up for a PAL C64 already, so you * will * need a PAL capable monitor to be able to use the config program and set the VIC "chip" to an NTSC version. The jumpers on the circuit board will NOT set what chip the Kawari emulates. I didn't realize this and it took me much faffing around until I was able to configure the chip properly (thank goodness the 1084S handles PAL). :P Also you'll need to brush up on your C128 programming skills, since AFAIK it appears the method to program for the extra features of the Kawari is pretty much how you program the 8563 VDC chip. Currently I'm attempting to write a Python program that will take a web image and convert it into the format the Kawari expects, just to see if I can do it.

[@r3rossi]

FYI: You can use a jumper (paper clip or other short wire) to short the video standard pads which will flip it to the opposite of what is saved to the board. So you can always boot to a working screen even if it’s saved to a standard your monitor can’t support. The use CONFiG to save the new selection.

[@retrobitstv]

Cool, let us know how your Python program turns out!

[@dougjohnson4266]

I am very happy with my Kawari and, I have some J-CIA's coming. This is a great video.

[@tommyovesen]

Very good review!

[@JBOpie13]

So it'll work on my breadbin, but not 64C, yet. Hopefully, he'll make one for the 128 someday.

[@BillyMartin4Life]

Depends on which board you have in your C64C, because it does work on 250466 revision

[@AE-bm4no]

@@BillyMartin4Life i think most C64C's have shortboards.

[@BillyMartin4Life]

@@AE-bm4no from my experience, and what I can gather, many C64Cs in NTSC land, you can actually find more longboard C64Cs than Shortboard C64C

[@tetsujin_144]

14:30 - 50Hz *vertical* refresh. Bit nitpicky I guess...

[@retrobitstv]

Whoops, I'm so used to talking about 15 and 31khz that I perpetually have 'horizontal' on my mind apparently!

[@RacerX-]

This is indeed a very cool device has some great features. Excellent coverage here on this video! One day we will all need to use emulation of some sort. I prefer the FPGA variant. I hope this gets supported in the demo scene. Purists could look at this as an upgrade. No different then sticking an ISA VGA card into an older PC. It doesn't take anything away from the experience but adds some nifty new tricks.

[@chadwolf3840]

Great stuff!

[@countzer0408]

This really isn’t a VIC II replacement. I mean it does that very well, but it’s more of an evolution of the VIC line of chips. I would call it a VIC III with all the improvements (80 col in HW, Blitter and extra screen modes).

[@Voyager_2]

I don't really understand why he did not go for the DTV VICII features. The 256 color mode is really nice. And now we wait for C64 shortboard support ;-)

[@AE-bm4no]

I really hope they fix the timings of the Kewari for the short board. I have no problem cutting out parts of the RF shield to make it fit.

[@gklinger]

An excellent video, as usual. Thank you!

[@tiemanowo]

14:22 I think this NTSC 50 mode was requested by Adrian Black, right?

[@retrobitstv]

That is my understanding as well. I believe he helped with the beta testing. It's a really killer feature for us CRT users!

[@dzaga7123]

Круто! (Awesome!) :)

[@JosephTyson]

🤯

[@dangaAgadanga]

Wondering how often the equipment at the back needs dusting.

[@retrobitstv]

I have a cat who likes that room because it has weird cat-height windows she can look out of, so I end up vacuuming it at least once a week if not more. That keeps the dust down pretty well. I use one of those Swiffer Dusters on the shelf items from time to time, those are great for that sort of stuff and cleaning car interiors. The C64 in this video is super dusty because I just bought it from someone cleaning out their house and haven't serviced it yet!

[@dangaAgadanga]

@@retrobitstv Appreciated 😊 I was only in my loft yesterday and I wished I had a better way of storing my old media equipment (video, tape and CD players, etc). I have them bagged up.

[@tetsujin_144]

25:51 - "Purists may argue that it's no longer a C64, but personally I love witnessing the continued evolution of the platform" It's kind of an interesting question to me. I'm still on my Apple II kick, but very much looking to enhance the platform with expansion, acceleration, and new hardware and software capabilities. I feel like my limits for what kind of enhancements I'm OK with are kind of arbitrary, but there's always some point where I start to feel it's taken too far, where a machine that's enhanced "too much" feels like a pointless exercise to me, the result is too powerful to really fit what it was, but simultaneously still so ridiculously underpowered by today's standards that it still doesn't have any real utility. (I tend to feel that way about the Pi Storm accelerators on the Amiga, for instance. Or the X16's Vera module - I might feel better if I understood its limitations better but generally when I've looked into it, it sort of felt like it didn't have any... Lately I've been thinking about finally accelerating my Amiga 500, and wondering if even a 50MHz TF536 with 64MB RAM is too much. There's just no way I would have ever had that much RAM on an Amiga back in the early 1990s. It's all kind of silly and arbitrary but I tend to feel that there's no point using the old hardware if you're not going to get something at least kind of close to the original experience with it...) From what you've shown here, I feel like the Kawari treads the line nicely. It's got a nice set of capabilities, substantial upgrades, but nothing that feels unreasonably powerful relative to the C64. It's more like an alternate concept for what the C128 could have been.

[@AE-bm4no]

if you can run classic C64 software on it accurately, then it's still a c64, imo

[@tetsujin_144]

@@AE-bm4no By that logic my laptop is a Commodore 64

[@retrobitstv]

I've got so many modern add-ons like WiFi modems and flash storage devices that are capable of emulating the entire C64 but as long as they serve their particular function I'm fine with still calling it a C64. Where I tend to draw the line are the devices that basically use the original machine as just a keyboard and power supply and assume all of the other functions. That said, I am still interested in things like the PiStorm though, but haven't had a chance to play with one yet. On that point, I think a TF536 is a pretty nice upgrade. It's cost-effective and an '030 makes a big difference in the Workbench/WHDload experience and also in a fair number of original games too (looking at you, Elite Frontier!) I scored a good deal on a '060 CPU which may one day find its way into one of my Amigas. It's still a legit Motorola CPU that classic AmigaOS can run on so I think that's still fine since it's technically period correct. That's a good point! The C128 might have been better served by an updated but fully backward compatible VIC-II (VIC-III?) that could natively do 80 column text, additional graphics modes, and run at 2mhz. Since the 128Ds *did* have 64k of dedicated video RAM for the VDC there's a nice little analog there as well.

[@AE-bm4no]

@@tetsujin_144 your laptop doesn't do it accurately though.

[@tetsujin_144]

@@AE-bm4no I think it does. How does it not?

[@DragonNova]

Can you use this to hook up an old school PC CRT via VGA?

[@retrobitstv]

You can, but you will need the Large version of the Kawari for that. It has an RGB header that can output 15 or 31khz at a variety of resolutions. It's up to the end-user to build a cable and run it out of the C64 though.

[@djsquare510]

Is this board compatible with Reloaded MK2 motherboard?

[@Idelacio]

This IS cool...but if you are going to use an fpga you end up in the spiral that leads to the question of why not just use an FPGA for the lot, and therefore MiSTer or equivilant as an answer.

[@retrobitstv]

This is pretty far outside of my wheelhouse but I assume now that the entire 'chip' is described in Verilog, it *could* be made into a real replacement IC but because it's made in such limited quantities that it's still more cost effective to use a general-purpose FPGA. Granted, I have no idea what manufacturing costs would look like for a run of bespoke ICs so I'm only guessing here!

[@infinitecanadian]

I don't know why they couldn't have just built in a speed adjustment into the games so that they could work on any Commodore 64 computer.

[@retrobitstv]

Caveat: I know very little about C64 assembly programming but here's my best guess. C64 developers needed a way to reliably time events in the game and the best way to do that was to use raster interrupts. For example, when the beam hits a certain point (e.g. bottom of the screen) the interrupt routine jumps to a loop that handles player input, enemy AI, moving sprites, playing music, etc. On NTSC systems, it would fire every 1/60th of a second and on PAL 1/50th of a second. My assumption here is that there wasn't a better way to perform this type of timing otherwise we wouldn't have seen 40 years of software that runs incorrectly in other video regions.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@retrobitstv I guess a switch wouldn't have worked...

[@JoesComputerMuseum]

GIVE. ;)

[@retrobitstv]

The Kawari or the Evo64? :P

[@JoesComputerMuseum]

YES - ha!

[@infinitecanadian]

Why is there Latin text?

[@retrobitstv]

Lorem Ipsum isn't actually real words as far as I know, just made up words made to look like something real for the purpose of typesetting or testing layouts with.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@retrobitstv I have seen the same sort of thing on websites.