I never owned a Commodore 64 when I was a kid. But I did play it at the local computer club and I had some found memories about it… So, about 40 years later, I finally decided to get one on eBay and see if it lives up to my memories…

I got a “newer” case design because I prefer the look compared to the old breadbox. The newer cases also tend to be a bit cheaper, so why not?

But the best thing is that it came with this:

This is a TapeCart MicroSD Nano. Let’s break that down: TapeCart means it’s sort of a cartridge that plugs into the Cassette Tape port (with that blue card edge connector) and simulates a cassette… well actually: many many many cassettes… Note: it can also simulate ROM cartridges.

MicroSD means it has a MicroSD reader and that the MicroSD card in it will be used to store the data that is normally on a cassette (.PRG, .P00 or .TCRT files). And it will be able to load it much much faster than if it were on a cassette.

The MicroSD card is inserted at the bottom right of this photo:

On this photo you can also see that the “brains” of this TapeCart Nano is an Arduino Nano compatible board.

The bottom PCB is actually just a standard SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) card reader:

And in the middle you find a custom PCB that you can get from PCBWay here:

The additional components you need to solder onto it are:

  • 4N25 or 4N27 optocoupler
  • 330 Ohm 1/4 watt resistance
  • 2x6 pin 3.96mm Pitch Card Edge Connector

Of course, you’ll also find completely preassembled ones on eBay…

Once you plug it in, it looks like this:

(Note: my C64 is modified with an S-Video output instead of the modulated output)

Top view:

How to use it

Mine came with an SD card already preloaded with a lot of stuff, so all I had to do is press Shift+RUN in order to “start the cassette unit”…

You don’t actually have to “Press Play on Tape”. If the SD card contains BROWSER.PRG, it will be automatically found and served as if it was the first program on your “cassette”:

(Note: the LCD TV I am using here has some “stains” that resulted from permanent damage to the LCD panel)

If you don’t have BROWSER.PRG, you can get it here: Tapecart SD Browser software (releases).

Once loaded you will be able to browser all files of the MicroSD card:

See the “help” in the right side. It tells you everything you need to know EXCEPT for what you REALLY need to know!! Here is the missing info:

  • Navigate one line up/down at a time with the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard, or by up/down with the joystick
  • Navigate one page at a time with the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard, or by left/right with the joystick
  • Select with enter or the fire button on the joystick

Playing around with it

Loading programs is incredibly fast (much faster than with a disk drive !!).

The SD card had many many games on it, including all the games I played 40 years ago. However I was underwhelmed by the graphics. I remembered much more colorful sprites! :p I guess I had it mixed up with what I saw later on Atari ST and/or Amiga ;)

What I really enjoyed though are the demos, and more specifically the sound demos like this one:

This is the 8-bit sound at its best!

I know most I could probably find all the sound files online and even play them in a web-browser… But it’s a lot more fun to play them on the original hardware! (I have to confess though, that my SID chip is not original, but I’ll get into that in another post ;)

Looking for games?

Google for “commodore 64 games download”, “c64 prg download pack”, “OneLoad64”…