Commodore 64 and Joystick reverse-Y Cable

[+wood_jl]

I'm a bit of a new Commodore 64 gamer. A bit of fun to be had there, that I missed out on, previously.

 

However, one of the most aggravating little "quirks" of the system is the "Which joystick port does THIS game use" question you must ask yourself when going through a bunch of games, trying them out. I've never seen this on any other system. Does anybody know why they did this? Furthermore, it doesn't seem to "bother" other C64 gamers.

 

Here's the procedure I'm tired of:

 

Fire up a game.

Start, grab joystick, but it's plugged into wrong port. "Die"

Try to restart game, find out you can't until "all your lives are gone." Waste time.

Switch joystick ports, repeat.

 

Change game, repeat above procedure, ad nauseum.

 

One solution: keep another joystick plugged in. This helps, but you still grab the wrong stick to start. Plus, there's always 2 joysticks falling off the desk and banging.

 

So I was seeking other solutions. One I heard of is the "Super Snapshot cartridge" which has a "swap joystick port" feature. Well, I don't have one of those cartridges. The 1541 Ultimate is in the cartridge slot. Oh, it has "Super Snapshot" capability. Problem: I'm a retard and I hardly know how to operate the C64, much less have I ever dived into the features of the 1541U. Hell, it might not even have that....I just thought I heard that it did.

 

How about a more hands-on solution? So I ordered one of these "Reverse-Y Joystick Cables" from B and C Computervisions:

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 130355020180

 

Interestingly, the very box for the reverse-Y cable says it's good for the Vic-20. I guess you could play 2 Vic-20s at once with it, otherwise how can you use it on a Vic-20? It doesn't say it's "for the Commodore 64" on the front of the box, but on the back it reminds you that "Commodore 64 is a registered trademark of Commodore." So it doesn't actually say it's for use with the Commodore 64, which could use its functionality badly.

 

Now I'm afraid to plug it in. You guys know, how the C64 joystick ports are so finicky and the CIA (??) chip will "blow out" if you start plugging stuff in there that wasn't originally intended.....like a Sega controller? This would have to do something far from what the C64 was conceived of doing....this is going to tie all the identical pins (on each port) together, right? Wouldn't this thing need to be full of diodes (or something) to be safe? Does anybody here use this with their C64? Or do you like switching joystick ports?

 

Comments certainly appreciated!!!

 

Good day!

[Rybags]

Port 2 was the "standard". The CIA looks after both the joysticks and keyboard with the same data ports, as a result the joysticks can interfere with the keyboard scanning (and the other way around).

 

Port 2 produces much less interference. Clever programming can virtually eliminate keyboard interfering with joysticks and cut down on joystick interfering with keyboard... the trick is to ignore a keyscan if it returns on all columns/rows.

 

That device seems fine to me - practically any legacy input device that attaches to the joystick port for Vic-20 or 2600/A8 should be fine on C64, although Commodore paddles use 500K pots compared to 1M for Atari ones.

 

The problem with Sega and some later gamepads is that they reassign some pins which can cause problems.

Edited January 15, 2010 by Rybags

[Herbarius]

I'm a bit of a new Commodore 64 gamer. A bit of fun to be had there, that I missed out on, previously.

 

However, one of the most aggravating little "quirks" of the system is the "Which joystick port does THIS game use" question you must ask yourself when going through a bunch of games, trying them out. I've never seen this on any other system. Does anybody know why they did this? Furthermore, it doesn't seem to "bother" other C64 gamers.

 

Here's the procedure I'm tired of:

 

Fire up a game.

Start, grab joystick, but it's plugged into wrong port. "Die"

Try to restart game, find out you can't until "all your lives are gone." Waste time.

Switch joystick ports, repeat.

 

Change game, repeat above procedure, ad nauseum.

 

One solution: keep another joystick plugged in. This helps, but you still grab the wrong stick to start. Plus, there's always 2 joysticks falling off the desk and banging.

 

Oh yeah, I don't like that at all, but have learned to live with it.

I often thought about if it would be feasible to make a joystick "switchbox"...

 

It should work like this:

You have that little box, which has a little switch on top, two controller cables (labeled 1 and 2) come out of it, while it also has two joystick inputs, also labeled 1 and 2. If the switch is in his default position, joystick 1 will be directed through cable 1, and joystick 2 through cable 2. If you throw the switch, joystick 1 will be directed through cable 2 and vice versa instead.

 

It sounds really simple, and even the possibility of a strictly mechanical solution comes to mind, but I don't really know if that (mechanical approach) is advisable, especially because of the sensitivity of the C64... But I really don't have the knowledge to tell how you would make that a circuitry and if it's as trivial as it sounds.

 

If it works, this could even be used on other machines, like the Atari 2600 - even if it wouldn't be that much use as on the C64.

Edited January 15, 2010 by Herbarius

[Almost Rice]

I have that cable and the is some really good uses for it. My favorite is dual player control on cooperative games. I can play 7800 centipede coop mode for double barrelled fun. I do not feel moving cables is too much trouble. I have too many systems and it would be a cabling nightmare.

[Video]

I'm a bit of a new Commodore 64 gamer. A bit of fun to be had there, that I missed out on, previously.

 

However, one of the most aggravating little "quirks" of the system is the "Which joystick port does THIS game use" question you must ask yourself when going through a bunch of games, trying them out. I've never seen this on any other system. Does anybody know why they did this? Furthermore, it doesn't seem to "bother" other C64 gamers.

 

Here's the procedure I'm tired of:

 

Fire up a game.

Start, grab joystick, but it's plugged into wrong port. "Die"

Try to restart game, find out you can't until "all your lives are gone." Waste time.

Switch joystick ports, repeat.

 

Change game, repeat above procedure, ad nauseum.

 

One solution: keep another joystick plugged in. This helps, but you still grab the wrong stick to start. Plus, there's always 2 joysticks falling off the desk and banging.

 

Oh yeah, I don't like that at all, but have learned to live with it.

I often thought about if it would be feasible to make a joystick "switchbox"...

 

It should work like this:

You have that little box, which has a little switch on top, two controller cables (labeled 1 and 2) come out of it, while it also has two joystick inputs, also labeled 1 and 2. If the switch is in his default position, joystick 1 will be directed through cable 1, and joystick 2 through cable 2. If you throw the switch, joystick 1 will be directed through cable 2 and vice versa instead.

 

It sounds really simple, and even the possibility of a strictly mechanical solution comes to mind, but I don't really know if that (mechanical approach) is advisable, especially because of the sensitivity of the C64... But I really don't have the knowledge to tell how you would make that a circuitry and if it's as trivial as it sounds.

 

If it works, this could even be used on other machines, like the Atari 2600 - even if it wouldn't be that much use as on the C64.

 

That would be easy enough, allyou'd need to do is have the switch controll which 5vin is getting to feed the controller. It might be possible for 5vin on port one to work the outputs on port to (or vice versa) if that's the case, you may need switches for each out line.