27 Nov
2007
27 Nov
'07
5:51 p.m.
Hi,
....plethora of expansion options for the 64,
overburdened
the struggling supply.
To be fair, it's entirely possible the PS was fine and would live a
reasonable life attached to a bone stock 64....
Quite, I never had the slightest problem with my PSU (of the black brick
type), but then my C64 was 100% stock.
OTOH At the company I worked for at the time, the beige "wedge shaped" PSUs
were dropping like flies - we found them to be HORRENDOUSLY unreliable, and
those were stock unmodified C64s too!
....It looks like the Atari variants had true joystick
IO ports....
The 400 and 800 used a PIA (6520/6820) with 4 bits of each port going to
each joystick port. The paddle inputs (analogue in) and triggers were
handled by POKEY.
The later XL and XE machines dispensed with joystick ports 3 & 4 and used
port B of the PIA to map the OS and BASIC ROMs in and out of memory and
control paged RAM.
....Google says Atari created such a trainer for their
400/800 units,
so the idea held some merit.
Must admit I've never heard of that one, but the ports could certainly be
used for generalised I/O.
I designed and built my first EPROM burner to attach to my 400 via its 4
joystick ports (it needed all 4), so it's certainly possible.
TTFN - Pete.