A Hobbyist's Guide to THEC64 Mini

Book excerpt: If you own a C64 and tinkered with it, you will definitely enjoy this book. I have collected a large collection of tips and tricks, hardware, useful software and many other interesting internet links for the Mini. Retro Games has answered my every question and covered every topic. As a result, a lot of official answers went into this book. The software solutions I present here will make it easier to use and extend the Mini with a variety of new games compared to the possibilities you have using the original menu. I mention some tools and tricks that make loading new games from an USB stick much easier and I will show you how you can use all your games from almost all Commodore file formats on the Mini. I found and interviewed dedicated users who took the Mini apart and analyzed the hardware. What gave birth from tinkering with the hardware is the information from which you now can benefit. For example, you can learn about the joystick and USB compatibilities, why delays can occur between a joystick action and the screen display and what you can do about it. Slightly more complex changes of the system are also possible e.g. you can change the music menu, which seems dull at first, but is technically somehow more difficult to implement than you might think. I do hope that you will find a lot of suggestions to revive or deepen your love for the C64 in this book and that you will have a lot of fun playing and experimenting with it.