My first computer was a C128 aka Commodore 128 w/ a commodore 1571 disk drive, a two button mouse, a color dot matrix brother printer, a commodore 1084 Color Monitor, a 1750 512Kb Ram Expansion Unit, GEOS 128 v2.0, a couple of joysticks and a library of C64 games and C128 games and applications; This set up satisfied my computing needs and gaming needs. I had the VDC chip upgraded to 64Kb of video ram and also had the rom upgraded back in the day. I had this great c128 painting program that had such great graphics that rivaled the Amiga, Mac and VGA PC. I had some great 80 column c128 games that made great use of the VDC 80 column chip such as tetris or maid stone quest. Unfortunately, I no longer own a Commodore 128. So i had to turn to an emulator; enter VICE.
What is VICE?
VICE is a program that runs on a Unix, MS-DOS, Win32, OS/2, Acorn RISC OS, BeOS, QNX 4.x, QNX 6.x, Amiga, GP2X, Dingoo, Syllable, SkyOS or Mac OS X machine and executes programs intended for the old 8-bit computers. The current version emulates the C64, the C64DTV, the C128, the VIC20, almost all PET models, the PLUS4 and the CBM-II (aka C610).VICE is freeware and open source and is the answer to my needs.
I recommend the GTK+ port of vice or the x11 port and not the cocoa version for Mac OS X because the GTK + version and the x11 version is more complete than the cocoa version.
Can't wait to use GEOS 128 again! GEOS 128 was as every bit as good as the Mac but way cheaper in price back in the day! And there is a lot of abandonware/freeware/public domain software for the native c128 mode for c128 computers!
More information and downloads are on the website:
http://viceteam.org/
