exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

OK, on the Kung-Fu Flash. It turns out the SD card wasn't empty, it just had a dodgy SD->MicroSD adapter. Still the stuff which PhilC pointed me to was far better as the original stuff was not only for the KFF but also the SD2IEC, a VIC=20 cartridge, a ZX Spectrum and BBC one as well!

Anyway, it's nice, neat cartridge with an injection moulded case:


On power up it takes you straight into the file menu.


It works well, though annoyingly it doesn't sort the names into alphabetical order and shows them in the FAT directory order.

The first thing I did was find the diagnostic cartridges as I wanted to test the machine before going any further and ...


It passes with flying colours. I'm pretty sure that I've used the machine more now than the original owner given how clean it is/was.

Finding and loading cartridges is quick and simple. Similarly D64 images and PRG files, though I have had a few of each not start properly.


One annoyance is not being able to bypass the cartridge on boot and go into BASIC. Still, you can drop into BASIC afterwards using a menu item.

I can see this being a useful cartridge with the EPYX speed loader cartridge image installed in addition to a floppy emulator of some kind though.

On the whole a nice product and worth the ~£36 + postage (lucky dip colour, -£4, no USB, -£10), total ~£42.

Oh, and I'm very impressed with the SID chip. The music from Wizzball is very good and a proper synth sound. Unlike most people it seems I don't like a lot of the high cadence chip-tunes in the games, the AY chip can do most of that stuff. What the AY can't do are analogue synth bending and frequency effects.

*Note: All images on screen are from the RF output on the C64, which is surprisingly good. The SCART cable should arrive tomorrow.

@stephen_usher I know what you mean about the SID chip!

My main memory of the C64 (I and a couple of my friends had a Beeb while many had a C64) are of a nice rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade playing as the background to a game...but I've no idea which game! :oops:

I'm sure someone out there will be able to fill in that detail!

Then all I'll need is a pointer to a decent C64 emulator that mimics the sound accurately (if there is such a thing)!

That KFF looks really good, definitely on my shopping list!

JezC wrote: 08 Mar 2022 21:20 Then all I'll need is a pointer to a decent C64 emulator that mimics the sound accurately (if there is such a thing)!

Extremely difficult as the SID chip is mostly analogue. It's a true analogue synth with analogue filters etc., merely digitally controlled.

stephen_usher wrote: 08 Mar 2022 21:26 Extremely difficult as the SID chip is mostly analogue. It's a true analogue synth with analogue filters etc., merely digitally controlled.

Yes, not surprised there's no accurate simulation of it - shame!

If someone chimes in with what the game was, I'll have to look out for some videos on YouTube...

You'd not be able to do this on any other sound chip...

I never realised the KFF also works with d64's - presumably it only works for those that have a single .pgm file in them though - otherwise it would be emulating a 1541...

I've got one and mostly use the 1541UII+ because the that, but both direct load pgm's into ram and bypass loader routines so are faaast, so if KFF can do that from within a d64 that's pretty cool.

Yeah d64 support only works if programs access the drive via OS calls as it remaps them. If stuff goes to the hardware or requires the 1541 to run programs then it doesn't work. Similarly, there's no way to swap disks.

It loads *.prg files directly into memory.

It looks like no C64 SCART cable today.

I had it sent to work but Royal Mail has failed to deliver any post this week there.

Well, seeing as you are waiting for the SCART cable, can I take the liberty to show you some of the bleeding edge of C64 Demos for you to check out?

(It's a shame you don't have an old CRT TV, as there was a demo which didn't use the SID chip at all, but played a classical score using just chroma noise from the colours displayed on the screen, with the volume turned up).

Anyway, some more stuff to look at:

HAM quality picture on the C64 anyone?:


(picture is at 4:58)

Realtime Time stretch/pitch change/vocoder/etc effects on a playing sample?:



If you want to take the SID up a notch, Soundemon/HCM produced a great sample/wave player which although a closely guarded thing, is slowly filtering out to certain people.

Try stuff by e.g. Lman (Confusion here). This is pretty much where its at regarding the SID these days:



Theres even a full song being played back at 48Khz (albeit 8 bit, but still very good), but you need an Ocean cart device (1Mb) to play it:



(Don't know if you may have or would want to get a compatible one?)

My favourite has to be anything by Algorithm/Algotech. Although not as visually/sonically striking, what he is trying to do with compression amazes me more that most of the rest of the stuff.

Anyhow, hope you find some of the above intriguing. There's so much to see. This is just a taster. :D

EDIT: Although because of the high use of the Krill loader on demos, your mileage may vary on anything other than a real 1541. :(