(chiptune music)
- [Woman] Welcome.
- You're not American.
You're a German.
Oh, hello, Chip Dippers.
Welcome to Retro Recipes.
And first up in this THEC64-themed video,
some good news.
Yup, THEC64 is finally available to order
for not just Europeans,
but also us Americans.
Well, British-Americans.
Check out the link in the description.
That'll take you directly to the store
where you can preorder it right now.
Speaking of which,
in two recent videos,
I took you through how to make
a working 1541 Mini floppy drive
for THEC64.
And the result looked and worked great.
But it did kind of exclude users
who either didn't have a 3D printer or a Mac,
or didn't really want to install Linux
in a virtual box on their Windows PC.
'Cause, as we established,
THEC64 sees the floppy drive as a USB thumb drive,
essentially.
And whilst the Mac has no problems,
unfortunately, Windows itself, on its own,
can't format floppy drives as if they were thumb drives.
Makes sense.
So let's try to solve that
and show you how to build a 1541 Mini disk drive
using nothing but a cheap floppy drive,
and Inkjet printer,
and either Android or Windows.
No Linux or Mac required.
Well, unless it's raining.
- What?
- [Perifractic] A Mackintosh
to keep the rain off.
You don't say Mackintosh in America?
- We do referring to computers.
- [Perifractic] No, like a raincoat.
Like a poncho.
A Mackintosh.
- What are you talking about?
- [Perifractic] Mackintoshes.
- Computers.
- Wow.
Will she ever understand me?
Well, either way, let's open up our cheap Chinese drive.
Why do they always give you a ruler?
And we'll make up our own rules for this (glass shatters).
Well, we know what works with THEC64 floppies.
But it doesn't look very nostalgic.
So let's open up Photoshop
and try to design a decal or a skin
to wrap around that drive to give us that warm,
fuzzy, childhood nostalgia feeling
whenever we use THEC64.
Oh, but just before we do,
if you wanna get a warm fuzzy feeling from your PCBs,
I recommend PCBWayyyy.
'Cause as we all know,
PCB stands for Pretty Cool Boards.
Doesn't it?
(upbeat electronic music)
- [Woman] Welcome.
- [Perifractic] Now, Photoshop has this feature
called guides,
and it lets you create guidelines.
So let's create some to represent the flattened view
of what the decal will look like.
This, for example, will be the side of the disk drive,
and this will be the top.
You get the idea.
(upbeat electronic music continues)
I also want to get the color just right.
I've certainly got a lot of reference images,
so let's use the eyedropper tool
and try and create an accurate kind of average
of what the THEC64 color really is.
Hmm, it's proven a bit tricky.
But there is one way to be sure.
To be sure.
Terrible french accent, sorry.
(upbeat electronic music continues)
And here's the resulting scans.
Now we can just drag this into Photoshop,
and then go back to the eyedropper tool.
Get a really accurate version.
But as I am slightly colorblind,
Ladyfractic helped me out as well
on a break from her hobby:
sewing.
What is this you're wearing?
- This is my new kaftan.
It's like Cersei Lannister inspired
with the fur trim.
- [Perifractic] Oh, I like the fur trim.
- [Ladyfractic] Thank you.
- [Perifractic] Wait a minute.
- [Ladyfractic] Comes with a little face.
- [Perifractic] Who's this?
Well, if you wondered what Ladyfractic would look like
as a Jedi,
that was it.
And now let's use the Force and create our label.
(upbeat electronic music continues)
Now, I actually want to add some text to logo.
And Photoshop has this really cool match font features.
So let's try it out.
(upbeat electronic music continues)
Perfect.
Now, what about some of the other features
from the 1541,
like that logo and the vents at the back?
So let's get back to our original model in Fusion 360.
And I'm literally gonna steal this logo from here,
just using a screenshot.
And then we can go back to Photoshop
and paste it in over our detail.
(Perifractic sighs)
This is getting really frustrating.
I think I need to vent (comedy drum fill).
(cymbals crash)
- Welcome. - All right, all joking aside,
this is looking really good.
So let's print it out.
I found this vinyl sticker paper.
This should work great.
(squeaking)
(printer whirring)
Okay, yeah, I did end up doing quite a few prints
to get the color just right.
I think it's a pretty good match now.
And when you come to print yours using the instructions
in the description,
you'll see this very faint guideline.
This tells you exactly where to cut things off
the front and the back of the decal
for the perfect fit.
(glass squeaks)
(upbeat electronic music)
Now, one little snag is we've got this weird corner here.
So what you're gonna do is just line up the scissors
with that angle.
Snip, snip.
And then when you come to fold over the back piece,
it should tuck nicely over the front piece,
and give it a really nice shape.
(upbeat electronic music continues)
And I'm just gonna tidy up my final design,
so that when you wrap that over it doesn't look
a little bit wonky.
(uplifting electronic music)
And then just chop out some little pieces
for the feet to poke through.
It doesn't really matter what it looks like.
You're never gonna see its backside again,
thankfully.
And then smooth everything down.
Ready for the big reveal.
(uplifting electronic music continues)
(disk clicks)
(intense chiptune music)
You feeling hot and tired?
Better.
Well, let's move to the laptop right here,
and see if we can work out a way to format that floppy drive
in Windows without any need for a Linux virtual box.
And in a moment, we'll also try it on an Android phone.
(bright electronic music)
(dog sniffs)
(dog whimpers)
And the six simple steps that we're gonna follow
to get this working in Windows,
you can find on my website right there.
So just follow along on YouTube
and get floppy with it,
kind of like her.
You flopped, haven't you?
Anyway, the first thing we're gonna do
is just download a few files.
First thing is HxCFloppyEmulator.
Download that.
Also you'll need my pre-prepared blank disk image
that we're gonna write everything onto.
And, finally, RawWrite,
which is the new way we're gonna write the disk
within Windows.
All right, love?
No, bugger off!
Oh.
And you can't also grab your choice of games.
For me, I'm gonna choose Little Computer People,
in honor of that recent video I did about it.
So to get started,
we're gonna load up HxCFloppyEmulator.
And if you think that sounds familiar,
you're right.
You've probably seen it running on my GoTek drive
on my Amiga 500.
It's the preferred firmware for that.
And it explains why it's able to read 3.5-inch disks
for the Commodore 64 on Windows.
So all we do is drag the blank disk image
that I provided onto HxC.
And you can see it right there.
84 tracks, two sides.
So next we click disk browser,
and go and find those games that you downloaded
that you want on the C64.
Now, a little tip here I mentioned previously,
if we rename just one file as this,
THEC64 will automatically mount that game
as soon as we insert the disk.
So drag that onto the disk browser,
then just click save.
And change the save as type to IMG or image file.
And hit save.
And then the final quick step,
is you open up RawWrite.
Click on the three dots there.
Select the image file we just saved.
Ignore this rude message at the top.
Don't know what that's for.
And click write.
Right?
Right.
(children cheer)
(bright electronic music)
Always the third way around
when you're trying to unplug a USB.
(bright electronic music continues)
And there it is, the House-on-a-Disk.
We have to enter the time: 4:34 am.
Been up late editing today.
And there's our little guy,
loaded up from floppy disk.
(character mumbling)
God, needs a lot of attention, doesn't he (door rings)?
All right, let's get him some dog food delivered,
well get the dog some dog food delivered.
(character mumbling)
Fine, I'll give you a petting.
Oh, looks like he's coming out of the closet.
Let's see how obedient he is.
("Fur Elise" by Beethoven)
Now, what if even that's too complex?
Or we just wanna show off
and get really clever with our floppies?
Well, if you have an Android phone,
and because Android and the Mac are both closely related
to Linux,
as the Mac can format disks for THEC64
in the correct format,
in theory, the Android phone should be able format them too,
and allow you to copy games to the floppy disk
all through the Android interface.
Not really an Android phone.
But we can do it on a ZX Spectrum.
So let's go to the real Android phone.
I'll show you what we're gonna try.
(mellow electronic music)
So, personally, I'm using a Galaxy S10
and one of these little dongles
that will convert the USB from the disk drive to USB-C.
And as soon as we stick that in,
the drive starts whirring,
which is good news.
(floppy drive whirs)
So just go to settings menu.
And find the storage option.
For me I have to go in Advanced.
And there it is.
As expected, it thinks it's a USB thumb drive.
Now, one caveat...
I said caveat.
(laughs)
Is you will at some point need to format the floppy disk
in Windows first.
If it's not already formatted in Windows,
for some reason the Android phone crashes.
Don't ask me why.
And with that done,
it's over to the Droid, then everything else.
(robot beeps)
How'd you do that?
So then we just hit format
and hope that it formats in the correct format.
(floppy drive whirs)
(bright electronic music)
And the fun thing about this
is you can download the games in Android as well.
So let's try an old favorite of mine: Parallax.
Once it's downloaded,
just go to our downloads folder,
click move,
and then we're gonna select the USB storage
for where to move it to.
(bright electronic music continues)
Now, before we wrap up and test our wrapped up drive
in Parallax,
there's a really weird coinkydink.
See, as I was setting up to play Parallax,
Spotify decided that I should listen
to a new suggested song
called "Parallel Lines."
Hmm, Commodore 64s may not be able to run Crysis,
but at least they don't spy on us.
Well either way
Let's spy on THEC64,
loading the disk created completely in Android.
And there it is,
along with some Android system folders,
Parallel Lines, I mean, Parallax.
(THEC64 whirs)
(keys clack)
(8-bit music)
(video game chimes)
So Parallax, of course,
means that there are two planes of background scrolling
at different speeds.
Gives the impression of you being high up in the air.
This was such an achievement at the time.
So smooth.
Of course, now, we see games rendered for the Commodore 64
that do this in their sleep,
but this, in 1984,
was something of a,
you know, a meme feat.
Of course, you could land.
Not there (laughs).
Ah, space.
(8-bit music)
Oh, I'm on foot.
Don't remember this.
(8-bit music continues)
(keys clack)
Well, there it is,
a 1541 micro drive that anyone can use.
Well, almost anyone.
No opposable thumbs, you see.
Well, I'll be back soon.
So, as always, thanks for watching.
Subscribe and join below.
(robot beeps)
Oh, apparently the Commodore 64 can run Crysis.
Well, kind of.
Here it is.
Cheerio.
(keys clack)
(8-bit Crysis music)