| Posted By
pixiedward
on 2023-12-29
12:31:55
|  Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Hello, recently I finally managed to purchase 1551. I was hoping that I will be able to buy disk games, but noticed that Psytronik is no longer offering games, that they used to have in their store (they also don't answer for my messages sent by contact form and/or Messenger).
I'm looking for Pets Rescue, Alpharay, Majesty of Sprites 1/2, Adventures in Time.
If anyone is willing to sell them, please let me know.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-12-29
13:26:08
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
There's a difference between game and game I guess 
Just want to clarify that you're after the physical disks (and boxes), specifically as collectors items, not the games themselves, because you just want to play them? (In case it's the latter, you can download the games from our site and write them to any disk, or an SD card if you have an SD2IEC drive.)
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Posted By
pixiedward
on 2023-12-29
14:21:03
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Yes, I mean physical, original disks (and boxes if available). I remember they were available to purchase on (I'm not sure) binaryzone.org. Now the site redirects to a new Pystronik store, but Plus/4 games are no longer avaiable. I'm asking if maybe someone have them and would like to sell.
I know I can download files and write them to disks, however I would like to have original physical releases.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-12-29
15:05:58
 | Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Psytronik had to shrink its shop due to the lack of sufficient stocks of 5.25 disks: check their last releases and you'll see they're all on cartridge and USB keys. Other distributors like poly.play still resist.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-12-30
05:56:11
 | Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Although most of the floppy discs I saw on the video were 3.5", there are still sources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KspNLO9i9g
also, I need to mention here, that MM started to sell again brand new Maxell Compact Cassettes, in production again.
So there is still a slight hope that a well known brand will pick up this business again, and start to produce again DD Floppy discs (or we may need to swap to the 3.5" D81 DD format, because it seems those hard shell floppy discs are more easily available on ebay as NOS)
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Posted By
SukkoPera
on 2023-12-30
09:35:18
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Switching to 3.5" disks would be very good for a number of reasons:
- They are more reliable
- They store more data
- A 1581 drive can be self-built with almost all components that are still available nowadays
- 1581 has burst mode (though I doubt that can be used with a +4)
- 1581 floppies can be read/written on standard PC drives (not 100% sure)
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Posted By
Harry Potter
on 2023-12-30
09:57:12
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
I'm curious: How much would a 1581 drive cost? If I get one, I can create floppies of one-part C64 and Plus4 games and use my DirMenu program to run them. I might also run some single-disk games from them. I live in the U.S.
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Posted By
SukkoPera
on 2023-12-30
10:19:47
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
If you want to buy the original one, they are quite rare and so they usually for about 500€.
Building one from scratch is probably more like 100€ depending on whether you already have parts available, what enclosure you get, etc. The nice thing is that you can put a Gotek drive in it and get both advantages of using a real drive and disk images.
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Posted By
Harry Potter
on 2023-12-30
10:25:01
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
Thank you. So it's not worth it. 
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-12-30
18:36:05
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
With JiffyDOS the 1581 is a beast, fast and big.
No, burst mode does not work ok Plus/4, though theoretically it is possible to implement it on the same way as on C64, to involve the CIA (in our case ACIA) for the task, but it needs two wires and the complete rewrite of the C64 code.
https://commodore.software/downloads/download/8-programming-tutorials/1417-c64-burst-mode
I have Jiffy for my Plus/4, and planning to build the 1581 for myself with the help of project available on PCBWay too.
Only one thing annoys me a little, that the JiffyDOS switches off the screen on +4, makes the loading process for eg BASIC games a continuous blinking experience.
I know Jiffy can reach higher speed if the whole screen can be used for the handshake and fast transfer (and no badlines, etc), but I think it took the easy way.
I would be happy enough with a slower Jiffy speed but switched on screen during loading, like load only when the TED is on bottom or upper border area.
I know the speed could be only the 40% of the current, but would be still 7x faster, than an 1541 normal load, and 2x faster than an 1551 loading speed and the loading would not influence the customer experience so much.
Also I need to mention, that during the tests with the emulators I found the Jiffy on +4 to be a little unstable, but I will see how it will performs with the real HW.
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Posted By
Harry Potter
on 2023-12-30
19:07:39
| Re: Looking for Plus/4 games on floppy
To me, the Commodores at my mother's house are mainly just toys of nostalgia. I'd really like to do other things on them, though. I don't actually need a 1581 but am wondering if it would do any good for me.
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