One of my favourite C64 demo groups ‘Genesis Project‘ recently released an oldskool demo, which came first place for Function 2016 Event. Unusually not for the Commodore 64, but instead for a lesser known platform the Enterprise computer.
The Enterprise is a Zilog Z80-based home computer first produced in 1985. It was developed by British company Intelligent Software and marketed by Enterprise Computers. Its two variants are the Enterprise 64, with 64 kilobytes (kB) of Random Access Memory (RAM), and the Enterprise 128, with 128 kB of RAM.
There are two well known emulators for the Enterprise named, EP32 and Ep128EMu.
I was having a lot of trouble working out how to load the file type which is a .com file, which I am not familiar with. So I decided to turn to our Facebook Group for help, myself and Allan Pinkerton had a long conversation about the emulators, trying to figure it all out.
Allan was very helpful, but between us, we could still not figure out why this demo wouldn’t run. The problem is these two emulators are not so easy to use as say WinVice, where you just choose ‘File’, ‘Autostart disk/tape image’, load the file and the game/demo just runs.
Hmm.. so what to do next? Obvious thing to do? Ask Genesis Project themselves, duh.. Should’ve thought of that earlier! <facepalm> So off to the Genesis Project Facebook page I go and posted my dilemma, within minutes Hedning (a great guy btw) got hold of the original coder, Andreas Gustafsson (aka Shadow of G*P), who was very helpful and pointed us in the right direction, and the demo loaded first time :)
I thought I would share this little story and the demo with you guys, ’cause I know how much you all love scene demo’s right? Well your in for a treat, check out the video below and marvel at the awesomeness! Also if you want to try these emulators out yourselves, I have included the download links, have fun! :)
In EP128EMu choose File/configuration/Load from ASCII file and then load the one called “EP_128k_Tape_FileIO.cfg”. Then under Options/Set working directory, just choose the dir where you have the .com file. Finally from the Enterprise prompt type: LOAD”FIRSTCONTACT.COM”
Download: EP32
Download: Ep128EMu
Download: First Contact by Genesis Project
Genesis Project: Facebook, CSDb
Pouet: http://www.pouet.net
Vintage is the New Old: Facebook Group