The Benefit of Upgrading the Super Snapshot V5 to 32kB RAM
January 4, 2022 Reading time: 8 minutes
After upgrading the RAM of my Super Snapshot V5 from 8kB RAM to 32kB, I was hoping for considerably better performance when copying disks with the built-in Disk Copier program. I was quite disappointed when I found out that copying a regular 35-track disk with a single disk drive only improved from requiring 4 read/write cycles (7 disk swaps) to 3 read/write cycles (5 disk swaps).
I did not put any further energy into looking more closely at how the memory of the C64 and Super Snapshot V5 is used when copying disks until I noticed that VICE is able to emulate the Super Snapshot V5 with both 8kB and 32kB cartridge RAM.
German Operating Manual of the Super Snapshot V5
January 3, 2022 Reading time: 2 minutes
The Super Snapshot has never been hugely popular in Germany, as far as I know. I ordered my cartridge from a company called GSK Import en Export from the Netherlands in 1990. GSK could have taken the easy route and just shipped the cartridges with an English manual, but they translated the text into German for what was probably a rather limited market. Kudos to GSK!
After more than 30 years I finally got around to scanning the manual and provide it for download as a PDF file.
Unfortunately the cover of the manual was lost at some point in the past 30 years, but I think it was identical with the cover of the English version anyway.
Viewing the output of a C64 on a laptop via an STK1160 based video grabber
January 22, 2020 Reading time: 2 minutes
I bought a cheap (< €15) USB 2.0 video grabber which is based on the SyntekSTK1160 chipset. My goal was to display the output of my Commodore 64 on the screen of my laptop. The cable which connects the C64 with the video grabber allows me to use an s-video signal.
Changing the RAM chip of the Super Snapshot V5
September 4, 2019 Reading time: 2 minutes
The manual of the Super Snapshot V5 mentions that the 8kB RAM chip of the cartridge can be upgraded to 32kB. Back in the days™ it was possible to send the cartridge to LMS Technologies. Nowadays this is not an option anymore and I was happy to find an article by Chris Kobayashi which describes the required steps. Since the article does not contain any illustrations, I decided to share some photos I took when I changed the RAM of my Super Snapshot V5.
Re-soldering the reset button of the Super Snapshot V5
April 23, 2018 Reading time: 2 minutes
In an act of clumsiness I pulled off the cables connecting the reset button of my Super Snapshot V5 and the PCB. I asked Twitter and Mastodon for help, but to no avail. The search engine of my choice also did not come up with any helpful link. Luckily information about the Commodore 64 is all over the web. Read more