WarpCopy64 on Macs

Graham’s WarpCopy64 is *the* tool if you want to copy some of your real c64 disks directly via ethernet to your host. The initial release was windows only, but j0x did a really nice job of porting the host code as a command line tool to linux.

So I thought, why not run this little gem on my MBP (as it is a well-behaved un*x-system, too)…

To sum it up: it works like a charm and is IMHO the best solution for efficient disk transfer currently available! (My second best solution is an MMC64, but there I have to carry the MMC card from one machine to the other…)

Here is my recipe:

Mac Software

  • download mwc-0.2alpha and unzip
  • a simple “make” compiles the sources cleanly on Mac OS X.
  • also download and compile Graham’s codenet to have the codenet tool on your mac. this also compiles without problems.
  • download the binary archive of the original windows version of WarpCopy64 as it contains the C64 sever program, called WARPCOPY06.PRG

Hardware Setup

  • Setup your C64, 1541 as usual, insert a disk to grab, attach your Retro Replay with RRNet.
  • First I plugged the RRNet directly into my home network hub, but there is too much traffic for poor little c64, so I replaced the connection with a cross-cable directly hooked up to my MBP.
  • Power on your retro stuff, make sure to have The Final Replay ROM in your RR activated!
  • Enter the codenet server on your C64, by pressing F6.

Copy on!

  • Now you can control everything directly from your mac
  • Transfer and run the WARPCOPY06.PRG server:

    codenet -n <c64-ip> -x WARPCOPY06.PRG
  • The C64 receives the server and launches it. A black screen shows you a startup message. If not then probably your network or IP setup is not correct. You have to use the C64-IP you burned into TFR ROM… 192.168.0.64 is the default. Make sure your Mac has the host address burned into TFR, e.g. 192.168.0.1!
  • Actually, the warp server allows you to change the C64 IP address by pressing the N key. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on my setup. But simply replacing the IP in the PRG with a hex editor did the job 😉
  • Now its time to copy a disk. Simply launch mwc, give it the C64 IP and a disk image name to write…

    mwc -i <c64-ip> <image>.d64
  • If all went well, the 1541 comes to live, reads in the disk and the C64 transfers it completely in less than a minute…
  • Have a look at mwc docs, there is a batch mode in mwc that greatly simplifies the copy of a large number of discs.

I hope you enjoy this method, as much as I do….

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