Hey All,
Anyone know of sites that have projects for the User port on the 64? Was thinking about tinkering there next...


TIA.

there's a few 'electronics projects' books in the Hardware section here:

http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm

In Compute's First Book of Commodore 64 there is a project to control leds on a board through the user port. I was going to play around with it. It would make a good first project. I could scan those pages fyi.
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I'm thinking about doing something similar.

What was the coolest "thing" to do back in the day?

I've been playing with Arduino Micro controller a little, One project had a small relay to control a higher DC voltage, I didn't want to use relays like the Vic-Rel board so I was told to try MOSFETS, I hooked one up with a 12 volt DC motor, Since the motor had a high amp draw on the 12 volt side, I needed a Heat sink on it of course. BUT, I was able to use a small voltage to control the larger voltage. I figured I could apply this to the Commodore User port as well.

Actually, it was seeing all the cool things people attached to their home computer that got me into computing and electronics as a profession.

Years later and after owning several 8 bits, all the projects seem a bit "samey". All seem to have the speech synth, relays and motors etc.

My first project was building my own rs232 interface using max232 chips. (It takes 2 for all the lines). I followed that up by interfacing a wiport embeded wireless adapter. (It takes 3.3v i/o instead of 5volts, I used inverters as voltage shifters.)


Later,
dabone

this project of mine uses userport to control a stepper motor (for friction to simulate slopes), measure wheel speed and read buttons of my indoor bicycle:

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=35543

pictures included in zip file.

more pics at

http://0xaa.org/2006/gallery/







ready.[/img]

Try to find a VIC-REL cartridge or equivalent clone. Gives you easy access to relays and inputs on the user port. I used one in my C-64 Controlled Remote Control Truck project.

@ready: Yep, thats cool, not my thing but very cool.

re Vic-rel, I have been trying to find details of the relay board I built a few years ago, it wasn't specifically for the C64 but it can connect directly to the user port.

Will see if I can dig some details out.

Why not work up an I2C interface board? There are dozens of great I2C chips that would be very useful if we had a way of connecting them. There's a nice little $10 I2C floating point math chip I would LOVE to plug into my C128!
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@Smitty: not like a game in the way that you have to score points. The faster the wheel spins the faster the scrolling is and the break resistance is set accoring to the slope, which is calculated randomly (or kind of: based on SID output, wheel speed, time,....). The program can also play SID tunes and load them using Dreamload by The Dreams, so you can load tunes while the programs still controls the bike.

Then you can manually offset the breaking action using the buttons on the bike. There are also other buttons: one for tune selection and one for tune loading.

The d64 at:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=35543
is a pathced version to be used without the user port interface, just to give an example of what the user port version is.

But maybe next version could be so that you follow a cyclist on the screen, maybe the cyclist could be the best score set in the past. I haven't worked on the project since spring 2006.

I have controlled a Servo Motor from the User Port, built my own vic-rel and have been working on robot arm.

here is an example of what you can do with the Vic-Rel (Leif's site).

I found an issue of the TPUG Newsletter that has some info on using the Joystick port or the user port.

http://www.tpug.ca/archive/nl/FallWinter2004.pdf

It's on pages 4 and 5.

In 2008 I used my Vic-20 to control a scene for a haunted house! Here are a video of one of the tests and the final scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuDu_GNIi3M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GczmRnQ0uZM

I typed out the timings for each of the eight control lines in Wordpad on my PC, and used Chipmunk Basic to combine them and output a finished Commodore program. I transferred this to a floppy and loaded it up on my Vic. All the props were connected to the Vic through a Kit-74 (similar to a Vic-Rel) plugged into the user port. Using the book Electronic Computer Projects from AtariArchives.org I made a light sensor connected to the joystick port- with thirty feet of cord!

When trick-or-treaters came down the hall, they tripped the light sensor and the Vic would start a CD player and puppet the four heads in synch with the music, and made the bride remove her head and put it back on. It was a challenging project, and lots of fun to know my little old Vic was running the show!

(The idea was that the headless bride, like Princess Mombi of Oz, can remove her head and choose another. The song "I Feel Pretty" was sort of a joke, with the bride gazing into the mirror while trying on different heads. The clicking sounds in the video really weren't very noticeable in person.)
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I have two Commodore 64 relay boards.
One is running a mill-drill like a cnc machine.
The other one has never been pluged in a machine.
I would like to sell the two boards with the computer and two 1541's.
The relay boards are both input and output boards.

I was going to build a sound sampler using the user port. Then I thought about the fact that the user port is bi-directional, so if the A/D circuit I want to interface to the user port writes a zero (0) to a certain bit and the corresponding bit in the user port is set to output instead of input, writing a one (1), the user port 6526 will most likely die. The 6526 will put 5V at its output line and the ADC will be a current sink to ground.

Is there really this danger if setting the wrong bits into CIA?