C64 READY. CLI — the command line for your cassettes, cartridges and disks

You have a stack of C64 cassettes recorded as WAV files, or a folder of .tap, .d64, .d71, .d81, .g64, .nbz, .crt and .prg files, and you want to convert, inspect, repair and run them in batches, without dragging each 285 MB recording through a browser. c64rdy is the C64 READY. tape and disk engine with a terminal in front of it: the same decoder, the same repairs, the same listings, scriptable and with no dependencies at all.

npx c64rdy dir tape.tap          # what's on it, where, and what state it's in
npx c64rdy wav2tap "*.wav"       # a shelf of recordings into .tap files at once
npx c64rdy run game.d64          # boot it headless, save a screenshot

A damaged tape is a result, not a crash. One quoted wildcard works on any shell. Every conversion prints the directory it produced, so you always see what you got.

A whole tape, one picture

run --all --collage boots every program on a tape or disk and tiles them into one sheet, each captioned from the C64's own character ROM. Add --anim and every cell plays its own film. A real tape side, nineteen programs, one command:

npx c64rdy run side-a.tap --frames 2000 --roms roms --all --collage --anim --fps 25 --speed 2

Who it's for

The digitizer has a shoebox of cassettes and a sound card. wav2tap turns each recording into a .tap, mending the damage a worn tape leaves and saying where it couldn't; dir and loadtest tell you what survived. One quoted wildcard converts a whole shelf, and a damaged tape is a result, not a crash.

The player has a folder of downloaded games and wants to see one run. run boots a .prg, .tap, .d64, .d71, .d81, .g64, .crt or .t64 headless and saves a PNG of the screen, or with --all a PNG for every program on a side at once, so you can tell a working dump from a broken one without opening an emulator.

The archivist moves programs between the era's containers. tap2d64, t642d64, disk2prg and the prg2* family convert in every direction that is honest, each printing the directory it produced, so a tape becomes a disk becomes a .prg and back with the bytes accounted for at every step.

The tinkerer builds tapes and disks from parts. disk new/add assemble a .d64 from loose .prg files, prg2tap and prg2turbo write real (and fast) cassettes the machine's own SAVE produced, and tapcat joins sides: the mixtape, made from the terminal.

Install

Node 20.19 or newer, and nothing else. Run it without installing:

npx c64rdy dir tape.tap

Or keep it as a command:

npm install -g c64rdy
c64rdy --version

What it can do

| | | | --- | --- | | Recordings into tapes | wav2tap, dmp2tap, tapfix, tapcat | | Tapes into anything | tap2wav, tap2d64, tap2prg, tap2t64 | | .t64 archives | t642d64, t642prg, t642tap out; disk2t64 in | | D64/D71 into D81 | disk2d81 | | Nibbler dumps into disks | nbz2g64 | | Programs into containers | prg2d64, prg2crt, prg2tap, prg2turbo | | SID music into player or audio | sid2prg, sid2wav | | Questions about a file | dir, info, loadtest, loader | | Boot the machine | run (a PNG of the screen, or an animated one) | | A disk's interior | disk new, disk add, disk rm, disk extract |

c64rdy --help lists every command and flag.

Turn a SID tune into a runnable PRG with the same music player as the browser UI, or render it as 16-bit WAV audio (mono for one SID, stereo for two):

c64rdy sid2prg tune.sid --song 2 -o player.prg
c64rdy sid2wav tune.sid --seconds 180 --roms roms

Both accept multiple inputs, quoted wildcards and --out-dir. sid2wav defaults to three minutes at 44,100 Hz, with the SID model from the tune header (8580 when unspecified). It supports --sample-rate, --model 6581|8580 and --song. Two-SID files use their header address and chip models, with SID 1 on the left and SID 2 on the right. --model overrides both models. sid2prg reports the second address required by the exported program. Rendering is PAL, through the player's Safe view and the emulator's reSID engine. The CLI guide details the options and supported tunes.

The ROMs

Commands that boot a machine need the C64's KERNAL, BASIC and character ROMs: run, loadtest, tap2d64, tap2prg --via-machine, prg2tap, t642tap and loader, plus sid2wav. run on a .g64 also needs the 1541 ROM (1541.bin): a raw disk only boots through the emulated drive. sid2prg needs no ROMs. prg2turbo also needs them when using --loader, including the --drive mode. The ROMs are copyrighted and are not bundled. Tell it once where they are and it remembers:

c64rdy roms ~/c64/roms

Or put kernal.bin, basic.bin and chargen.bin in a roms/ folder where you run, or point --roms <dir> or $C64_ROMS at them. If VICE is installed, its ROMs are found without any of that. Conversions that work directly on the file formats, and inspections such as dir and info, need no ROMs.

The full C64 in your browser

c64rdy is the terminal side of C64 Ready, the complete Commodore 64 running in your browser at c64ready.com: the real machine with its screen and SID sound, a datasette and disk drive you can watch turn, and your library a drag away, with nothing to install. It is the same engine under this CLI, so a tape you mend or a disk you build here loads there, and a program you photograph with run is one you can sit down and play on the site.

More

The full user guide walks every command with real captured output, and the specifications credit the format references and source material the tool is built on.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. © Morten Øien Eriksen. This package bundles part of the C64 Ready emulator; the third-party materials it builds on (reSID and the rest) are credited in NOTICE.txt.

Release notes

0.9.4

• D64/D71 to D81. disk2d81 copies PRG, SEQ and USR files into a D81, preserving their bytes, names, types and lock flags.

• Shared disk commands. disk2prg and disk2t64 detect D64, D71, D81 and G64 input automatically, replacing the format-specific command names.

• D71 disks. List, run, create, edit and extract double-sided 1571 images.

• G64 disk images. dir, info and disk extract read .g64 files, disk2prg and disk2t64 pull files and archives out of one, and run boots one through the emulated 1541 (it needs the 1541 ROM). A .g64 is read-only: disk add and disk rm refuse it.

• Nibbler dumps. nbz2g64 turns a .nbz into a .g64, cut and aligned as nibtools' nibconv does it. info reads .nib and .nbz.

• D81 disk images. dir, info, run and the disk group take a 1581's .d81 (disk new formats one when the output name ends in .d81), and disk2prg and disk2t64 pull files and archives out of one.

0.9.3

• Stereo PSID v2 files with separate chip flags are recognized as two-SID tunes.

• Two-SID audio. sid2wav exports two-chip tunes as stereo WAV, using the address and models in the tune header. sid2prg includes a player that keeps both chips audible and reports the required second-chip configuration.

0.9.2

• SID tunes as programs and audio. sid2prg includes the browser UI's C64 music player in a runnable PRG. sid2wav records a selected song as 16-bit mono WAV, with duration, sample-rate and SID-model options.

• dir stops warning about tapes that are fine. A file that hands straight over to the game's own fast loader used to leave minutes of "carries a signal nothing here could read" under the listing, which reads as damage on a tape that has none. That line is now kept for signal no file on the tape accounts for.

• PROCASS tapes list their files. US Gold's own loader, the one under Out Run and Forgotten Worlds: dir now names every file on such a tape, and the converters explain its blocks as stages the game's own loader streams in.

• A refused overwrite no longer stops a batch. With --jobs, a .d64 already on disk used to crash the whole run with a stack trace. It is now that one tape's failure line: the other tapes still get their disks, and --force still writes over.

0.9.1

Credits travel with the package: NOTICE.txt ships in the tarball, and the README links the specifications and credits pages.

0.9.0 (first public release)

The full tape and disk toolchain from the terminal. wav2tap turns recordings into .tap files, mending what it can and saying where it couldn't; dir, info, loadtest and loader tell you what a file is and whether it loads. Conversion runs in every honest direction between .tap, .wav, .d64, .t64, .prg and .crt, and the disk group builds and edits a .d64 from loose programs. prg2tap and prg2turbo write real and fast cassettes with the machine's own SAVE, tapcat joins sides, and run boots anything headless, with --all --collage tiling a whole side into one sheet, animated if you like. c64rdy roms remembers your ROM folder once. No dependencies; Node 20.19+.