Also see Wikipedia article.

Specifications

• Housed in a joystick.
• Two fire buttons.
• 4 general buttons (A/B/C/D)
• Reset button.
• DTV2 or DTV3 core
  • the DTV2’s Blitter has problem with transparent blits (writes occur when srcA is fetched regardless of transparency setting) which is fixed in DTV3
• 2 MiB RAM (ISSI IS42S16100C1-7T)
• 2 MiB FlashROM (Atmel AT47BV161T, SST39VF1681, or very rarely Atmel AT49BV163A)
• Video output with programmable color carrier and PAL/NTSC timing. (Only retailed as PAL)
  • All DTV2/3s are shipped with a minor fault in the video circuit leading to relatively bad colors. This can be fixed. See DTV Mods.
• 6502 emulation supporting many undocumented opcodes.
• 6502 skip internal cycle and burst mode selectable.

External Ports

• Composite video
• Audio

Internal Ports

These are only available by soldering - see DTV Mods.

• Keyboard port (emulates the C64 keyboard matrix)
• IEC port for connection of peripherals.
• User port
• S-Video
• Cassette port sense line
• Joystick port 1 & 2 (all 5 connections)

Games

AlleyKat, California Games, Championship Wrestling, Cybernoid, Cybernoid II, Cyberdyne Warrior, Eliminator, Exolon, Firelord, Gateway to Apshai, Head The Ball, Impossible Mission, Impossible Mission 2, Jumpman Jr., Marauder, Maze Mania, Mission Impossibubble, Nebulus, Netherworld, Paradroid, Pitstop, Pitstop II, Ranarama, Speedball, Summer Games, Super Cycle, Sword of Fargoal, Uridium, Winter Games, Zynaps

Revisions

The batch number is “hotstamped” into the plastic on the bottom of the joystick just beside the battery compartment, as shown below. It is not identical to the batch number stamped onto the retail packaging. The assumed interpretation is YYMMDD.

Note that there seem to be both DTV2s and DTV3s in batch 050927, 051005 and 051008 at least so batch number is not absolutely reliable for determining the DTV version. You have to run DTVDetect or Blitterscroll by tlr to determine DTV version reliably. Bordeaux reports that his 051005 DTVs came in a white box, so buying according to box color alone does not guarantee a V3 DTV.

The AT47BV161T (data sheet) was never released to the public. It is pin compatible to the AT49BV161T and AT49BV163AT (data sheet) but lacks some of its features and is guaranteed to last 100 flash erase cycles only. See this thread for details. This thread describes programming details from the software perspective.

For DTVs using the SST39VF1681 chip a hardware modification is needed for reflashing the device (add a 47pF capacitor between CS and GND or Vcc). Also, recent flash software (June 2007 or newer) is needed.

See Flash the DTV Rom for details on the flashing procedure.

FAQ

How to attach a keyboard/joysticks/floppy/…?

See DTV Mods.

How can I put new games on the DTV?

See Flash the DTV Rom#Flash new programs.

Can I use JiffyDOS with the DTV?

Yes. Use this version that is patched specifically for the DTV and fixes some IEC timing bugs. Just run the program you get from that page on the C64DTV. It will put the Jiffy kernal to RAM $1EE000 and use the DTV memory mapper to ‘install’ the new kernal (temporarily).

If you want to use the Jiffy kernal by default, use DTVSlimIntro and put the Jiffy kernal as AUTOSTART into flash.

How can I reflash the DTV to boot to BASIC/Jiffy/… instead of showing the menu?

Simply use the AUTOSTART feature of DTVSlimIntro.

Quality of video output is bad. What can I do?

The DTV’s video timing is not completely PAL compliant. In general, CRTs work much better with the DTV’s signal than flat screens. If the picture does not synchronize properly, try using DTVSlimIntro’s D04E changing feature (or POKE manually). The hardware colorfix and S-Video output (see DTV Mods) might also help a bit. However, picture quality is mostly determined by the screen’s input circuit.

Some people have modded the DTV to NTSC output. This requires replacing the timing crystal with a hard-to-get NTSC variant and reflashing the kernal. The NTSC output has far fewer issues. However, this is not recommended as PAL programs might not run properly on an NTSC C64(DTV).

How compatible is the DTV with the C64?

The DTV has a few but crucial emulation issues. Many games (say, 10 to 30%) do not work properly. Old games are just as susceptible not to work as are newer ones: For example, Bruce Lee does not work without patches at all (but was easy to fix) while Mayhem in Monsterland ‘just’ has graphical glitches (that were very hard to fix). See also DTV Patched Games.

Is a DTV3 much better than a DTV2?

No. The only difference is the fixed blitter bug and a better flash chip. The blitter bug only affects a few DTV specific demos. So far, the inferior flash chip of the DTV2 has not failed anywhere.

Some games from Spiff’s Repository fail to run properly. Why is that?

1. There are several fixed games in Spiff’s repository that are large files (i.e., files that are longer than 202 blocks/51k/extend above $CFFF). These files are intended to be flashed and then loaded from flash. LOAD“…”,1 always loads file data to RAM whereas LOAD“…”,8 writes to the memory visible to the CPU. For the CPU, at $D000 starts the I/O area
   • writing random values there makes the C64(DTV) crash.

Solution:

• Flash the game
• OR use a big file compliant LOAD
  • DTV Speed Load - needs a normal floppy drive, you may run into problems with the 160k disk limit here
  • The TRSI kernal speed load is also supposed to load big files properly
  • Advanced: A patched kernal, possibly softkernal, including the big file patch from SVN
• OR use DTVTrans to transfer the file directly from a PC to the DTV’s RAM
• In VICE/x64dtv, you can load big files from the monitor: bank ram, l “file” 0, x

1. There also some fixed games that come in multiple files and load game data from flash. You have to put these in flash.

External Links

Note: these two links should be moved–each refers to Hummer as well as C64DTV, and the programming document (which covers all DTV versions) was already posted at DTV Specific Programming, under DTV Programming.

• DTV2 Schematic:
• DTV2 Programming: