^{Menu: Reset → Soft Reset [ESC]}

Animation: Emu64 Soft Reset

Nearly everybody had a reset button of some kind, may it be with a module or selfbuilt. This had the advantage that the C64 didn't have to be turned off and the RAM Memory was also kept. This was (and is) very interesting for coders.

For most programs that don't have an exit option a soft reset is good enough and and you can load a new program. When performing the soft reset you can see that the side frames go a bit to the inside, the cursor stops flashing and both status LEDs of the disc drive light up. This is because the IEC-BUS to the Floppy is resetted too and the disc drive reacts with the lightening up and a small click sound. The soft reset looks different depending on the program used. After a sucessful reset the C64 start screen is shown again.

There are some reasons a soft reset can fail. Mostly games are coded in a way that prevent a soft reset. In this case you can perform a hard reset.

Besides clicking on the menu item you can press the key ESC to perform a soft reset.