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Commodore 64 The Final Enhancement

December 16th, 2010 5 comments

Finally i had time to finish the enhancements of my Commodore 64, below a brief description of what you see in the photos.

Enhancements description:

  • 1541-III bulk version.
  • Reset Switch.
  • Multi Kernel with Atmel flash rom.
  • Multi Kernel Switch.
  • Eprom homebrew PLA.
  • Cartridge ON/OFF Switch.
  • DualSID with separate output (6581 / 8580)
  • 2 x Fan Cooling.
  • Fan Cooling Switch.
  • Bright Blu Power LED.
  • 1541 Ultimate REV1 with v2.0 Firmware.

Commodore 64 (WG 149763) & (UK B1611244)

December 8th, 2010 No comments
Commodore 64 (WG 149763) & (UK B1611244)

Autopsy:

Today i picked up two Commodore 64, both are in poor condition and Broken.

The first one with the chip SID 6581 can play a garbled sound and the closing hooks broken, the other one with the chip PLA 906114, 7406, CIA 6526 dead. I made some cleaning and repaired the problems.

Philips MSX VG-8020 + Tape Recorder NMS 1515/00

December 7th, 2010 No comments
Philips MSX VG-8020

Autopsy:

MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation. It is said that Microsoft led the project as an attempt to create unified standards among hardware makers.

from Wikipedia:

On 27 June 1983, the date considered the birthday of the MSX standard, the MSX was formally announced during a press-conference, and a slew of big Japanese firms declared their plans to introduce machines. The Japanese companies avoided the intensely competitive US home computer market, which was in the throes of a Commodore-led price war.

Only Spectravideo and Yamaha briefly marketed MSX machines in the US. Spectravideo’s MSX enjoyed very little success, and Yamaha’s CX5M model, built to interface with various types of MIDI equipment, was billed more as a digital music tool than a standard personal computer.

source: wikipedia

Amiga Crusaders Eurochart issue #13 and #14

December 4th, 2010 No comments

With great pleasure I found two photo of xad (me) and The Ripper on the Amiga magazine: Eurochart by Crusaders.

  • The Ripper of Nightfall on Crusaders Eurochart #13
  • Xad of Nightfall on Crusaders Eurochart #14

DualSID by Tomi Malinen Assembling and Testing

November 28th, 2010 3 comments

DualSID Assembling and Testing

DualSID KIT by Tomi Malinen:

DualSID is a device which allows you to plug in two different SID models to your Commodore 64.

You can set the second SID‘s address to five different memory locations. For more information and price visit the Tomi Malinen homepage

Download: DualSID V3 PCB Scan (476)

Atari Lynx II with Carry Bag / Powersupply and Cartridges

November 25th, 2010 No comments
Atari Lynx II with some Cartridges

Autopsy:

Thank to Lynx of Nightfall for your generous donation.

The Atari Lynx has several innovative features including its being the first color handheld, with a backlit display, a switchable right-handed/left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with up to 17 other units via its “ComLynx” system (though most games would network eight or fewer players).

from Wikipedia:

The Atari Lynx is a 16-bit handheld game console that was released by Atari Corporation in 1989. The Lynx holds the distinction of being the world’s first handheld electronic game with a color LCD. The system is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics, and ambidextrous layout. The Lynx was released in 1989, the same year as Nintendo’s (monochromatic) Game Boy.

However, the Lynx failed to achieve the sales numbers required to attract quality third party developers, and was eventually abandoned. Today, as with many older consoles, there is still a small group of devoted fans, creating and selling games for the system.

source: wikipedia

Atari 800XL fix for Expansion Ram 320XL

November 14th, 2010 No comments

I had to make this change to get the Expansion Ram 320XL running on my Atari 800XL:

source: atariage.com

Unboxing expansion Ram 320XL (320kB) for Atari 600/800XL

November 14th, 2010 No comments
Expansion Ram 320XL (320kB)

Autopsy:

The Expansion Ram 320XL is a external plug and play 320kB memory expansion card for Atari 600XL and 800XL machines designed by ctirad a user of AtariAge Forum.

Additionally there is a possibility to disable internal memory and remap it onto card (switchable via jumper), thus one can “fix” many failing XLs without even looking inside. Also, an unexpanded 16kB 600XLs can be upgraded to 320XL without any additional work.

The Expansion Ram 320XL uses banking via bits 2,3,5,6 and 4 of PORTB. As you can see this is compatible with “Atari magazine” expansion rather than a most common RAMBO or Compy shop setup, however I have to say the comaptibility with both old and new software is excellent. There can be only problem with some programs, which does use the separate Antic/CPU banking.

The Installation is very easy. The Atari 600XL users will just plug it into PBI port. For Atari 800XL is a bit more complicated, because Atari decided to remove 5V power from the PBI connector from it. Thus 800XL users will have either to use additional power cable which will fit into joystick port or solder one wire inside atari to make the PBI port powered like on 600XL (look photo).

For more information and price visit the atariage.com.

source: atariage.com

Commodore 64C Family Pack (Boxed)

November 13th, 2010 3 comments
Commodore 64C Family Pack

Autopsy:

Today i picked up a Commodore 64c Family Pack Edition with Powersupply / Datasette & Joystick in good working condition. The plastics of the Commodore 64c and Datasette are little yellowed but does not affect the right use.

Micro SwinSID KIT – Assembling and Testing

November 8th, 2010 No comments
Testing Micro SwinSID

Micro SwinSID KIT by Peter Sieg:

Certainly you can’t expect perfect emulation, but we are very close, the audio is much more clean than the original SID chip, if the project continues on this road we will arrive very soon on the perfect emulation.

Micro SwinSID (SwinSID88) is a hardware replacement for legendary SID sound chip which was placed in every Commodore C64 computer.

This project is based on the microcontroller ATMEGA88PU from Atmel and the emulation code is written by Swinkels. The first version of the pcb (prototype) was made by Crisp.

For more information and price visit the forum64.de.

Toshiba MSX Home Computer HX-10

November 7th, 2010 No comments
Toshiba MSX Home Computer HX-10

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia:

MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation.

On 27 June 1983, the date considered the birthday of the MSX standard, the MSX was formally announced during a press-conference, and a slew of big Japanese firms declared their plans to introduce machines. The Japanese companies avoided the intensely competitive US home computer market, which was in the throes of a Commodore-led price war.

Only Spectravideo and Yamaha briefly marketed MSX machines in the US. Spectravideo’s MSX enjoyed very little success, and Yamaha’s CX5M model, built to interface with various types of MIDI equipment, was billed more as a digital music tool than a standard personal computer.

source: wikipedia

Philips Microcomputer P2000T/38

November 6th, 2010 2 comments
Philips Microcomputer P2000T/38

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia:

The Philips P2000T home computer was Philips’ first real entry in the home computer market, after the Philips Videopac G7000 game system (better known in the U.S. as the Magnavox Odyssey2) which they already sold to compete with the Atari 2600 and similar game systems.

There was also an P2000M version with an additional 80-column card for use with a monochrome monitor. This version shipped with a monitor cabinet also housing a dual 5.25″ floppy drive. Basically the P2000T was a Z80 based home computer that used a Teletext display chip to produce the video picture and a small Mini Cassette recorder for mass storage (42 kByte).

The mini cassette was seen as a floppy drive from the user perspective using the automatic search for a program (CLOAD command) or free space (CSAVE). A command to display the directory of the cassette does also exist. Philips used components they already produced for other markets (television sets and dictation machines) to quickly design a small computer system. It was partially designed by Austrian professor Dieter Hammer.

They also copied the ROM cartridge system from their Videopac G7000 game system. One of these cartridges contained Microsoft BASIC. It was also possible to use cassette tape floppys.

source: wikipedia

Atari Portfolio

November 5th, 2010 No comments
Atari Portfolio

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia:

The Atari Portfolio is the first PC-compatible palmtop computer, and was released by Atari Corporation in 1989. The Portfolio was licenced from Distributed Information Processing (DIP) based in Guildford, Surrey, England. The original founding member of DIP was Ian Cullimore, fresh from his experiences at helping design the early Organiser products at Psion.

DIP officially stood for “Distributed Information Processing”, although secretly it actually stood for “David, Ian and Peter”, the three founding members of the company, all ex-Psion. The original founder of the company (first called “Crushproof Software”) was Ian Cullimore, and the other two David Frodsham and Peter Baldwin. It was built around an Intel 80C88 CPU running at 4.9152 MHz and ran a variant of MS-DOS called “DIP DOS 2.11″. It had 128 kB of RAM and 256 kB of ROM which contained the OS and built-in applications. The on-board RAM had to be divided between system memory and local storage (the C: drive). The LCD was monochrome without backlight and had 240×64 pixels or 40 characters x 8 lines.

source: wikipedia

Commodore yellowed spare parts

November 5th, 2010 3 comments

Commodore yellowed spare parts:

  • 1 x Commodore 64C (Motherboard ASSY 250407)
  • 1 x Commodore 1541 II (Floppy Drive Chinon)
  • 1 x Commodore Mouse 1351.

SIO Tape Cable for Commodore

November 5th, 2010 No comments

This is a rare SIO Adapter cable. You can use it for connect the Atari 1010 Program Recorder on Commodore 64/128.