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Commodore USA shows his baby, The Commodore 64 clone

December 26th, 2010 No comments

Commodore 64 it’s back… and better than ever! The new C64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible.

It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow.

source: commodoreusa.net

SD2Iec Firmware v0.10.1

December 26th, 2010 No comments

SD2IEC is a hardware mass storage device using an SD/MMC card and interfacing with the IEC bus. It is based on the ATmega644 or ATmega1284p microcontroller from the Atmel AVR microcontroller family.

The most prominent use of SD2IEC is emulation/replacement of a Commodore-1541 disk drive for a C64. Hardware and the microcontroller’s firmware is available as open source (GPL).

Changelog:

2010-12-25 – release 0.10.1

  • Bugfix: Remove remains of previous commands while parsing B-*
  • Bugfix: Fix response of UI command for unknown suffix chars.
  • Small improvement of JiffyDOS transfer speeds.

source: sd2iec.de gitweb forum thread c64-wiki

Categories: Firmware, News & Rumors, Today

C64 Game: Scooby Doo +3 [Special] by Hokuto Force

December 25th, 2010 No comments

Published by: Elite Systems Ltd.
Developed by: Gargoyle Games Ltd
Released: 1986

Game description: Scooby’s friends Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma have been kidnapped in an enormous castle owned by an evil genius. It’s Scooby’s job to travel through it and rescue them in this platforms ‘n’ ladders beat ‘em up.

Enemies include ghosts emerging from doors, bats which must be ducked, skulls to jump over, springy thingies, and Ghoulfish. Scooby has plenty of attacking moves, but must be stationary to launch into one. You start with six lives, and get extras by picking up Scooby Snacks, and by completing each of the four levels.

source: noname.c64.org hokutoforce.netsons.org

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

December 24th, 2010 No comments

Wishing you a joyous holiday season and a happy new year.

(Italian) Storia dell’Informatica e della Comunicazione Digitale

December 24th, 2010 No comments

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Categories: Event(s), News & Rumors, Today

HxC Floppy Emulator: Software updated

December 23rd, 2010 2 comments

The HxC Floppy Drive Emulator is a software and hardware system created by jfdn aka Jeff.

The aim of this project is to replace the floppy disk drive by an electronic device emulating the floppy disk drive (list of supported Computer/Hardware).

There are two differents emulators:

  • A USB version which allows to connect the floppy disk drive interface of the computer to a PC via a USB cable.
  • A SDCARD version which allows to emulate floppy disks which images are stored in a SDCARD.

Release notes for the HxCFloppyEmulator software v1.5.1.0:

  • New files Support : Jeff Vavasour Color Computer Disk Image format (*.JVC) added.
  • Floppy disk dump tool/ HFE conversion : Bitrate value are now corrected.
  • Floppy disk dump tool : a small GUI change.
  • D88 file format support improved.
  • HDM file support : gap len increased to 116.
  • FAT12 Floppy Generator enhanced : More FAT12 floppy format available, FAT geometry adjusted/corrected.
  • FAT12 Floppy Generator : Sources files on the PC side are now correctly closed in case of fail.
  • E-Mu SP1200 support : E-Mu SP1200 RAW file image support added (*.sp1200fd)
  • ISO/IBM track generator : Skew/interleave generator bug corrected.

source: hxc2001.free.fr

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

Commodore 64 DiskMagazine – Vandalism News #54

December 21st, 2010 No comments

Onslaught / Wrath Designs / Vandalism, bring you the 54th issue of the Vandalism News.

source: noname.c64.org

Easyflash crt Binary Converter by e5frog

December 19th, 2010 3 comments

This program for M$ Windows converts the EasyFlash files in .crt format (and others as well) to two binary files that can be used by eprom programmer.

source: noname.c64.org

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.

ZoomFloppy: Commodore floppy drive Interface

December 15th, 2010 No comments

ZoomFloppy is an USB device for connecting Commodore disk drives to your PC.

The ZoomFloppy is an improvement based on XU1541 from Till Harbaum. Nate Lawson and Jim Brain teamed up to produce a professional product.

This controller will support IEC drives, IEEE-488 drives and a user-port connection for parallel speeder drives.

source: jbrain.com commodore-gg.hobby.nl

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

KryoFlux USB Floppy controller

December 15th, 2010 No comments

KryoFlux is a USB-based floppy controller designed specifically for reliability, precision, and getting low-level reads suitable for software preservation.

Technical Specs:

  • Compatible with USB 2.0 (high-speed).
  • Powered by USB interface (approx. 500mA). Drive requires it’s own power.
  • Shugart (with extensions) drive interface. 34-pin dual-row header connector.
  • Developed with 3.5″ Samsung SFD-321 and 5.25″ Newtronics D509 drives and compatibles. Other types of drives and media (such as 3″) currently under investigation.
  • Connection of two drives supported using a dual floppy cable, one can be accessed at a time.

source: kryoflux.com

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

Attitude Diskmagazine #11 Winter Edition released

December 15th, 2010 No comments

Attitude is a disk magazine for the Commodore 64 computer. This edition is written in collaboration with the joint forces of TRIAD and Oxyron.

We hope you enjoy this issue as much as you did the previous ones!

source: attitude.c64.org

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

Lallafa’s DTV2Ser v0.5 Released!

December 12th, 2010 No comments

Dtv2ser is a small hardware device that bridges TLR’s dtvtrans protocol used to communicate with a DTV via a RS232 interface to your Mac or PC.

By using a serial-to-USB adapter the dtv2ser provides dtvtrans access for all modern PCs where the original dtvtrans parallel cable cannot be used.

The new firmware integrate the support for Arduino 2009 board.

Changelog version v0.5 – 11.12.2010:

dtv2sertrans:

  • Fixed double open problem in pySerial on Windows.
  • Added missing ‘g’ command available in TLR’s dtvtrans for usage compatibility.

dtv2ser firmware:

  • Added support for Arduino 2009 board (ATmega168, 16 MHz, 250kB/s transfer)

source: lallafa.de

A working Commodore 64 under water

December 10th, 2010 No comments

The team from dienstagstreff.de has demonstrated a Commodore C64 on the “Hobby und Elektronik 2010” in Stuttgart.

Demonstrating a C64 is not so special but this time the C64 was under water! They submersed a C64 circuit-board in water, connected it to a power supply and a monitor and the C64 work without problems for 1 hour.

source: youtube.com commodore-gg.hobby.nl

1541 Ultimate I / II: New firmware v2.0 Final

December 5th, 2010 No comments

A new version of the firmware for the interface 1541 Ultimate I / II is released.

This version also runs on the Ultimate-I! (Of course, only the features that MK1-hardware supports will show.. no RTC, no USB, no C2N (tape), etc…)

This is a MAJOR update from RCA! Please note that former versions had issues with writing back data to .D64 images.

Your copies that you made with former 2.0RCx versions might be corrupt!!

Major improvement in latest release:

  • Added: Small step made to supporting block sizes other than 512 bytes (for CDROM, which I want to support soon!)
  • Added: Update changed to flash all roms too…
  • Added: Boot FPGA definitions added for booting with Winbond Flash.
  • Added: USB hub support (high speed devices only!)
  • Added: C64 reset included in 1541 reset (optional)
  • Added: Option to save current disk as D64 or G64.
  • Added: Option to create formatted G64.
  • Added: Progress bars in user interface.
  • Added: Stop option added to tape playback.
  • Added: Initial attempt to implement creating of G64 files.

Read more…

Categories: Firmware, News & Rumors, Today