from 1541 Ultimate homepage:

February is already drawing to the end, so some news about the 1541U-II is needed here. The good news is: the boards have been produced, and the first few have been tested and are working! They are currently back at the assembly house for a missing connector, but I am expecting them back early this week.

The not-so-good news is, that the plastic cases have more delay. The Chinese company sometimes makes some promises that they are breaking afterwards. Yesterday I received a message that the new samples will be shipped on the 10th of March, while they had previously promised to send 100 cases upfront on Feb 25. I pressed them to send at least 100 pieces on, or before that date.

The good news about the cases is, that they will be black and not cream! I noticed that a lot of you have a strong preference for black. They will be produced using the PA material, enforced with glass fiber. :-)

source: 1541ultimate.net

SD2IEC is a hardware mass storage device using an SD/MMC card and interfacing with the IEC bus. It is based on the ATmega644 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:

2009-02-28 – release 0.9.0

• Bugfix: REL offset calculation for records 256,512,…
• Bugfix: Non-REL P command parameters now match README.
• Bugfix: Reading after EOI behaves correctly now.
• Red LED only active while unwritten data in memory.
• Remove XC,XJ commands.
• New fastloader: ULoad Model 3.
• New fastloader: G.I. Joe (said to be commonly ripped)
• New fastloader: Epyx FastLoad cartridge.
• Support reading raw directory ($ with secondary > 0)
• “display disk images as directories”-mode.
• DNP support.
• Remote display support.
• Build system doesn’t require gawk anymore.

source: sd2iec.de gitweb forum thread c64-wiki

The High Voltage SID Collection web page is totally renewed. Especially the Search part is much improved.

You can for example type-in “Rob Hubbard” and you will be presented with a complete list.

source: hvsc.de

It has been over four years since the latest release of our disk magazine. Finally “Attitude #10″ is ready for download. Get your copy and tell us if it was worth to get together again and make this release possible.

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

source: attitude.c64.org

General Info:

• Firmware written primarily for the DivIDE interface, maybe for others in future.
• Inspired by our (Phoenix & LaesQ) old ‘backbone’ project + inspiration from +D
• Works with HDD/CD-ROM/ZIP/LS120 (LS120 can access 720KB and 1.44MB floppies)
• Uses drivers to access filesystems (either in RAM or ROM)
• Provides new BASIC commands
• Will provide RST 8 hooks for user-land apps
• Supports IM2 loading/saving (K3L’s FA part)
• Drivers give access to the filesystem, and provide specific emulation hooks in certain cases (TRDOS, .TAP, etc)
• There’s a device/filesystem abstraction layer, which means that BASIC or user-land programs don’t need to know anything about the underlying filesystem/device (ie, you use the same BASIC commands for all filesystems, FAT/ISO/TRD/etc)
• Will allow up to 4 virtual drives for disk images (.trd/etc)
• Filesystems are mapped acording to type: hd*, fd*, cd*, vd*, td*
• FAT12/16/32 driver built-in ROM, other drivers loaded from boot filesystem on demand. (on this preview version, there was still room so TRDOS filesystem is in ROM too)
  Does not need a system file to work, common BASIC commands and FAT driver on ROM, system file loaded from boot filesystem will have additional commands, etc.
• … more stuff which I prolly forgot

source: esxdos.org

Island of Secrets Graphic Adventure – 22 column version by Jenny Tyler and Les Howarth.

This game is a conversion from Commodore 64 of a classic type-in text adventure from the book published by Usborne in 1984. Play it with the stunning graphic excitement of more than 30 hi-res screens! It’s require a VIC-20 + 24K RAM.

source: Denial (The Commodore VIC-20 forum)

This program is basically a utility created to edit your D64 files.  Hopefully when it is done it will have all of the features you’d expect from a c64 based disk editor, as well as additional features that make it easier to manage your D64 files.

Here some features:

• Read D64 files, display the directory, move files around the directory, rename files.
• Export files from the D64 into PRG files.
• Import files into the D64 with autodetection for P00 files.
• View/Edit the BAM.
• View the block chain of files on the D64.
• Create new blank D64 files, clean existing D64′s.
• View and modify blocks on the disk in hex.
• Automatic check for crosslinked files on the D64.
• View the directory using the native c64 font.
• SEQ File Viewer using the c64 font with PETASCII->ASCII conversion option.
• Drag and Drop functionality. Drag D64′s onto the main screen to load them, drag other files to import them.
• Preliminary support for importing T64′s.
• A filename builder to enable easy use of the C64 Characterset in filenames.

Read more…

A anonymous person has published a large amount of files on a web page about the history of Amiga.

At the moment there are more than 600 PDF files available for viewing or downloading.

source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl

My homebrew Powersupply adaptor & RGB/Audio Scart cable for Amstrad CPC 464/6128.

source: cpcwiki.eu jrp king homepage kjthacker.f2s.com

ACID 64 Player Pro is the sequal of Acid 64 Player and is a cycle based Commodore 64 music player designed for playing SID tunes on sound cards/devices that have a real SID chip (6581/6582/8580) on board like the HardSID cards and HardSID 4U USB device.

ACID 64 emulates the MOS 6510 micro processor, the 6526 CIA chip and partially the 6569 VIC chip to run the code of a SID tune and it controls the SID chip on the device for playing the Commodore 64 music.

What’s new in version v3.0.3:

New:

• Support for the new HardSID USB devices: Uno and UPlay.
• Auto detection of turned on/off USB devices.
• Added sorting on column of every grid.
• Emulated SID reading.

Improvements:

• When performing e.g. mute/unmute, filter on/off or pause then no time gap isn’t noticed anymore while playing on a USB device.
• Seek bar is always going smooth now and still synched with the 6510 CPU clock.
• Improved fast forward.
• HardSID.dll isn’t required anymore for USB devices.
• Many small improvements.

Fixes:

• Works now without administrator rights.
• When using dual monitor ACID 64 will now be centered on the screen instead of the desktop.

screenshot:

source: acid64.com

PONG is one of the earliest arcade video games, released by Atari way back in 1972. (It was not the first video game, but it’s venerable indeed.)

We’re certainly not the first to build a real-world analog of a video game or even of PONG itself.

source: evilmadscientist.com

Achim released his game Space Limits II for the Commodore C64. This 4 kbyte game is the successor of Space Limits from 2009.

source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl noname.c64.org

The SIDstick is a pocket-sized chiptunes player. Chiptunes are songs written to be synthesized in real-time. A lot of chiptunes are ripped from classic videogames, and some are new works. The SIDstick plays the most common variety of chiptunes, music written for playback on a SID chip. Main features:

• Removable Storage supporting microSD cards, 1 card can hold 20,000 songs.
• 20+ hour battery life.
• Super Hi-Quality hardware-based playback at 31kHz sample rate, >16 bit resolution.
• Completely Open, hardware and software are available under the MIT license.
• Upgradable with connections on the board.

source: gadgetgangster.com wikipedia hvsc.c64.org

Cartograph is a native Commodore 64 application created for designing tile-based maps/levels.

This versatile tool allows you to create maps and levels for your games, matrices and data for demos and tools and much more.

Changelog:

Cartograph V1.3 increases productivity and decreases the amount of time needed to create your data. Some of the major changes include six new fill modes (random and pattern), six more data types, REU support (backups and undo), and RLE compression. Maps created with earlier versions are 100% compatible with this new release.

source: arkanixlab.com c64dev.com

from 1541 Ultimate homepage:

Finally, you might think! An update on the 1541U-II… As time is going fast, the moment that all the hardware parts for the 1541U-II will be ready is drawing near. It all was not too easy, but things are going now the way they should.

The major difficulty showed to be the plastic case. Finally I have found a contractor who is willing to make the plastic case exactly as I wanted it, for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the mould for plastic injection is quite expensive; in fact about double of what I expected initially, based on an unrealistic quote that I got a few months ago. Because of the large interest in the 1541U-II, I decided to just continue with it, and leave the selling price of the total product intact.

Earlier this week, I received the first pictures of the first try-outs of the injection mould tool. The result shows a little problem in the design, with the planned material (ABS). Due to the thick and sturdy plastic constuction on the inside, sink marks are visible on the outside.

The manufacturer has tried to run the case with a different material (PA), which looks a lot better. However, due to different shrinkage characteristics, the mould tool needs to be adapted to adjust for the difference in material. (You can see this, that the matte version does not close perfectly…) They will do this, but it will take one week extra before the cases are ready. The final color won’t be black (unless I am getting a lot of angry E-mails now.. ;-), but light cream color, to match the C64C better.

Read more…