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

Program that detects type of your hardware in Commodore 128.

Also added recognizing CMD Hardware FD/HD/RAMLink/RAMDrive/JiffyDOS/SuperCPU and a better detection of MMU and RAM size (SuperRAM), not works correctly in VICE.

Optimized for 80 columns mode. Thanks to Christian Johansson.

source: mirkosoft homepage

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:

2010-11-07 – release 0.10.0

• Deprecation notice: E-R and E-W commands will be removed in the next release.
• Improved reliability of Nippon loader.

source: sd2iec.de gitweb forum thread c64-wiki

Autopsy:

12►

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

Autopsy:

123►

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