AceDOS v1.0 for Commodore 128 by MirkoSoft

AceDOS for Commodore 128 support standard drives, 64HDD (Professional), IEC-ATA and 1541Ultimate SD-DCA (SD – direct card access).

AceDOS can be used also with standard drives only, but more features will be disabled.

source: mirkosoft homepage

Brain Innovations new Hardware for Commodore

April 30th, 2010 No comments

from the homepage:

  • C2NPower: Powering CBM products can prove harder than initially thought. Many manufacturers choose the safe (and professional) route of including a power jack on the product and a plug-in power supply (wall wart). It’s a safe choice, but it carries a double cost. Power supplies tend to be $5.00 or so, and are often bulky and heavy, adding to shipping costs. On the consumer side, there’s a cost in finding another open outlet for the power supply and cable management. [continue here]
  • X-Pander 3: In my continuing effort to sell more products for your Commodore computer, I determined users would buy more cartridge-based solutions if they could plug more into their machine at one time :-) Thus, given the lack of cartridge expansion options on the market at present, I am producing the X-Pander. Modeled off the CMD EX-3, CMD EX2+1, and the FB-3XP. [continue here]

source: jbrain.com

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

Some new Games & Utility for Commodore VIC-20

April 30th, 2010 No comments

Some new Games & Utility for Commodore VIC-20.

  • Go Left. The object of the game is to go left. A player may fail by not going left. Points are scored by correctly going left. Follow the on-screen directions. (This game appears on the white side of the Denial Collection 3)
  • Font 1. A replacement font for the VIC 20.
  • The Dungeon of Doom – RPG Creator. Funny, colourful, and comprehensive RPG creator, including dungeon and character generators – both with excellent graphics!

source: Denial (The Commodore VIC-20 forum)

Commodore Free Magazine Issue #39

April 30th, 2010 No comments

Commodore Free Magazine Issue #39

Contents:

  • Editorial.
  • Readers Comments.
  • Commodore USA, LLC.
  • NEWS
  • - New Version: D64Lister 1.7.
  • - CCS64 Updated.
  • - BASIC Game Competition.
  • - Amiga Zorro RAMBoard.
  • - Digital Talk 90.
  • - TAP Clean.
  • - Clear Competition Pro.
  • - Commodore Plus/4 Spreadsheet.
  • - Datatool.
  • - Return Issue 2.
  • - VIC20 Twitter Client.
  • - New Version of SD2IEC Released.
  • - PET Alive!
  • NOSTALGIA
  • - Commodore Free.
  • - John Fielden.
  • - Peter Badrick.
  • - Chris Syntichakis.
  • - Commodore Free (2)
  • - Shaun Bebbington.
  • - Charles J. Gutman.

source: commodorefree.com

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

CartographPC V1.1 by Arkanix Labs

April 28th, 2010 No comments

CartographPC is a Windows application created to assist in designing tile-based datamaps. This devtool serves as a companion piece to our C64 native Cartograph devtool.

The original purpose of CartographPC was to enable us to take nice screenshots of our datamaps without having to take four or six screenshots of smaller windows and piece them together.

CartographPC has since grown into a full editor with the benefit of being able to load datamaps created on the C64 directly into memory and edit, save, and move them back to C64 without much hassle.

It works by creating datamaps using tilesets created on C64 with the old, but popular, ultrafont editor. Datamaps can have dimensions of 1 to 255 tiles horizontally and 1 to 127 tiles vertically. CartographPC allows the user to create a datamap as small as 40×25 tiles (one screen) and up to 255×127 tiles.

Read more…

Released the latest version of C64-Archiv v3.1

April 28th, 2010 3 comments

C64-Archiv descriptions:

  • Scans and stores your C64 – (games) – collection with only a few clicks.
  • Easily manages your C64-programs by creating your own categories.
  • Starts the C64-programs in different emulators.
  • Delivers instructions for the emulators VICE and CCS64.
  • Stores the C64-programs from files with the extensions .d64, .d71, .p00, .prg and .t64.
  • Stores files by name with the extensions: .tap, .vsf (VICE-snapshot-file) and .c64 (CCS-session-file)
  • Stores the C64-programs in files with the extensions: .zip, .7z and .cab.
  • Supports multi-language.

Version 3.1 – What’s new?

  • NEW: Views “Last started “, “Top 100″ (= Most recently used)
  • NEW: Improved Gamebase list with up to 30 columns.
  • NEW: Customizing views.
  • NEW: Profiles for the emulator Emu64.
  • NEW: .CRT, .TXT, .NFO and .DIZ-files can be stored.
  • NEW: French translation (Thanks to Max from MCC64.be).
  • BUG FIXED: Wrong copy from parameters.
  • FIXED: Various minor bugs.

source: Mikes Pages

Vice Snapshot Grabber v4.0

April 24th, 2010 No comments

This minimalistic tool extracts various screen modes from a VICE snapshotfile (.vsf).

Changes since Vice Snapshot Grabber 3.0:

  • MultiColor bitmap screens are saved additionally as koala image (.koa). Loadable directly by MultiColor V0.2.1 for example.
  • HiRes bitmap screens are saved additionally as interpaint HiRes (.ip64h). Loadable in GIMP with cbmplugs.

source: noname.c64.org

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k for Spare parts

April 23rd, 2010 No comments

Working Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k for Spare parts.

geoLink V1.00

April 20th, 2010 No comments

geoLink is a networked GEOS  application for the Commodore 64 written by ShadowM using the ip65 network stack.

It was assembled and linked on the ’64 using geoProgrammer (no cross-assemblers!).

source: lyonlabs.org

Philips MSX 2 NMS-8250 Second Floppy Drive

April 20th, 2010 1 comment
Philips MSX 2 NMS-8250 Second Floppy Drive

Autopsy:

Installation of a second Floppy Disk Drive for MSX 2 NMS-8250.

Acorn Electron Boxed

April 18th, 2010 No comments
Acorn Electron

Autopsy:

from wikipedia:

The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes  of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system.

The Electron was able to save and load programs onto audio cassette via a supplied converter cable that connected it to any standard tape recorder that had the correct sockets. It was capable of basic graphics, and could display onto either a television set, a colour (RGB) monitor or a “green screen” monitor.

At its peak, the Electron was the third best selling micro in the United Kingdom, and total lifetime game sales for the Electron exceeded those of the BBC Micro. There are at least 500 known games for the Electron and the true total is probably in the thousands[citation needed]. The hardware of the BBC Micro was emulated by a single customized ULA chip designed by Acorn.

It had feature limitations such as being unable to output more than one channel of sound where the BBC was capable of three-way polyphony (plus one noise channel) and the inability to provide teletext mode.

The ULA controlled memory access and was able to provide 32K × 8 bits of addressable RAM using 4 × 64K × 1-bit RAM chips (4164). Due to needing two accesses to each chip instead of one, and the complications of the video hardware also needing access, reading or writing RAM was much slower than on the BBC Micro.

This meant that although ROM applications ran at the same speed, there was a substantial speed decrease on applications running from RAM.

source: wikipedia

Philips Monitor VS0080 / MSX2

April 18th, 2010 8 comments
Philips Monitor VS0080 / MSX2

Autopsy:

I fixed two problems of this monitor: the PowerSwitch and the Video Composite input.

The monitor is a VS0080 RGB Color Monitor, which is technically identical to the Commodore 1084 Monitor, but with a black case to match the MSX colors

Philips Odyssey 2001

April 18th, 2010 1 comment
Philips Odyssey 2001

Autopsy:

from pong-story homepage:

Magnavox started to export video games in 1974. At first, Odyssey was exported in 1974 in more than ten countries. Later in 1976, Philips released the Philips Odyssey 200 in several countries including Austria and Germany. Finally, the Philips Odyssey 2001 and the Odyssey 2100 were released in 1977 and 1978.

The Odyssey 2001 is nearly same as the Magnavox Odyssey 4000, but it didn’t play the same games. Designed around the National Semiconductor MM-57105 chip, it played three games in color: Tennis, Hockey and Squash. Unlike most PONG games, sound came directly from the TV set. The chip delivered color video signals,  as opposed to the black and white games of the General Instruments game chips, which could use a special color encoder chip.

The game selection was simply done by pressing the button of one of the two controllers, allowing the players to switch from a game to another. The documentation of this console exists in ten languages, although only four foreign patents are shown on the back side of the system. The exact number of countries where this system sold is still unknown. This system is quite common, and Germany seems to be the country where it was most successfull.

source: pong-story.com wikipedia

(Italian) Firenze Vintage Bit 2010

April 16th, 2010 No comments

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

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

C64 Pixel Art from Roberto / Papposoft

April 16th, 2010 No comments