Forth, the Language.

Forth is a different language. It’s aged and a little weird.
What’s cool about it? It’s a very low-level and minimal language without any automatic memory management. At the same time, it easily scales to become a very high-level and domain-specific language, much like Lisp. Compared to C64 Basic, Forth is more attractive in almost every way.

It is a lot more fast, memory effective and powerful. Compared to C, specifically cc65, the story is a little different. It’s hard to make a fair comparison. Theoretically Forth code can be very memory efficient, and it’s possible to make Forth code that is leaner than C code. But it is also true that cc65 code is generally much faster than Forth code.

Download: durexForth v1.5.3 + Manual (866)

source: csdb.dk

Easy trick to improve a little bit the video quality for the Commodore 64.

The fix can be made without removing the modulator. Obviously the RF output doesn’t work anymore.

Gallery:

Forth, the Language.

Forth is a different language. It’s aged and a little weird.
What’s cool about it? It’s a very low-level and minimal language without any automatic memory management. At the same time, it easily scales to become a very high-level and domain-specific language, much like Lisp. Compared to C64 Basic, Forth is more attractive in almost every way.

It is a lot more fast, memory effective and powerful. Compared to C, specifically cc65, the story is a little different. It’s hard to make a fair comparison. Theoretically Forth code can be very memory efficient, and it’s possible to make Forth code that is leaner than C code. But it is also true that cc65 code is generally much faster than Forth code.

Download: durexForth v1.5.2 + Manual (901)

source: csdb.dk

Forth, the Language.

Forth is a different language. It’s aged and a little weird.
What’s cool about it? It’s a very low-level and minimal language without any automatic memory management. At the same time, it easily scales to become a very high-level and domain-specific language, much like Lisp. Compared to C64 Basic, Forth is more attractive in almost every way.

It is a lot more fast, memory effective and powerful. Compared to C, specifically cc65, the story is a little different. It’s hard to make a fair comparison. Theoretically Forth code can be very memory efficient, and it’s possible to make Forth code that is leaner than C code. But it is also true that cc65 code is generally much faster than Forth code.

Download: durexForth v1.5.1 + Manual (868)

source: csdb.dk

Forth, the Language.

Forth is a different language. It’s aged and a little weird.
What’s cool about it? It’s a very low-level and minimal language without any automatic memory management. At the same time, it easily scales to become a very high-level and domain-specific language, much like Lisp. Compared to C64 Basic, Forth is more attractive in almost every way.

It is a lot more fast, memory effective and powerful. Compared to C, specifically cc65, the story is a little different. It’s hard to make a fair comparison. Theoretically Forth code can be very memory efficient, and it’s possible to make Forth code that is leaner than C code. But it is also true that cc65 code is generally much faster than Forth code.

Download: durexForth v1.5.0 + Manual (867)

source: csdb.dk

Batch of repairs in one week (report):

• 1 x Amiga 500 (Green screen of death – Replaced 4 x DRAM)
• 1 x Amiga 500+ (Leaked battery acid – Cleaning / Replaced GARY socket)
• 1 x Amiga 600 (Distorted Clipped Saturated audio – Replaced LF347 / Total Recap / Cleaning)
• 2 x Amiga 600 (Total Recap / Cleaning)
• 2 x Amiga 1200 (Total Recap / Cleaning)
• 1 x Texas Instruments PHA-2037 (Missing Pb Component Video Signal – Replaced LM318)

I have done an accurate cleaning of the leaked battery acid on the mainboard.

I have also replaced the GARY socket destroyed by battery acid and rebuild a pcb track with a wire.

Gallery of the repair:

The problem of the green screen of death is usually due to a problem of DRAM,FAT AGNUS (chip or socket), GARY.

In this case all four DRAMs are failed. The pin 18 (IO/3) was always at high level.

Replacing DRAM everything has started to work properly.

Gallery of the repair:

Some new games or tools (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups.

Titles:

• Hyper Circuit +23D
• The Catacombs of Cherubim +4
• Rust’n'Steel +4C
• Yloa’s Complex Preview
• Qualot +3E
• Rogue Preview
• Voivod Attack +22D
• Yloa Preview
• Hummdinger +18D
• Block’n'Tropic +6
• Urban Warrior + [seuck]
• Energy Warrior +20D
• Yucatan +27D
• Girlguard Preview [german]
• Alley Cat +18D
• Quak Attak +18D
• Block’n'Tropic +6
• Zodiac +23D
• Kong 64 +28D
• Que +2
• Dragonfire +2DGMF 101%
• Code Hunter +17D
• Ladybug 2015
• Ladybug 2015 +1H
• Dragonfire +2F 101%
• Chicken Chase +15D
• Denarius +28D
• Quantarallax Preview +2
• Sputnik Preview
• Wildfire Preview
• Worron +3
• Flimbo’s Quest Preview +2
• Galax-i-birds +27D
• Nuker Preview V2 +4
• Firefighter Mario +3
• Łazik
• Frogger Arcade Preview
• Robocop +8DFHIR 101%
• Squirm 2 Preview
• Robotfindskitten
• Vault Man 2 Preview
• Ferris’s Christmas Caper +17D
• Cosmic Warrior +1 [inglish]
• Robo +
• Squid Jump Preview
• Slither X +1

Download: All Games in One Archive (3374)

source: csdb.dk

The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) is a freeware hobby project which organises Commodore 64 music (also known as SID music) into an archive for both musicians and fans alike.

The work on the collection is done completely in the Team and contributors’ spare time and is proudly one of the largest and most accurate computer music collections known.

This update features (all approximates):

• 672 new SIDs
• 132 fixed/better rips
• 5 repeats/bad rips eliminated
• 812 SID credit fixes
• 133 SID model/clock infos
• 10 tunes from /DEMOS/UNKNOWN/ identified
• 4 tunes from /GAMES/ identified
• 22 tunes moved out of /DEMOS/ to their composers’ directories
• 12 tunes moved out of /GAMES/ to their composers’ directories

Download:

• HVSC Update #64 (1237)
• HVSC Complete #64 (1321)

source: www.hvsc.c64.org

Brief summary of NOT repairing the Commodore Chessmate of a dear friend (Giacomo Vernoni).

The Chessmate I received had a funny defect: it worked for 10-15 seconds and then freezed completely with harrowing sounds in the background. So the defect appeared when something warmed up.

Having another Chessmate (mine) to compare the signals to, I noted right away that communication was missing between RIOT (6530) -> ROM (6332) -> CPU (6504) -> RAM (AM9111); CLOCK and RESET were working fine.

I sprayed synthetic ice on the 6530 RIOT to check if the problem was caused by this IC: as a matter of fact, after lowering its temperature, the Chessmate began to work again. I was glad I found the problem, but quite unhappy because the spare part is almost impossible to find. To double check I decided to unsolder the 6530, install a socket, and try it on my Chessmate.

It worked! Damn… after thinking about it for a while, I thought that maybe the spray partially freezed the nearby ROM too.

So I reinstalled the 6530 back in the non-working Chessmate, I turned it on, and after 15 seconds I sprayed the synthetic ice on the 6332, and it magically worked again.

That’s it… from that moment on, the Chessmate always worked! after the freezeing spray I left the Chessmate turned on for two hours and it never stopped working.

So, I’m asking myself: did the ice repair the ROM? Will it die again? probably yes :-D Maybe there was some small tin residue on the PCB that I removed by spraying it: I noticed that the Chessmate had already been repaired before, there were visible signs on the pcb.

It will remain a mystery, anyway the MPS 6322 ROM can be replaced by a 2532 EPROM (pinout compatible) or by a 2732 EPROM with an adapter.

Gallery:

This is a program that can playback .SID files found in the HVSC collection on a real Commodore 64/128.

You will find different versions of SP64 in this package, most of themwill work on all devices.  But I suggest you use the correct version for for your device, since they might contain special commands.

Versions of the program:

• sidplay64-reu-1541u2cmd.prg – 1541 Ultimate II version with REU.
• sidplay64-reu-sd2iec.prg – SD2IEC version with REU.
• sidplay64-reu-1541u-netdrive.prg – 1541 Ultimate & Netdrive with REU.
• sidplay64-reu-iec-cmd-ide64.prg – CMD drives, IDE64 devices & other IEC devices, with REU.
• sidplay64-reu-normal.prg – REU version for 1541, 1571, 1581 and clones of these.
• sidplay64-normal.prg – Standard version for 1541, 1571, 1581 and clones.
• sidplay64-1541u-netdrive.prg – 1541 Ultimate & Netdrive.
• sidplay64-iec-cmd-ide64.prg- CMD drives, IDE64 devices & other IEC devices.
• sidplay64-sd2iec.prg – SD2IEC.

(The 1541U2 software iec mode has been disabled for this build.)

Download: SIDPlay 64 (SP64) v1.0.0 (1059)

source: sourceforge.net

CBM prg Studio Version 3.5.0 is released. There are a lot of new features in this version. I’d really appreciate it if you report any bugs you find or have any suggestions/comments.

CBM prg Studio allows you to type a BASIC or Machine Code program in using a nice Windows environment and convert it to a ‘.prg’ file which you can run on an emulator, or even a real C64 / VIC20 or PET if you’re feeling brave and have the right kit.

CBM prg Studio is the result of merging C64PrgGen and VIC20PrgGen. Adding new features and fixing bugs in two apps which were 95% similar was a bit of a nightmare so merging them made sense.

It was also a good opportunity for a face lift and to add some new features, such as:

• Programs are project based, meaning all related source files, sprite files etc. are kept in one place and multiple source files can be linked more easily.
• Tabbed MDI.
• Syntax highlighting.

What CBM prg Studio isn’t is a front-end for tok64, cbmcnvrt, bastext or any other tokeniser / detokeniser / assembler. It’s all been written completely from scratch.

Improvements:

• Assembler:
  • Reporting of page boundary crossings for branching instructions.
  • Choose character set for TEXT directive.

• General:
  • Editing tools (Select to end/start of screen/doc etc.)
  • Comment blocks

• Debugger:
  • Show effective address of next instruction.

Bugs Fixed:

• Assembler:
  • Low of high byte of labels could fail.
  • Occasionally wrong target machine type with ‘generate and launch.’
  • Problems with a comment character after a comment character or in a string.
  • Problem with a label as a destination when the label is on the same line as the macro definition.
  • ‘Align’ incorrect when already on align boundary.

• Debugger:
  • Wrong return address shown.

• BASIC:
  • Statistics tool not coping with ‘rem’ in strings.

See the help for a complete list of new features and fixed bugs.

Note In this version, each target machine can have its own default project directory. If you are upgrading from a previous version (before version 2.5.1) of CBM prg Studio you may be asked to set up your project directories again. Your current projects will not be affected.

Download: CBM prg Studio v3.6.0 (952)

source: ajordison.co.uk

Replacing electrolytic capacitors Commodore Amiga 600/1200.

Gallery full Recap 2 x Commodore Amiga 1200:

Gallery full Recap 1 x Commodore Amiga 600:

All computers that i use for experiments or tests must at least be cleaned and disinfected.

Works that have been made:

• General and accurate cleaning.
• Accurate cleaning with a magnifying lens of the AMIGA logo with isopropyl alcohol. I have used also a toothpick to remove the black color from the corners.
• Full Recap of the motherboards.
• Removed the two pieces of metal.
• Fixed the RGB video connector (totally broken).
• Replaced the keyboard with another one less yellowed.
• Added a Gotek Floppy Drive with HXC Firmware.
• Kickstart ROM 3.1.

Photo gallery before cleaning:

Photo gallery after cleaning: