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 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

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

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

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

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

Autopsy:

Today i picked up two Commodore 64, both are in poor condition and Broken.

The first one with the chip SID 6581 can play a garbled sound and the closing hooks broken, the other one with the chip PLA 906114, 7406, CIA 6526 dead. I made some cleaning and repaired the problems.

Autopsy:

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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. It is said that Microsoft led the project as an attempt to create unified standards among hardware makers.

from Wikipedia:

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

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…

With great pleasure I found two photo of xad (me) and The Ripper on the Amiga magazine: Eurochart by Crusaders.

• The Ripper of Nightfall on Crusaders Eurochart #13
• Xad of Nightfall on Crusaders Eurochart #14

A free brand new C16/Plus4 special edition of Your Commodore is now available.

It includes every games review they published for the 264 series. Every “Our Comment” monthly feature. All the Data Statement news, all the type-in games and a review of both the C16 and Plus/4 themselves.

As always, all the scans have been straightened, reformatted and cleaned up, no yellowing of the pages to give a nice fresh original magazine feel. A brand new cover design and a new index page which I (hastily) designed for this retrospective lookback of yet another classic british magazine.

source: commodore16.com

Commodore Free Magazine Issue #46

Free to download Commodore magazine dedicated to Commodore Computers.

source: commodorefree.com

Floppy Emulator (PCB by Lotharek):

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The HxC Floppy Emulator is very smart device, designed by Jean-François DEL NERO. It allows you to emulate any 34 pins floppy disk drive. The SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator can replace different kind of floppy disk drive and allows you use SDCard media instead of floppy disk.

This emulator is actually used on Amiga, Atari, CPC, PC computers, different keyboards and samplers, CNC machine tool, and scientist instruments. The full list of supported host computer/instruments are on the project website.

source: hxc2001.free.fr lotharek.pl

Program that detects type of your hardware in Commodore 128.

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

The program is optimized for 80 columns mode.

source: mirkosoft homepage

Some new Games & Utility for Commodore VIC-20.

• Sprite Invaders by Robert Hurst. A clone of a classic arcade hit. Written in ca65 assembler using the VIC Software Sprite Stack, required 8k RAM expansion and a joystick.
• Theater of War by Ghislain. A WW2 Tactical Strategy game where you play the role of a German general on the Eastern Front in Russia.

source: Denial (The Commodore VIC-20 forum)