Adapters that you see in the photo:

• GQ-4X GQ-3X | WILLEM 3in1 PLCC32 to DIP32.
• GQ-4X GQ-3X | JTAG & SPI in circuit programming adapter | ICSP/ISP MODE ADP-056
• GQ-4X GQ-3X | WILLEM ADAPTER MCS-51 / AVR + PLCC44

My personal considerations:

This is a great programmer and certainly more stable of the classic Willem (parallel or usb). I have tried to program some EPROM and FLASH without problems. The power supply via USB is very stable and accurate.

from the homepage of MCUmall:

The GQ-4X is the newest model of True USB Willem Universal Programmer series from MCUmall Electronics Inc Canada.

With its complete new professional design, True USB PRO 40pin willem programmer GQ-4X is the first & exclusive Willem universal programmer in the market that owns the unique features:

• Neat robust enclosure; 40pin ZIF socket, fully automatic; JTAG support; Fast mode SPI support.
• Support O/S XP 32bit, XP 64bit, Vista 32bit,Vista 64bit, Windows7 32bit/64bit.
• Real True USB interface for both data transfer and power supply.
• High speed/fastest; most-user-friendly; simplest-to-use.
• Software update regularly; free life-time software upgrade/download.
• Multi-languages support capability: Chinese, Czeh, English, French, German, Spanish, Portugues, Italian.

The application-oriented & application-enhanced design facilitates GQ-4X supports thousands of most popular application devices (growing) and ideally suits the portable/convenient applications that includes: car automative field ECU chiptuning, airbag reset, mileage, satilite devices, BIOS refreshing, motherboard BIOS in-circuit upgrade, xBox,Wii gaming machines EPROM duplicate, Altera Xilinx JTAG, PIC/MCU development, newer laptop technology and newer desktop PC etc.

It has outstanding performance which supoprts the devices that other similar products are not capable of supporting: such as 25LF SPI series, PSOP44,TSOP48, 25VF SPI series, Altera Xilinx CPLD JTAG, PLCC84,SST39VF3201, TE28F102, 27C1024, 27C1028,HD6475,29F800, 29LV800, 29F032…

source: mcumall.com

Replaced a old yellowed Amiga 1200 keyboard with a new one.

Tiny status update of the SD2Snes Cartridge from Ikari

Directly from the SD2Snes Homepage:

So I’ve been getting a lot of questions pertaining to current progress, understandably. ;)

SuperFX is still crawling along, I’ve gotten a basic CPU core control unit and partial instruction decoder to work which can run test code in simulation fine, albeit limited. But it doesn’t deal with the different memory delays, stalling and parallelism yet; also the SNES interface, plot logic and other supplementary stuff are still missing.

The SuperFX uses pipelining which is a thing I haven’t fully understood yet, so that’s going to take some brain work and likely multiple complete rewrites of the CPU core. I’d rather not give an estimated time of completion for that at the moment… ;) Implementing pipelining properly is important because game code is laid out to take advantage of it and will not run correctly otherwise.

Besides the SuperFX, kogami has discovered a BS memory mapping bug, a regression that snuck into firmware 0.1.5 where I rewrote the BS memory mapping based on my own RE efforts. Also some graphical corruption has been found when using the “Run previous game” feature (Start button). I expect to make a bug fix / minor release addressing these issues (possibly others) in a couple of weeks.

source: sd2snes.de

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

This is the official demo party results from Demo of the Year Competition. See also the official homepage for more informations.

Demo:

• Daah, those acid pills! by Censor Design *new*
• Plasma by Alpha Flight
• Our contribution to the scene by Laxity
• Xnx-Colorama by Alpha Flight
• It’s all your fault by Hitmen *new*
• Forgotten Dots by Chorus
• Te-Te-Te-TechTech It Out by Camelot
• Bob Johnson by Phantasy
• Arthrobob by Fossil
• Cascade DOTY Entry by Cascade
• Fick, Daul und wurstig by Oxyron

Download: Demo of the Year Competition 2013 *updated* (959)

source: Demo of the Year Competition noname.c64.org

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Autopsy:

1234►

from Old-Computer Museum:

The NMS-801 was one of the last MSX machine made by Philips. This economical computer was a true MSX machine. The official MSX logo was although replaced on the case by the “MSX Compatible” mark because the MSX standard required a cartridge slot, which the NMS-801 had not.

The NMS-801 was only sold in Italy where it wasn’t very successful because of its poor expansion capabilities. However, Philips used the same case, CPU and video chip to produce the NMS-3000 and 4000, two video terminals dedicated to the Italian Videotel network, a precursor to the Internet which enabled each Italian family to access large databases as well as sending messages to one another.

source: old-computers.com

Commodore USA and official Commodore OS support forum is now defunct with no support and no communication.

Links to the company website, including their re-branded google homepage ceased working on April 22, 2013.

…but who is Commodore USA?

Commodore USA, LLC is a computer company based in Pompano Beach, Florida, with additional facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Commodore USA, LLC was founded in April 2010.

The company’s goal is to sell a new line of PCs using the classic Commodore and Amiga name brands of personal computers, having licensed the Commodore brand from Commodore Licensing BV on August 25, 2010 and the Amiga brand from Amiga, Inc. on August 31, 2010.

source: wikipedia commodoreusa.net

ASAP is a player of 8-bit Atari music for modern computers and mobile devices. It emulates the POKEY sound chip and the 6502 processor.

The project was initially based on the routines from the Atari800 emulator, but the current version has a completely new original emulation core.

Changelog ASAP 3.1.4 (2013-04-29):

• Android: plays in background, can switch to next/previous/random file, opens M3U playlists, file selector can display metadata, “back” returns to parent directory.
• WASAP fixed to avoid occasional deadlock when opening files during playback.
• VLC plugin compiled for OS X.
• 64-bit RPMs.
• Fixed time detection for CMS.
• Windows Explorer displays titles for RMT, TMC, TM2.
• “Show information about the currently playing file” restored after Winamp/XMPlay restart.
• TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit plugins don’t depend on libz-1.dll.
• asapscan calculates SAP fingerprints (contributed by Jakub Husak).
• Experimental ASAP2WAV in Perl.

Download: ASAP v3.1.4 (1503)

source: asap.sourceforge.net

Listen to your favourite radio stations on your Commodore 64.

The Software is written in C and compiled using CC65 compiler. Check the readme in the zip file for more information.

Download: C64 FM Radio v0.1 (985)

source: fm-radio-for-c64

CBM prg Studio Version 2.6.0 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.

New features:

• Assembler overhaul resulting in 30% reduction in assembly time.
• Added multi-depth file inclusion (Incasm).
• Batch mode for generating multiple files.
• GenerateTo directive extended for disk images (d64, d71, d81).
• BASIC import from D64, D71 and D81 images.
• The ‘@’ can be used to specify the start address/program counter.
• Case conversion for quoted BASIC strings.
• Bookmarks.
• Greater control over the data generation when including screen data in assembly source.
• The BASIC keyword PI has been changed to {PI}.
• Genesis assembler file format added to file conversion tool.
• The character editor’s scratchpad has been merged with the main edit form.
• The grid on the screen editor is now ‘behind’ the characters.
• Keystroke Macro recording/playback.

Bugs fixed:

• Some cheap label issues.
• Some projects not being built as the build order was incorrect due to ‘* =’ used when specifying the start address.
• Spaces around values in a WORD sequence were invalid.
• Assembly code reformatting issues.
• Reformatting assembly code which contained breakpoints.
• Reformatting assembly code which contains spaces.
• Breakpoints not being retained.
• Adding existing files to a project occasionally failed.
• Some assembler expressions not evaluated properly.
• Some assembler invalid variable names not detected.
• The BIT instruction in the debugger was not setting the overflow flag.
• Some memory overwrites not detected.
• Palette issues with C128 target machine.
• Some invalid byte sequences not reported.
• Emulator could start even after an invalid prg generation.
• Problems with global variables.
• Improved validation on options pages.

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

Download: CBM prg Studio v2.6.0 (837)

source: ajordison.co.uk

Carlo Pastore collector of Commodore things and webmaster of the site retrocommodore.com has released the schematics of two Revisions of the Commodore 65.

Download: Commodore 65 Schematics (1658)

source: retrocommodore.com

FAIL is a viewer of pictures in native formats of Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Atari Falcon and Atari Portfolio computers.

Currently the project includes:

• Fail2png – portable command-line converter to PNG files.
• FAILWin – viewer for Windows.
• Thumbnail providers for Windows Explorer and GNOME (Linux)
• Plugin for XnView.
• (de)coder for ImageMagick.
• Plugin for Imagine.
• HTML 5 based viewer.

Changelog:

• Added Atari 8-bit formats: IP2, IMN, ICN, DIN, IRG, IR2, VZI. Added “DEGAS Elite” icon (ICN). Fixed decoding of IPC. Thumbnail provider implemented for Windows 2000/XP. Fullscreen mode in HTML 5.

Download: FAIL (First Atari Image Library) v2.0.1 (1541)

source: fail.sourceforge.net

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups:  Onslaught, Antarctica, Bad Taste, Genesis Project and Laxity.

Download:

• Game of the Gods +D +Pic (1018)
• Sheepoid DX Preview +5 (962)
• Ballgame Preview (937)
• Plumb Crazy (Loadstar) +1D (937)
• Downfall Preview (921)
• Guns \'n\' Ghosts + (1038)
• All Games in One Archive (2403)

source: csdb.dk

The aim of the A8CAS project is to create software to read, save and archive tapes for Atari 8-bit computers.

Early Atari computers could store their programs on Compact Cassettes. Lots of commercial software was also sold on tapes. Some of the tapes employed different tricks to prevent creating illegal copies. A8CAS aims to correctly read and write all such tapes.

A8CAS is inspired by existing utilities, Ernest R. Schreurs’ WAV2CAS and CAS2WAV. Schreurs’ tools however did not support tapes with non-standard data (copy prevention mechanisms), and reading tapes from audio files was very unreliable. A8CAS addresses both of those issues. A8CAS now provides a superset of WAV2CAS’ features.

A8CAS consists of:

A shared library, liba8cas, that contains all routines needed to read and write cassettes (support for CAS, HEX, FSK and sound files WAV, OGG, FLAC etc. is implemented). The library can be used in emulators and drivers for SIO interfaces such as SIO2PC; a set of command-line tools, a8cas-tools, that contains a8cas-convert, a utility similar to WAV2CAS/CAS2WAV. The tools use the A8CAS library; a patch for the Atari800 emulator, that allows to load and save tape files (CAS, HEX, WAV, OGG, …) using liba8cas.

Changelog:

Liba8cas:

• Added the A8CAS_flush() function to API, which ends any chunk being written and writes data from buffers to disk.
• Fixed the inability to adjust stop bit length tolerance during recognition of data blocks. It was hardcoded at 0.25, now it uses the value of the A8CAS_PARAM_BLOCK_HEADER_DEVIATION parameter.
• Fixed crashes when setting A8CAS_PARAM_BLOCK_HEADER_LENGTH lower than 20.

A8cas-tools:

• Fixed a bug in a8cas-convert. When user provided an invalid value to a command-line parameter, the program silently ignored the parameter instead of warning the user

Download: A8CAS new Tools & Libs (1686)

source: a8cas.sourceforge.net