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Sinclair ZX80 Original Power Supply

May 10th, 2013 1 comment

I thank my dear friend for having found the original power supply of my Sinclair ZX80.

Commodore CBM 8250 & CBM 8296 Motherboards for Spare Parts

May 10th, 2013 No comments

I thank my dear friend for the donation of the motherboards.

  • Commodore Dual Drive Floppy Disk CBM 8250
  • Commodore CBM 8296

C64 Game: Danger Valley +2ED / Ballistix (AMIGA REMIX) +4FGD …

May 10th, 2013 No comments

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups:  TRIAD, Hokuto ForceThe Hidden Farts and Laxity.

Download:

source: csdb.dk

Some things to repair, test and still other to keep.

May 10th, 2013 No comments

A dear friend sent to me a few things to repair or test, i will see to do my best.

Things to repair/testing:

  • Commodore 64/128 – 1764 Ram Expansion (dead)
  • Commodore 64 Power Supply for the Commodore 1764 Ram Expansion (pcb broken)
  • ZX Spectrum Plus (7805 over burned)
  • Texas Instruments TI-99/A (black screen)
  • Amstrad 464 + (replace case and keyboard)
  • Kung-fu Master Jamma pcb Board (no audio)
  • Arabian Sinclair Spectrum 2+ (dead + tape problem + keyboard problem)
  • Sinclair ZX81 (video problem / testing)
  • Sinclair ZX80 (video problem / testing)
  • Sega SC-3000 (cpu bad socket)

Things for spare parts or to keep:

  • Sinclair ZX80 Original Power Supply.
  • Commodore VIC-20 Boxed cartridges.
  • Sega SC-3000 Basic cartridge.
  • Commodore Dual Floppy Drive 8250 motherboard (spare parts)
  • Commodore CBM 8296 motherboard (spare parts)
  • Sharp CE-510F Dual Floppy Drive for Sharp PC-5000 (Boxed)
  • Chalkboard Powerpad + Expansions (Boxed)
  • Tape Recorder for Commodore (spare parts)

MCUmall GQ-4X Universal USB Programmer + Adapters

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

Brand New Commodore Amiga 1200 Keyboard (UK)

May 7th, 2013 1 comment

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

SD2Snes Tiny status update

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

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

Re.Bit numero #8

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

Demo of the Year Competition results *updated*

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* (966)

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

(Italian) Jurassic News numero #47

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

Philips NMS 800/801 (MSX-DOS Compatible) Boxed

May 4th, 2013 1 comment
Philips NMS 800/801 (MSX-DOS Compatible)

Autopsy:

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

Goodbye Commodore USA and Commodore OS support forum

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

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

ASAP v3.1.4 – Another Slight Atari Player

April 30th, 2013 No comments

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 (1511)

source: asap.sourceforge.net

FM Radio for Commodore 64

April 29th, 2013 No comments

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 (993)

source: fm-radio-for-c64

CBM prg Studio v2.6.0 released

April 29th, 2013 No comments

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 (849)

source: ajordison.co.uk