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New Donation: Commodore VC-1541 to Repair + Klain Tape + Some IC.

April 4th, 2013 No comments

Material donated:

  • Commodore VC-1541 (need to fix it)
  • Microcomputer Data Recorder Klain for Commodore 64/VIC20/PET.
  • Some IC.

Thanks Alessio for the donation.

A package of new games for the Commodore VIC-20

April 4th, 2013 No comments

Revision 2013: C64 – Official demo party results

April 3rd, 2013 No comments

This is the official demo party results from Revision 2013 (Top 3 Entries only). See also the official homepage for more informations.

Mixed:

  • 4Krawall by Tristar & Red Sector Incorporated (4K Intro).
  • Franz Craps by K2 (SuperCPU Release).

Mixed Graphics:

  • Escape to Reality by Raven, Nuance.
  • Cor Blimey ! by Arsenic, Crest, Oxyron.
  • Machine D by Crest.

Mixed Music:

  • Abnormal People by Darklite.
  • Mini-bus and us by Fairlight.
  • Rox0r by fieserWolf.

Mixed Demo:

  • Crowd Pleaser by Hitmen.
  • Shards of Fancy by Lft.
  • Digital Underground by Panda Design.

Download: Revision 2013 Party stuff (1026)

source: noname.c64.org 2013.revision-party.net

Tatung: A history of a bad luck

April 2nd, 2013 2 comments

About 3 months ago i have repaired my Tatung Einstein with stability problems, after a few minutes the screen was filled with random characters. Below the replacement parts:

  • 2 x 74LS157 (IOO6/IOO7) Multiplexer.

On the same day has broken the Tatung TC-01 Monitor, the vertical sync is died without any way of adjustment. Yesterday, instead of celebrating Easter, i have tried to repair the monitor, the faulty component was as follows:

  • 1 x TDA 2578A Sync Mixer.

Very happy i have connected the Tatung Einstein to the monitor, i have tried a few games and after 15 minutes the Tatung (computer) decided to die. I spent more hours to understand what could have happened, oh! found it, some ram burned. Below the replacement parts:

  • 3 x RAM 4264 (IO11/IO10/IO8)

What could happen again?

I also did the dump of the eprom (rom), the download below.

Epson HX-20 Presentation and Replacing old accumulators (NiCd)

March 31st, 2013 13 comments
Epson HX-20

Autopsy:

The latest images of the gallery show how to replace the NiCd accumulators.

from Wikipedia:

The Epson HX-20 (also known as the HC-20) is generally regarded as the first laptop computer, announced in November 1981, although first sold widely in 1983. Hailed by BusinessWeek magazine as the “fourth revolution in personal computing”, it is generally considered both the first notebook and handheld computer.

With about the footprint of an A4 size page, the Epson HX-20 features a full-transit keyboard, rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, a built-in 120 × 32-pixel LCD (smaller than that on many mobile phones today) which allowed 4 lines of 20 characters, a calculator-size dot-matrix printer, the EPSON BASIC programming language, two Hitachi 6301 CPUs at 614 kHz which is essentially a souped up Motorola 6801, 16 kB RAM expandable to 32 kB, two RS-232 ports at a maximum of 4800 bits/s for the first 8-pin DIN connector intended for modem or serial printer with the second port capable of 38400 bits/s using a 5-pin DIN connector which was mainly for use with external floppy drive and video display an early concept of docking station, a 300 bit/s acoustic coupler was available, built-in microcassette drive, barcode reader connector.

Uses a proprietary operating system, which consists of the EPSON BASIC interpreter and a system monitor program, and weighs approximately 1.6 kg. Known colours of the machine are silver and cream, while some prototypes were dark grey. The HX-20 was supplied with a grey or brown carry case. An external acoustic coupler, the CX-20, was available for the HX-20, as was an external floppy disk drive, the TF-20, and an external speech synthesis Augmentative Communication Device (ACD), ‘RealVoice’. Another extension was the serially connected 40 x 24 character video. It used a special protocol, EPSP, which was also used by the external floppy disk drive.

The battery life of the HX-20 was approximately 50 hours running BASIC and less using the microcassette, printer or RS-232. The data integrity could be preserved in the 4.0 – 6.0 V range. The power supply was rated for 8 W. Operating and charging it would tolerate 5 – 35 °C. Data integrity could be preserved at -5 – 40 °C. The HX-20 could be stored between -20 – 60 °C. The later, more popular TRS-80 Model 100 line, designed by Kyocera, owed much to the design of the HX-20.

Loading game bomber:

source: wikipedia collection of HX-20 programs

C64 Game: Space Pope 2013 Edition +4H / Zombie Brain Eaters +2D …

March 29th, 2013 No comments

ST-Paint Beta (26/03/2013) by Peter Jørgensen

March 28th, 2013 No comments

ST-Paint is a Drawing program that lets you make Atari St picture on Windows based PC.

ST-Paint is still in a beta phase and it’s made by Peter Jørgensen same author of the program Ym2149 Tracker.

Note from the author:

  • NEW: Add surport for drag and drop.
  • FIX: Remove Spelling Error.

Download: ST-Paint Beta (26/03/2013) (991)

source: fedepede04.dk

Commodore 64 Gold Edition on Ebay.de (Sold out – € 5.900,00)

March 27th, 2013 No comments

Commodore 64 Gold Edition on Ebay.de.

from Richard Lagendijk Homepage:

This a special edition of the Commodore C64, celebrating the 1.000.000th sale of the C64 in Germany. This is one of the most desirable Commodore items. There are about 300 golden Commodore C64 produced. The numbers from 1.000.000 until 1.000.100 were for the staff of the Commodore factory Braunschweig.

The rest was given to hard- en software companies, magazine-publishers and distributors. The C64 is a computer system with a keyboard, external power-supply and a motherboard. On the motherboard you will find a MOS 6510 processor, RAM / ROM memory, MOS 6569 VIC-II video chip, MOS 6581 SID sound chip and twice a MOS 6526 CIA. PAL version.

source: ebay.de richardlagendijk.nl

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

Commodore Joystick 1342 Boxed donated from a friend

March 27th, 2013 No comments
Commodore Joystick 1342 Boxed

Commodore Joystick 1342 donated from a friend.

 

Javatari v3.12 (Atari 2600 emulator)

March 26th, 2013 No comments

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

  • Unique Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
  • Cheat and turn off Collisions. Finally discover the ending of River Raid!
  • Complete Save State/Load State functions.
  • Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
  • Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

  • Preliminary support for built-in ROMs.
  • Auto-load of built-in ROMs.
  • Auto-detection of Paddles Mode per ROM.
  • Option to start with Paddles Mode ON.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.12 (Needs Java 6) (845)

source: javatari.org

HermIRES v1.28 C64 hires-bitmap editor

March 25th, 2013 1 comment

HermIRES it’s a cross-platform hires bitmap (Art Studio 1 format) editor for the Commodore 64.

The format has some restrictions, here are the rules:

  • The maximal resolution of the picture is 320×200
  • Only 16 fix C64 colours can be used (no gradient either)
  • In a 8×8 pixel-block only 2 colours can used to be displayable by C64 (this is detected in HermIRES, but .hbm files can be saved with clashes too.)
  • On a real C64 the PAL will blur the screen-content a bit, should check on CRT, or at least VICE emulator’s CRT simulation.

Changelog:

  • Gave 45 pixel taskbar-height for GUI-size auto-detector (more tolerance)
  • LoadVPL() is now before LoadFile() in ‘main’ (by commandline-argument or from config-setting) so opening .png/.bmp at startup is converted correctly with the latest palette.
  • Caption name now doesn’t contain the extra letter at the end (string-delimiter 0 was put in wrong place by loop)

Download:

source: hermit.netne.net

SNDH Atari ST YM2149 Archive v4.1 released.

March 25th, 2013 No comments

SNDH archive v4.1 released – 3726 SNDH files (total 7003 tunes)

Ever since the birth of the Atari ST, different chip music formats have had different ways to use them. If you are coding a chip music player for the Atari ST you would have to use dozens and dozens of special ways to replay music.

But in the mid 90′s, BDC of Aura crew became tired of this inelegant system and decided to fix the issue once and for all. He then created the ‘SNDH’ file format. SNDH is actually the original songfile and replaycode with a header bolted on top of the music and replayer. The header has a unified calling interface no matter what type of chip music is hidden beneath it, and it has extended datas about the music.

Download: SNDH Atari ST YM2149 Archive v4.1 (1369)

source: sndh.atari.org

Categories: Atari, News & Rumors, Today

HxC Floppy Emulator: Software v2.0.12.2 & HxC Slim Firmware v2.0.2.2

March 24th, 2013 2 comments

The HxC Floppy Drive Emulator is a software and hardware system created by jfdn aka Jeff.

The aim of this project is to replace the floppy disk drive by an electronic device emulating the floppy disk drive (list of supported Computer/Hardware).

There are two differents emulators:

  • A USB version which allows to connect the floppy disk drive interface of the computer to a PC via a USB cable.
  • A SDCARD version which allows to emulate floppy disks which images are stored in a SDCARD.

Firmware Slim SD HxCFloppyEmulator v2.0.2.2:

  • First public SD Slim version firmware.

Release notes for the HxCFloppyEmulator software v2.0.12.2:

  • GUI now Based on FLTK : http://www.fltk.org/
  • Windows / Mac / Linux support ( http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1120  ;) )
  • New library : libhxcfe -> Contains the floppy management functions (track generator/images loaders/analyser/file system layer…).
  • New library : libusbhxcfe -> Contains the HxC USB Floppy Emulator support layer.
  • New Integrated DOS Disk browser : Can generate / add / get / remove files from any DOS HFE files.
  • New Track Viewer/Analyser : Low level floppy track is now analysed and displayed.
  • “Load Raw image” : Predefined floppy disk format description in XML (based on Expat XML Parser)
  • New low level Track format : TYCOM (custom FM) & MEMBRAIN (custom MFM)
  • Floppy disk dump : “missing sector” issue with some FDC corrected.
  • FM Track format : desync added to the end of the track to solve the SCAN command issue with some FDC.
  • Disk Browser : Support of special/custom 2.5MB DD & 4.5MB HD FAT floppy disk format.
  • Batch converter : It is now possible to batch convert RAW images files.
  • Track pregap support/setting added.
  • Some issues corrected & enhancement in the following loader : D88,JV3,DMK,IMD,AFI,EDE,OricDSK,Emax…
  • New file export support : TI99/4A V9T9 file image
  • New Loader : Kryoflux Stream Loader (*XX.X.raw) / analyser.
  • New Loader : Sega System24 Loader (*.S24)
  • New Loader : Apple 2 NIB image support added. (*.NIB)
  • New Loader : Casio FZF floppy image support added.
  • W30 Loader : Roland S50/S330/S550 image support added.
  • HFE Files : New alternate format flags for the track 0 side 0 & side 1.
  • Sanity check function added to some loader.
  • And a lot of minor corrections/enhancement too.

Download:

source: hxc2001.free.fr lotharek.pl

C64 Game: Psycho Soldier +7DFIR 101% / Berzerk RSE +4DF 101% …

March 24th, 2013 No comments

HP-85: Pinch Roller reconstruction / Cleaning Rubber / DC-1000 Fix

March 23rd, 2013 1 comment

I had several problems with the repair of the Hewlett-Packard HP-85.

The first problem was the way to reconstruct the pinch roller using a latex tube, this is a very bad choice, then i have used a 10mm heat shrink, this choice instead is very good.

The second problem was the rubber parts of the pinch roller are literally dissolved and the rubber is went to cover the optical diode and part of the pcb and of course nothing has worked and the tape drive was always in stalled state.

After cleaning, the drive started to work perfectly. The last problem are the magnetic tapes 3M DC-1000 instead of HP DC-100, for the correct operation you must perform a modification by adding a resistor of 2kohm in parallel to the already present on the pcb. After this mod you need to format the tape with the “erasetape” command.

I must also thank John of the site vintagecomputers.freeserve.co.uk for the support.

Download:

source: voidware.com/calcs/hp85rep hp9845.net vintagecomputers.freeserve.co.uk