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D64Lister v1.7

March 6th, 2010 No comments

from the Readme file:

Introduction: Because I wasn’t satisfied with all the available D64 lister programs in several aspects I decided to make my own one. The D64Lister is of course Freeware.

The D64Lister is featured with the following abilities and properties, which are described more precise later on:

  • Windows based (Win9x, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP, WinVista, Windows7)
  • Multifile support.
  • Extended Recursive OpenDialog with Directory selection.
  • D64 Images as parameter.
  • Images can be drag&dropped.
  • 40 Tracks Support (SpeedDOS, DolphinDOS, PrologicDOS)
  • 99% PETSCII -> ASCII conversion.
  • 99% Original C64/1541 behaviour.
  • ASCII Textfile generation.
  • RichTextFormat file generation.
  • Appending of new Textfiles to existing ones.
  • Upper/Lower -> Upper/Graphics Char switching.
  • Emulated C64Screen.
  • C64Screen is zoom – and scrollable.
  • Comfortable OptionsDialog with *.ini File.
  • GEOS File support.
  • Auto Upper/Lower Char switching for GEOS Files.
  • GEOS File Details.
  • GeoWrite Textviewer with styles, fontsizes, formats and photoscraps.
  • GEOS Font Shower.
  • GeoPaint Viewer.
  • PhotoScrap Viewer.
  • PhotoAlbum Viewer.
  • GeoPaint pictures and PhotoScraps are saveable.
  • Fonts zoom – and saveable (as bitmap)
  • Zoomable display of GEOS icons.
  • Export function for supported GEOS Filetypes
  • Show BAM (with diskerrors like StarCommander)
  • Show BAM entry -> filename, filename -> BAM entries.
  • BlockViewer in hex or char.
  • FileViewer with BASIC Command Detokenize, C64 program export and Hex View.

source: hardworks.de

1541U-II boards have been produced

March 5th, 2010 1 comment

1541 Ultimatefrom 1541 Ultimate homepage:

February is already drawing to the end, so some news about the 1541U-II is needed here. The good news is: the boards have been produced, and the first few have been tested and are working! They are currently back at the assembly house for a missing connector, but I am expecting them back early this week.

The not-so-good news is, that the plastic cases have more delay. The Chinese company sometimes makes some promises that they are breaking afterwards. Yesterday I received a message that the new samples will be shipped on the 10th of March, while they had previously promised to send 100 cases upfront on Feb 25. I pressed them to send at least 100 pieces on, or before that date.

1541-II Motherboard

The good news about the cases is, that they will be black and not cream! I noticed that a lot of you have a strong preference for black. They will be produced using the PA material, enforced with glass fiber. :-)

source: 1541ultimate.net

SD2Iec Firmware v0.9.0 Released

March 2nd, 2010 No comments

SD2IEC is a hardware mass storage device using an SD/MMC card and interfacing with the IEC bus. It is based on the ATmega644 microcontroller from the Atmel AVR microcontroller family.

The most prominent use of SD2IEC is emulation/replacement of a Commodore-1541 disk drive for a C64. Hardware and the microcontroller’s firmware is available as open source (GPL).

Changelog:

2009-02-28 – release 0.9.0

  • Bugfix: REL offset calculation for records 256,512,…
  • Bugfix: Non-REL P command parameters now match README.
  • Bugfix: Reading after EOI behaves correctly now.
  • Red LED only active while unwritten data in memory.
  • Remove XC,XJ commands.
  • New fastloader: ULoad Model 3.
  • New fastloader: G.I. Joe (said to be commonly ripped)
  • New fastloader: Epyx FastLoad cartridge.
  • Support reading raw directory ($ with secondary > 0)
  • “display disk images as directories”-mode.
  • DNP support.
  • Remote display support.
  • Build system doesn’t require gawk anymore.

source: sd2iec.de gitweb forum thread c64-wiki

Categories: Firmware, News & Rumors, Today

New site for the High Voltage SID Collection

February 28th, 2010 No comments

High Voltage SID CollectionThe High Voltage SID Collection web page is totally renewed. Especially the Search part is much improved.

You can for example type-in “Rob Hubbard” and you will be presented with a complete list.

source: hvsc.de

Attitude Diskmagazine #10 Jubilee Edition released

February 23rd, 2010 No comments

It has been over four years since the latest release of our disk magazine. Finally “Attitude #10″ is ready for download. Get your copy and tell us if it was worth to get together again and make this release possible.

We hope you enjoy this issue as much as you did the previous ones!

source: attitude.c64.org

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

Released eSXDos v0.7.3 Beta public firmware for Divide interface

February 21st, 2010 No comments

eSXDos Divide Beta firmwareGeneral Info:

  • Firmware written primarily for the DivIDE interface, maybe for others in future.
  • Inspired by our (Phoenix & LaesQ) old ‘backbone’ project + inspiration from +D
  • Works with HDD/CD-ROM/ZIP/LS120 (LS120 can access 720KB and 1.44MB floppies)
  • Uses drivers to access filesystems (either in RAM or ROM)
  • Provides new BASIC commands
  • Will provide RST 8 hooks for user-land apps
  • Supports IM2 loading/saving (K3L’s FA part)
  • Drivers give access to the filesystem, and provide specific emulation hooks in certain cases (TRDOS, .TAP, etc)
  • There’s a device/filesystem abstraction layer, which means that BASIC or user-land programs don’t need to know anything about the underlying filesystem/device (ie, you use the same BASIC commands for all filesystems, FAT/ISO/TRD/etc)
  • Will allow up to 4 virtual drives for disk images (.trd/etc)
  • Filesystems are mapped acording to type: hd*, fd*, cd*, vd*, td*
  • FAT12/16/32 driver built-in ROM, other drivers loaded from boot filesystem on demand. (on this preview version, there was still room so TRDOS filesystem is in ROM too)
    Does not need a system file to work, common BASIC commands and FAT driver on ROM, system file loaded from boot filesystem will have additional commands, etc.
  • … more stuff which I prolly forgot

source: esxdos.org

Categories: Firmware, News & Rumors, Today

Island of Secrets Graphic Adventure for Commodore VIC-20

February 20th, 2010 No comments

Island of Secrets Graphic AdventureIsland of Secrets Graphic Adventure – 22 column version by Jenny Tyler and Les Howarth.

This game is a conversion from Commodore 64 of a classic type-in text adventure from the book published by Usborne in 1984. Play it with the stunning graphic excitement of more than 30 hi-res screens! It’s require a VIC-20 + 24K RAM.

source: Denial (The Commodore VIC-20 forum)

D64 Editor v0.030

February 16th, 2010 No comments

This program is basically a utility created to edit your D64 files.  Hopefully when it is done it will have all of the features you’d expect from a c64 based disk editor, as well as additional features that make it easier to manage your D64 files.

Here some features:

  • Read D64 files, display the directory, move files around the directory, rename files.
  • Export files from the D64 into PRG files.
  • Import files into the D64 with autodetection for P00 files.
  • View/Edit the BAM.
  • View the block chain of files on the D64.
  • Create new blank D64 files, clean existing D64′s.
  • View and modify blocks on the disk in hex.
  • Automatic check for crosslinked files on the D64.
  • View the directory using the native c64 font.
  • SEQ File Viewer using the c64 font with PETASCII->ASCII conversion option.
  • Drag and Drop functionality. Drag D64′s onto the main screen to load them, drag other files to import them.
  • Preliminary support for importing T64′s.
  • A filename builder to enable easy use of the C64 Characterset in filenames.

Read more…

Amiga Documents v2.0.9

February 14th, 2010 No comments

Amiga in 1985 and "Amiga" in 2003A anonymous person has published a large amount of files on a web page about the history of Amiga.

At the moment there are more than 600 PDF files available for viewing or downloading.

source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl

ACID 64 Player Pro v3.0.3 (Windows)

February 9th, 2010 No comments

ACID 64 Player Pro is the sequal of Acid 64 Player and is a cycle based Commodore 64 music player designed for playing SID tunes on sound cards/devices that have a real SID chip (6581/6582/8580) on board like the HardSID cards and HardSID 4U USB device.

ACID 64 emulates the MOS 6510 micro processor, the 6526 CIA chip and partially the 6569 VIC chip to run the code of a SID tune and it controls the SID chip on the device for playing the Commodore 64 music.

What’s new in version v3.0.3:

New:

  • Support for the new HardSID USB devices: Uno and UPlay.
  • Auto detection of turned on/off USB devices.
  • Added sorting on column of every grid.
  • Emulated SID reading.

Improvements:

  • When performing e.g. mute/unmute, filter on/off or pause then no time gap isn’t noticed anymore while playing on a USB device.
  • Seek bar is always going smooth now and still synched with the 6510 CPU clock.
  • Improved fast forward.
  • HardSID.dll isn’t required anymore for USB devices.
  • Many small improvements.

Fixes:

  • Works now without administrator rights.
  • When using dual monitor ACID 64 will now be centered on the screen instead of the desktop.

screenshot:

source: acid64.com

A playable game of Tabletop Pong

February 6th, 2010 No comments

A playable game of Tabletop PongPONG is one of the earliest arcade video games, released by Atari way back in 1972. (It was not the first video game, but it’s venerable indeed.)

We’re certainly not the first to build a real-world analog of a video game or even of PONG itself.

source: evilmadscientist.com

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

The Space Limits II for Commodore 64

February 6th, 2010 No comments

The Space Limits IIAchim released his game Space Limits II for the Commodore C64. This 4 kbyte game is the successor of Space Limits from 2009.

source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl noname.c64.org

SIDstick chiptunes player

February 6th, 2010 No comments

The SIDstick is a pocket-sized chiptunes player. Chiptunes are songs written to be synthesized in real-time. A lot of chiptunes are ripped from classic videogames, and some are new works. The SIDstick plays the most common variety of chiptunes, music written for playback on a SID chip. Main features:

  • Removable Storage supporting microSD cards, 1 card can hold 20,000 songs.
  • 20+ hour battery life.
  • Super Hi-Quality hardware-based playback at 31kHz sample rate, >16 bit resolution.
  • Completely Open, hardware and software are available under the MIT license.
  • Upgradable with connections on the board.

source: gadgetgangster.com wikipedia hvsc.c64.org

Categories: Hardware, News & Rumors, Today

Cartograph V1.3 by Arkanix Labs

January 31st, 2010 No comments

CartographCartograph is a native Commodore 64 application created for designing tile-based maps/levels.

This versatile tool allows you to create maps and levels for your games, matrices and data for demos and tools and much more.

Changelog:

Cartograph V1.3 increases productivity and decreases the amount of time needed to create your data. Some of the major changes include six new fill modes (random and pattern), six more data types, REU support (backups and undo), and RLE compression. Maps created with earlier versions are 100% compatible with this new release.

source: arkanixlab.com c64dev.com

1541U-II Plastic Case & Software: Working in progress

January 31st, 2010 No comments

1541 Ultimatefrom 1541 Ultimate homepage:

Finally, you might think! An update on the 1541U-II… As time is going fast, the moment that all the hardware parts for the 1541U-II will be ready is drawing near. It all was not too easy, but things are going now the way they should.

The major difficulty showed to be the plastic case. Finally I have found a contractor who is willing to make the plastic case exactly as I wanted it, for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the mould for plastic injection is quite expensive; in fact about double of what I expected initially, based on an unrealistic quote that I got a few months ago. Because of the large interest in the 1541U-II, I decided to just continue with it, and leave the selling price of the total product intact.

1541U-II

Earlier this week, I received the first pictures of the first try-outs of the injection mould tool. The result shows a little problem in the design, with the planned material (ABS). Due to the thick and sturdy plastic constuction on the inside, sink marks are visible on the outside.

The manufacturer has tried to run the case with a different material (PA), which looks a lot better. However, due to different shrinkage characteristics, the mould tool needs to be adapted to adjust for the difference in material. (You can see this, that the matte version does not close perfectly…) They will do this, but it will take one week extra before the cases are ready. The final color won’t be black (unless I am getting a lot of angry E-mails now.. ;-), but light cream color, to match the C64C better.

Read more…