If you are interested in BASIC programming for the C-64, then you have probably used a BASIC Extension at some point. Most of us are familiar with Commodore’s Simons’ BASIC cartridge. Unfortunately, most of these extensions aren’t very useful. Simons’ BASIC, for example, has a pretty lousy set of commands.
Many of them are basically (pun) useless. It’s also a very confusing set of commands — there are no consistent conventions used, making it necessary to constantly refer to the manual.
Further, a program written with Simons’ BASIC can only be run on a C-64 with a Simons’ BASIC cartridge. Pretty limiting.
DotBASIC Plus is similar to other extensions in one way: you get a lot of new commands (or DotCommands, of course) — over 100 so far. But that’s where the similarities end.
source: 8bitcentral.com
This game is a Manic Miners style game with extra sub-games. It is programmed by Jason Fox and Adam Gilmore did the graphics and music. The game is actually more than 20 years old but was never released.
source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl gtw64.retro-net.de
Some new Games & Tools for VIC-20
- Meteor Storm (an impossible mission)
- Weather 20 (Conversion of the classic Commodore PET game Ouranos (Weather War). Inspired by Orion70′s version for software emulated 40 column VIC-20, this is a genuine 22 column version.)
- Repel (A resurrected Space Invaders clone from a 1983 archive. Written in 100% machine code.)
- Island of Secrets (Conversion from Commodore 64 of a classic type-in text adventure from the book published by Usborne in 1984. Play it on your little colour computer!)
source: Denial (The Commodore VIC-20 forum)
Autopsy:
from Project Homepage:
The 1541-III is a PIC microcontroller controlling an FAT16 MMC/SD card with .D64 files. It is connected to a Commodore computer via the standard IEC-bus (the serial bus normally used to connect diskdrives and printers).
The main goal of the circuit is to behave like a 1541 disk drive (therefore the name 1541-III). The MMC/SD card contains D64-files (or normal .PRG files).
source: Project 1541 III
Scalos is a workbench replacement for the Amiga computer. In this new version a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
source: scalos.noname.fr
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:
2009-03-20 – release 0.6.7a
source: sd2iec.de gitweb forum thread
From homepage: This version fixes some critical bugs.
Changelog:
- Fixed crash when changing sampling frequency of audio device before playing a tune.
- Fixed error handling when syncing a collection that has been deleted and replaced with a file.
- Added load address to tune details panel of info window.
- Playlists now end correctly after the last tune if repeat is turned off.
- Fixed incorrect timing on playback of many different tunes.
- Small performance improvements.
- Fixed deleting of playlist items, if playlist is not sorted by index.
- Playlist item count is updated immediately when items are removed from a playlist.
- Fixed filter settings when exporting multiple tunes.
source: sidmusic.org
This is a search engine written in PHP and using a MySQL database to store/search c64 releases by filename(file size) or label. Its intention is to let people search in huge amounts of c64 data and locate missing releases. Included is a matcher-tool, that can scan your archives for missing releases!
Read more…
Hi all!, after 13 years we are back Online via Telnet.
The Hidden Power BBS is working with all the statistics (bullettins) and calls (callerslog) of a time, and nothing was removed, all accounts (login / password / nup / telnet login) are the same as 13 years ago.
If you want to try, Click the Magic Link on the upper right corner (you need Java Macromedia Flash for the FlashTerm Telnet Client).
Hardware used:
- Amiga 1200.
- 64mb FastRam.
- 2mb ChipRam.
- 60gb 2.5″ IDE HD (DH0: FFS / DH1: SFS).
- Phase5 Blizzard 1230 IV (68030 / 50mhz)
- Kick 3.1 (blizzKicked ;-D).
- IDE-Fix Express Splitter / Express Adapter.
- Indivision AGA 1200 (FlickerFixer).
The PASSWORD of Telnet D00r (fake Unix login) is: area51 / nup: oldskool
Executable Image is a perversely over-engineered solution to a very simple problem: how do I convert a Koala image into an executable program? The sane solution would be to fire up an assembler, write about a page of code copying color ram, set up the VIC, and then pucrunch or exomize it to get a sys line.
Scout released a .bat file that does pretty much all that, and it gets the job done. The implementation gave me an itch that I just had to scratch
though.
Executable Image is available for MacOsx / Linux Binary (sources included).
Changelog:
2009-03-17 – Executable Image release 2
- Added support for Amica Paint images.
- Added support for OCP Art Studio V1 images.
- Added support for Doodle images.
- Added support for FLI Designer 1 & 2 images.
- Added support for FLI Graph images.
- Border color can be set with -b.
- Image format can be forced with -f.
- Application chattiness can be changed with -q, -v, and -d.
- Compressor can be selected with -c.
- Available compressors are now none, lzss, pucrunch, and exomizer.
- LZSS compressed images can now be re-run after exiting to basic.
source: noname.c64.org
ProTrekkr (formerly known as NoiseTrekker by Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius aka Arguru) is a tracker program combining a software synthesizer together with a traditional samples tracker which can be used to create electronic music (like psytrance, trance goa, hard acid, IDM, chip, techno, etc.) for small sized intros, demos or games.
source: os4depot.net
How to deal with the “not-so-mellow yellow” of old computers and consoles
Anyone who has dug their old computer or console out of the cupboard or loft for some retro gaming will probably have noticed that it maybe hasn’t worn too well with the test of time. The plastics these machines were made of is called ABS and to make it flame retardant (just in case it catches fire after a marathon session) the plastics manufacturers added chemicals that caused the plastic turn yellow or, even worse, brown over a long period of time.
source: retr0bright.wikispaces.com
MultiColor is an image manipulation tool for Commodore 8-bit computers’ graphics formats. It is an old-school painting program for graphicians but not an image converter. Currently VIC-II multicolor bitmap is the only supported image format.
Features:
- Written in C++, so it’s quite fast and no special runtime is required.
- Can be compiled for many platforms, because it uses wxWidgets.
- Can load Koala and Amica, file type is detected independently from file name.
- Behaviour when hitting the color-per-cell-limit can be selected.
- Undo/redo.
- Tools with realtime preview (e.g. Line)
- Basic TV emulation.
- Zoom, with grid at higher zoom factors.
Changelog:
Read more…
from 1541 Ultimate forum:
This is the domed resin 1541U logo that comes with your case, free to the first 50 orders.
source: 1541ultimate.net
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