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* (1008)

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

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

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 (1560)

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 (1021)

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 (881)

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 (1704)

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 (1617)

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 (1040)
• Sheepoid DX Preview +5 (1024)
• Ballgame Preview (997)
• Plumb Crazy (Loadstar) +1D (980)
• Downfall Preview (971)
• Guns \'n\' Ghosts + (1091)
• All Games in One Archive (2491)

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 (1761)

source: a8cas.sourceforge.net

Commodore Free Magazine Issue #68 and #69

Free to download Commodore magazine dedicated to Commodore Computers.

Download:

• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #68 (D64) (1006)
• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #68 (PDF) (1156)
• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #68 (TXT) (1211)
• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #69 (D64) (1000)
• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #69 (PDF) (1359)
• Commodore Free Magazine Issue #69 (TXT) (942)

source: commodorefree.com

Steve Gray started a new project. He uses an 80 column (monochrome) CBM/PET to display a 40 column screen with colour.

A normal 80 column CBM/PET uses two RAM banks for the text. Steve now uses one RAM bank for the text (40 columns) and the other RAM bank for the colour information.

source: 6502.org awesome.commodore.me

CBM-Command is a disk manager for the Commodore 64 / Commodore 128 / Commodore VIC20 / PET and Commodore C16 computers. It is written like Norton Commander or Midnight Commander, but is much simpler due to the target platforms. Both the C128/C64/VIC20/C16/PET have their own native version of the application.

Release Notes – Version 2.2 – 2013-04-16 – RC2

New Features:

• Provides Side-By-Side panels or Top-And-Bottom panels on 40-column systems.
• Batch disk image creation.
• User can select drive or partition number.
• The disks have a little BASIC-language program that can update your configuration files.

Updates from RC1:

• The help file explains how to use a new feature of the configuration utility.
• The configuration-file updater adds another configurable key to your personal configurations.
• The D80 image was rebuilt, in order to work around a VICE bug.

Known Issues:

• It can trigger the write-and-replace bug.
• It can’t create or write back D80 and D82 images.
• The REL-file copier doesn’t truncate old target files that have the same record size as the new file.
• It will try to copy DEL files if they are selected.
• Errors don’t stop batch operations; the file is skipped.

Download: CBM-Command v2.2 RC2 (D64/D80) (1722)

source: cbmcommand.codeplex.com