Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Autopsy:

1234567►

from Wikipedia:

Apricot Computers is a British manufacturer of business personal computers, originally founded in 1965 as “Applied Computer Techniques” (ACT), changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s. It was a wholly owned UK company until it was acquired in the early 1990s by the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, which hoped that Apricot would help them compete against Japanese PC manufacturers, in particular NEC which commanded over 50% of the Japanese market at the time. Mitsubishi eventually shut down the Apricot brand; a management buyout resulted in new company Network Si UK Ltd being formed. In 2008 a new, independent Apricot company was launched in the UK.

Apricot was a remarkably innovative computer hardware company. The Birmingham R&D center could build every aspect of a personal computer except for the integrated circuits (chips) themselves, from custom BIOS and system-level programming to the silk-screen of motherboards and metal-bending for internal chassis all the way to radio-frequency testing of a finished system. This coupled with a smart and aggressive engineering team allowed Apricot to be the first company in the world with several technical innovations including the first commercial shipment of an all-in-one system with a 3.5-inch floppy drive (ahead of Apple), while in the early 90s they manufactured one of the world’s most secure x86-based PCs, sold exclusively to the UK government.

In 1985 ACT was renamed “Apricot Computers”. By this time, the F1 had become one model in the F Series; other machines in the series were the F1e (a cheaper F1 with less RAM standing at 256KB); the F2 (with two floppy drives) and the F10 (with a 10MB Rodime hard drive, 512KB RAM and a more conventional-looking infra-red keyboard). The Activity GUI was replaced by GEM. The F1e contained a 360KB single sided floppy drive, and the F10 contained a 720KB double sided drive. Some F1e computers shipped with an expansion card that could also be used in the F10, that would modulate the RGB video signal to RF enabling the computer to be used with a domestic television set. This card also contained a composite video output. The machine was unusual in that it contained the same 36-way Centronics parallel port that appeared on many contemporary printers (and continued to do so until virtually replaced with USB and ethernet). This means that a standard 36-way centronics male to centronics male cable needs to be used to connect a printer – and these were hard to find since IBM had introduced the DB25F connector.

source: wikipedia

Quick overview of some Flash Cartridges (backup device) for Super Nintendo (Famicom/Snes), Megadrive (Genesis), Nintendo 64, Atari 2600.

Flash cartridges (backup device) used in this video:

• Everdrive-MD flash cartridge for Sega Megadrive (Genesis) with SD/MMC interface.
• EverDrive 64 backup device for Nintendo 64 with SD interface.
• SD2Snes backup device for Super Nintendo (Snes/Famicom) with SD interface.
• Harmony flash cartridge for Atari 2600 with SD interface.

Autopsy:

12►

The SD2Snes cartridge is a SD Card Cartridge for the Super Nintendo / Famicom / Snes.

This cartridge, unlike previous products such as the NeoFlash SNES Myth Cart, has more space inside the Xilinx Spartan FPGA to store code so in the future it is possible to support any special chip as long as it has been firmware updated with the latest code provided that support has been developed and implemented.

Xilinx Spartan FPGA Firmware updates can be done without any special hardware, again, unlike the NeoFlash product. You can put the firmware on an SD card and it will automatically find the file and allow you to flash it right in place.

This cartridge already supports the Capcom CX4 microchip which is used in both the Megaman/Rockman X2 and Megaman/Rockman X3 cartridges. NTSC/U/J and PAL/E ROMs will run without a hitch as well as the Megaman X3 Zero Mission ROM (with the latest firmware update which readdresses some of the memory mapping in code).

It also works with ALL DSP chips including third party vendors (DSP1A/B, DSP2, DSP3, and DSP4). SD Gundam GX and TopGear 3000 run as well as Dungeon Master and Pilotwings. All of these titles load in a fraction of a second and are fully playable. There is no difference between the gameplay of these ROMs using sd2snes than playing them on original cartridge hardware.

Features:

• SD/SDHC/SDXC support (tested up to 64GB; no exFAT support so SDXC cards must be reformatted using FAT32)
• High quality push-push memory card slot.
• Fast ROM loading (~9MB/s)
• Fast menu navigation.
• Directories are sorted automatically, no need for FAT sorting tools.
• High resolution menu (512×224) for adequate display of long file names.
• Real Time Clock.
• Supports ROM size up to 128MBit (96Mbit actually implemented)
• Automatic near-time SRAM saving to SD Card (while the game runs). Some limitations apply:
  • near-time saving is switched to periodic saving when a game is found to use the SRAM as work RAM.
  • Automatic saving is disabled when MSU1 is used. SRAM is saved on reset.
• Enhancement chip support (see below for implementation status)
  • BS-X memory map / Satellaview base unit registers (clock)
  • DSP1 / 1b
  • DSP2
  • DSP3
  • DSP4
  • ST-010
  • Cx4
  • MSU1 (Each supported enhancement chip can be used in conjunction with MSU1.)
  • S-RTC
• SuperCIC key (SNES CIC clone):
  •  enables operation on unmodified consoles of all regions.
  •  supports software 50/60Hz switching on SuperCIC enhanced consoles only (to be performed by sd2snes firmware, not yet implemented there)
• Auto region patching: eliminates “This Game Pak is not designed…” messages regardless of 50/60Hz setting.

A few things that may be added via Firmware updates in the future:

• GSU-1/2 (SuperFX)
• Action Replay/Game Genie code support
• SPC7110
• and more…

SD2Snes Video Review:

Download: SD2Snes Cartridge Label (1909)

source: sd2snes.de tototek.com

A new VIC-20 game by Ghislain is Released.

Short Description: Puzzle action game.

Requirements: Unexpanded VIC-20 + Disk Drive.

Download: Break-Fast II (1274)

source: sleepingelephant.com

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

• fixed REU, transfer length register is 1 after a transfer completes.
• fixed REU 512K wrap around.
• fixed cache controller preventing corruption when accessing 0x1FFFF0000 – 0x1FFFFFFFF
• faster SDRAM controller. More memory bandwidth for turbo.
• added slowdown modes to the Turbo settings. Offering CPU speeds of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.
• added native updater program (see manual) to update the fpga core without an usb connection.
• make menu item active when pressing a hotkey, so it is selected when going back to the respective menu.
• correctly mute/unmute second sid in menu freezer.
• clockport- and rr-net- items in options menu are correctly disabled if either is not available.
• if found, load and run update.prg from sd card (chameleon updater)
• if “boot from sd card” is enabled, load boot.prg from sd card (regular c64 boot program)
• improved navigation in one panel mode, cursor right enters subdir/image and cursor left goes one level up.
• improved quickfind, just type a filename quickly to jump to it.
• mount menu is skipped if there would only be one active item.
• when returning to the menu from the sid player by pressing left/menu button it will go directly to the filebrowser.
• added gfx viewer for various multi-color and hires formats.(see manual)
• added wav player (see manual)
• added filecopy (F5 in two panel mode, see manual)
• set $030c-$030e to 0 before starting prgs, increases compatibility with certain packers.
• .sid files which actually contain a basic program can now be run correctly.
• re-read destination panel after copying image.

Download: Chameleon Beta-7b release (1860)

source: beta.icomp.de

VirtualC64 emulates a Commodore 64 personal computer on your Intel Macintosh OSx > 10.6.

I wrote the software with two major goals in mind. First, I wanted to create an emulator that can be used as a demonstrator program in a first year or second year course on computer engineering.

To achieve this goal, I have integrated various debugging capabilities that let you peek inside the CPU, RAM, ROM, or one of the custom chips. Second, I tried to make the emulator as user friendly as it can get.

In short: VirtualC64 tries to combine the ongoing fascination of the ancient Commodore computers with the great user experience of today’s Macs.

Bug fixes and enhancements:

• Lions native fullscreen mode now works as expected (no more ugly borders)
• Removed old fullscreen mode which frequently crashed on lion machines.

Download: VirtualC64 v0.9.6.1 (1472)

source: dirkwhoffmann.de

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: Really Proud Lamers, Genesis Project and David Eriksson.

Download:

• Spike C64 Dislike +1MHD (1090)
• Deflectors +2D (1161)
• Robots +2D (1128)
• Spike C64 Dislike (1150)
• All Games in One Archive (2462)

source: csdb.dk

The 11th X party will be held from October 19th until October 21rd 2012. The party will be at the new and improved location: De Hoof 18, Someren – the Netherlands. Competitions: C64 Demo, C64 Music and C64 Graphics.

source: x-2012 homepage

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 3.1.2 (2012-06-25):

• Created VLC plugin (SAP format only).
• The JavaScript player now works in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 9 and 6, using XAudioJS.
• Flash Player, Java applet, Silverlight and JavaScript players were put in a single “web” package.
• UTF-8 encoding is supported for STIL.
• Author is no longer hidden in the converted XEX files.
• Winamp plugin opens ATR disk images and plays files inside them.
• Audacious plugin updated to Audacious 3.2 and compiled for Windows.
• BASS add-on updated to be compatible with AIMP 3 (SAP format only).
• Enabled title/author/year in the BASS add-on (only selected BASS-based players use it, for example EncoreBassing).
• Windows Media Player codec supports subsongs, AUTHOR and NAME (this works at least with Media Player Classic Home Cinema).
• JavaScript interface of the web players has been extended and now has same functionality.
• New TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit plugins show changes in SAP tags.

Download: ASAP v3.1.2 (1115)

source: asap.sourceforge.net

The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) is a freeware hobby project which organises Commodore 64 music (also known as SID music) into an archive for both musicians and fans alike.

The work on the collection is done completely in the Team and contributors’ spare time and is proudly one of the largest and most accurate computer music collections known.

This update features (all approximates):

• 975 new SIDs
• 239 fixed/better rips
• 13 repeats/bad rips eliminated
• 3136 SID credit fixes
• 396 SID model/clock infos
• 38 tunes from /DEMOS/UNKNOWN/ identified
• 18 tunes from /GAMES/ identified
• 72 tunes moved out of /DEMOS/ to their composers’ directories
• 24 tunes moved out of /GAMES/ to their composers’ directories

Download:

• HVSC Update #57 (1544)
• Complete HVSC #57 (1533)

source: www.hvsc.c64.org

SID Known is a command line tool (M$ Windows) which you can use to identify SID tunes from SID and PRG files.

This tool can be used if e.g. you want to know which SID tune is used in a specific C64 demo or C64 game, or you have a SID tune found or ripped and you want to know if it is already in your SID collection.

Download: SID Known v1.04 (1130)

source: noname.c64.org

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: S.E.U.C.K. Trainers United, Avatar, Laxity and TRIAD.

Download:

• Legion Of The Damned 2 +2D (1745)
• Legion Of The Damned +2 (1685)
• Medieval Mayhem +2 (1651)
• God Slayer +2D (1652)
• Barakon +2D (1707)
• Blood & Honour +2 (1657)
• Sylphwyrm +2D (1640)
• Skiwriter (1679)
• Forgotten Forest +2 (1725)
• Wyvern +2D (1692)
• Wyverns +2D (1704)
• Mangrove +GD (1736)
• Airliner 101% +D (1786)
• Space Trip +6HF 101% [pal/ntsc] (2267)
• Mini-Golf (Uptime) 101% +D +Pics [pal/ntsc] (1698)

source: csdb.dk

Autopsy:

My personal feedback: This is one of the best Joystick ever made for a intensive use.

from Wikipedia:

Albatros is a joystick produced by Alberici S.p.a (Bologna / Italy). It was sold in the 1980s on the Italian market. The joystick had six microswitches, four for the lever and two for the buttons, together with an audible feedback.

A first series was produced with a slim frustum cone lever. The second production featured a sphere on the top of a larger lever.

source: wikipedia

Line Runner is 8-bit Atari version of the popular game for Android and iPhone. Copyright’s owner is Rober Szeleney (Djinnworks).

Line Runner is available for Atari 800XL, 65XE, 130XE, 1200XL, both PAL and NTSC and is also available a Cartridge version for a very low price.

Download: Line Runner by GR8 Software (1095)

source: gr8.atari.pl