Autopsy:

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The Mivar 9BN2V it’s a 9 inches B/W CRT screen with 16 programs preselection with a electronic tuning for each program. It can be powered even with a 12volt and has a headphone jack.

Mivar is an Italian TV-set manufacturer. It was founded by entrepreneur Carlo Vichi in 1945 in Milan. Mivar used to produce radios and CRT televisions, but now produces only LCD LED televisions. Mivar is the last Italian factory of televisions. Their factory is in Abbiategrasso (20 km from Milan).

Since the 80s until 2000 in Italy Mivar TVs have had a very wide spread, in fact these televisions were present in almost every Italian house, in the Italian TV Studios, in schools, hospitals, hotels and prisons, because these CRT TVs were good, cheap, robust and durable.

When the market decided to focus on the LCD TVs, Mivar was unprepared and had serious difficulties. But thanks to the tenacity of the master Carlo Vichi, Mivar introduced in 2010 some new attractive and competitive LCD-CCFL TVs, and in 2011 some new LCD-LED TVs. The televisions made today by Mivar are also particularly simple and rational, with a particular Italian design and front speakers for better sound. Today’s Mivar TVs are all made in Italy.

source: wikipedia

I thank my dear friend that gave me this external Numeric Keypad.

Autopsy:

The Advance Business Technology Inc (ABT) is a external Numeric Keypad made for the Apple II line of computers.

Autopsy:

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Zanussi, a well known Italian furniture company, released two game systems: Ping-O-Tronic, an analog game first released in late 1974 but really successful during 1975, and Play-o-Tronic, an AY-3-8500 game released in 1977 (this particular model was also released by Universum in Germany). Zanussi obtained the Sanders Associates License Agreement on April 21st, 1975. Zanussi reported 21,514 Play-o-Tronic units sold between October 1st and December 31st, 1977 (3 months) for a total amount of 620,408,000 lire, on which a 5.5% royalty was paid to Sanders (34,122,440 lire). Considering this amount, each game would have cost around 28,800 lire during this period, which seems quite low. Unfortunately there is no similar information for Ping-O-Tronic.

Ping-O-Tronic is a nice example of an early video game designed with discrete components (over fifty transistors and twenty diodes) and only three TTL chips (7400 type). All of the graphic objets (paddles, ball, boundaries) and sync signals are generated by transistor flip-flops and one-shots. The chips combine the individual signals so as to manage events like collisions between the ball and a paddle, or a lost ball. They may also be used as triggers for the serves.

This system is quite interesting because it has been improved and upgraded several times. At least nine different models are known to exist, all of which remain on the initial design (PP-2 if not PP-1). Little is known about the first model (PP-1), which dates late 1974. All we know is that it was nearly same as model PP-2 below, and may differ only by one or a few improvements in the electronic circuits (cleaner video signals, etc).

All of the systems play three games: Tennis, Squash / Solo and Attract / Automatic. Tennis and Squash are the obvious games played by analog systems. Curiously, the Hole in the Wall variant has not been implemented although it would have required minor modifications to invert the video signal of a paddle (or both to play more games). Surprizingly, an Attract / Automatic mode is available, where nodoby plays. Both paddles take the whole screen in height, forming a closed square with the two horizontal boundaries. Thus the ball bounces indefinitely, making a very strange PONG variant that only one other system known to play: Executive Games Electronic Television Tennis. This mode was a very clever way to attract people in shops because it required nobody to demonstrate the unit. You whould simply place it in the window and everybody walking down the street would see it play by itself ! This said, the attract mode designed by Executive Games was more realistic since it involved an intelligent paddle which moved automatically to always catch the ball in a squash game.

Several adjustments can be made. Paddles can vary in height from very small (almost unplayable) to enormous. This rare feature for an analog game certainly allowed young kids to play more easily. The picture can be centered both horizontally and vertically. The system is only powered by the mains (no batteries). Both hand controllers can be stored in the system case when not used.

Although model PP-2 is labeled Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic on the top side, models PP-4 and PP-5 are known to exist as Seleco Ping-O-Tronic. As a matter of fact, Seleco was a trademark of the Zanussi Industries. Other models like PP-6 only show “Ping-O-Tronic” without trademark. We currently ignore if both Seleco and Zanussi labels were used for a same model.

source: pong-story.com

I thank my dear friend that gave me this computer.

Autopsy:

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The Thomson MO6 was an 6809E-based computer introduced in France in 1986. It featured 128 KB of RAM, a 40×25 text display, and built-in Microsoft BASIC. The MO6 was available until January 1989. In Italy it was sold by Olivetti with little aesthetic changes, and named Olivetti Prodest PC128.

The Thomson MO 6 was the successor of the Thomson MO 5. This machine was widely used in French schools. It was compatible with the MO 5 and the other members of its family (TO 7, TO 8, TO 9 and TO 9 plus).

It has two versions of BASIC on ROM, one to be compatible with MO5 and BASIC 128 (both made by Microsoft). Almost all memory (101 KB) was accessible with BASIC thanks to a transparent 16 KB bank switching mechanism. An optional 3.5″ floppy disk drive (640 KB) was available.

It had a short life because soon after it was launched, the TO 8 came and challenged to it.

BUILT IN LANGUAGE 2 Microsoft BASIC interpreters – MO5 compatible and BASIC 128
KEYBOARD Full stroke 69 key with 5 function keys and arrow keys
CPU Motorola MC 6809e
SPEED 1 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR Custom Thomson gate array chip
RAM 128 KB
ROM 64 KB
TEXT MODES 40 or 80 chars x 25 lines
GRAPHIC MODES 8 modes, from 160 x 200 to 640 x 200 dots

source: computinghistory.org.uk

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:

• AFLI caption can be fully disabled (AFLIexe-patch included along with bin2array.exe)

Download:

• HermIRES v1.29 (Windows/Linux) (1257)

source: hermit.netne.net

It was released a new firmware for the SD2Snes Flash Cartridge (Super Nintendo/Famicom) by Ikari. The upgrade instructions can be found here.

Changelog:

Added:

• OBC1 support (Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge works)
• Menu now displays the 10 most recently played games instead of one.
• Hidden and system files are now ignored in the file browser.
• Some minor internal changes for convenience of development.

Fixes:

• Partial-size BS dumps should now load correctly.
• Fixed a PSRAM mapping bug in the new BS-X mapping logic that caused graphical corruption on some games (notably Treasure Conflix garbled sprites)
• SRAM mapping for LoROM
• 0000-7fff only. Fixes saving in some games, e.g. Ys III Wanderers from Ys.

Download: SD2Snes Firmware v0.1.6 (1422)

source: sd2snes.de

Forth, the Language.

Forth is a different language. It’s aged and a little weird.
What’s cool about it? It’s a very low-level and minimal language without any automatic memory management. At the same time, it easily scales to become a very high-level and domain-specific language, much like Lisp. Compared to C64 Basic, Forth is more attractive in almost every way.

It is a lot more fast, memory effective and powerful. Compared to C, specifically cc65, the story is a little different. It’s hard to make a fair comparison. Theoretically Forth code can be very memory efficient, and it’s possible to make Forth code that is leaner than C code. But it is also true that cc65 code is generally much faster than Forth code.

Download: durexForth v1.26 + Manual (1104)

source: noname.c64.org

Autopsy:

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Zanussi, a well known Italian furniture company, released two game systems: Ping-O-Tronic, an analog game first released in late 1974 but really successful during 1975, and Play-O-Tronic, an AY-3-8500 game released in 1977 (this particular model was also released by Universum in Germany).

Zanussi obtained the Sanders Associates License Agreement on April 21st, 1975. Zanussi reported 21,514 Play-O-Tronic units sold between October 1st and December 31st, 1977 (3 months) for a total amount of 620,408,000 lire, on which a 5.5% royalty was paid to Sanders (34,122,440 lire). Considering this amount, each game would have cost around 28,800 lire during this period, which seems quite low. Unfortunately there is no similar information for Ping-O-Tronic.

source: pong-story.com

Repaired for a friend a Commodore CBM 8296 Motherboard.

Defect:

• Black screen of death without startup beep.

Replaced parts:

• Replaced PLA [UE6] with a OTP EPROM 27C512R 70ns + Adapter.
• Replaced PLA [UE5] with a original one MOS 324744-01
• Replaced [UC8] 3-State Driver Bus MOS 65245 (74LS245)

Most people will remember the Commodore 64 as the classic breadox with the rainbow label (logo). However, when Commodore released the first C64s, they didn’t have this label (logo), but had a silver logo with the text “Commodore” and a silver “64″ next to the power LED.

The keyboard of this C64 Silver is pretty rare and is absolutely identical in the shape to that of Commodore’s PET computer (however, on the Commodore 64 side the PET’s number pad was replaced by four wide function keys, the remaining holes are covered with tape).

The motherboard used is the the original Rev.A ASSY 3262980 with the Video Chip (VIC II) ceramic and has also a 5-pin video connector instead of the 8-pin connector that later boards had. It means there’s not separate chroma signal available in a 5-pin video connector. In other words: no S-Video, only composite available via the video port.

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The Commodore 64, commonly called C64, C=64 (after the graphic logo on the case), occasionally CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International.

Due to changes in the computing industry since its release, people claim it’s the highest selling computer of all time. This claim is disputed, because various changes were made to the “Commodore 64″, making the CP/M plug in cartridge incompatible with all but some 1982 production models, as well as the computer being revamped and placed into a new case, then its name changed to Commodore 64C, indicating that there were at least 3 different models in this range of computers.

Volume production started in early 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$ 595.[7][8] Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM, and had favorable sound and graphical specifications when compared to contemporary systems such as the Apple II, at a price that was well below the circa US$1200 demanded by Apple, but the same couldn’t be said of the Tandy Color Computer, which was initially priced at $399.

source: wikipedia mos6502.com

Some new games or tools (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups.

Titles:

• Double or Nothing
• Castle Boy +3
• Stratagos +4
• Arcade Football &GD
• Metro-Cross +5MDGHF
• Vault Man +7
• Ganimedian Rescue +4ED
• D-2000 IFR-Trainer Preview +E
• Rudi the Rat +4EHD
• Bouncing Ball +4EHD 101%
• Sharky +5HDG
• Shaolin+ +2HD +Pic
• Flappy Bird +
• Flappy Bird +1
• Flappy Bird +MH
• Labiraton +4E
• D-2000 IFR-Trainer Flight Simulation +EFD [pal/ntsc]
• Slither
• cc65 Chess V1.0
• Flappy Bird
• Flipperkönig +D
• Rocky Memphis Preview +
• Paradroid Redux Preview 2
• Penultimate Fantasy 101% +DM
• Combination Deluxe +4PF [pal/ntsc]
• Happy Flappy &H
• Silverrock 3-in-1 [Easyflash] Skaermtrolden Hugo, Guldkorn Expressen, Super Oswald
• Gold Grabber +3D
• Star Strike +2D
• Rocky Memphis and the Temple of Ophuxoff Preview +1F [pal/ntsc]

Download: All Games in One Archive (3057)

source: csdb.dk

Autopsy:

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The computer Lemon II is a “perfect” clone of the Apple ][+ (Apple Europlus) produced in Italy by different companies, Selcom, Jen, Belton and Lemon Italy.

The mainboard was a copy almost identical of the Apple ][+, differ from the original for a few details, such the use of EPROM instead of ROM.

The contents of the ROM was slightly modified to remove any reference to Apple. So the boot screen that show “Apple II” are replaced with “Lemon II”. The Lemon II was therefore not only a computer “compatible” like the original, but a real clone.

The computer won the fame of 100% software compatibility, feature that will determine the commercial success.

This text was taken from the homepage of computerhistory.it and translated in English language.

Playing at Montezuma’s Revenge:

Lemon II at work in a school laboratory:

source: computerhistory.it leganerd.com

I have received a Lemon II computer (Apple ][+ / Europlus Clone) in a good cosmetic condition but with a serious problem at the keyboard, here below defects and repairs that has been made.

Cleaning comparison (before / after):

Gallery of the repair:

Defects:

• First problem: When a keyboard key is pressed is always displayed the same character, in this case the character “O”
• Second problem (which i have only noticed after solving the first one): The keyboard works correctly, all characters are displayed in the correct way, but sometimes the character displayed does not match with the key pressed. Example: when pressing many times the letter “I”, after a while is displayed the character “Y” and after a while it show the right character “I”.

Components Replaced:

• 2 x 74LS191 (UP/DOWN Counters)
• 1 x SMC KR2376-ST (Keyboard Encoder)

I have to thank my friend Luca that called me to inform me that there was still a piece of the SMC KR2376-ST available in the store.

Autopsy:

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The Philips Monitor CM8802/00G is an excellent RGB monitor 14” suitable to use with Amiga and Atari ST.

Electronically is identical to the monitor Philips CM 8833, but compared to the latter one we can’t find the TTL RGB (DIN) input and the switching for Color/Monochrome, but is always present the composite (RCA) and Audio which makes it perfectly for computers with this type of output.

Cleaning comparison (before / after):

Defects:

• Missing RED Color.
• Out of focus.
• Convergence and saturation of colors.
• The monitor turns off by itself.

Works that have been made:

• Redone cold solder joints on PSU and CRT PCB.
• Focus, Colors and Convergence Adjustment.
• Cleaning.

Download:

• Philips CM8802-CM8833 Manual (4662)
• Philips CM8802-CM8833 Service Manual (1947)

This is the official demo party results from BCC Party #8 (Top 3 Entries only). See also the CSDB BCC Party #8 section for more informations.

C64 Demo:

• Durch den Monsun by Delysid
• Was erlaube MYD? by Mayday!
• Free Beer! by Delysid

C64 Music:

• Flott-O-Mat by Spider Jerusalem
• Locust by Slimex
• Quad*Project by celticdesign

C64 Graphics:

• Eisvogel by Slayer Grafix
• Butterfly Dreams by JSL
• Dark Power by Crayon

Mixed:

• Godspeed – A 8580 Music Album by Mayday! (Music Collection)
• Buddha Music Disk #1 by Hokuto Force (Music Collection)
• Commodore in Space II by Wintermute (Game

Download: BCC Party #8 Party stuff (1136)

source: facebook.com