Commodore 64 DiskMagazine – Scene World #20

January 5th, 2013 No comments

Scene World is a C64 magazine on disk dedicated to various activities of both C64 scenes.

“Both” means, that we are supplying information and texts of both scenes; NTSC and PAL.

Download: Scene World #20 (D64/D81 + Disk Cover) (847)

source: sceneworld.c64files.com

Atari Dos: SpartaDOS X v4.46

January 4th, 2013 1 comment

SpartaDOS X (or SpartaDOS 4.0) is a disk operating system for the Atari 8-bit family of computers, that closely resembles MS-DOS. It was developed and sold by ICD, Inc. in 1987-93.

Ten years later SpartaDOS X considered abandonware has been picked up by its enthusiasts, and developed further. These unofficial revisions, incorporating many of the utilities written since 1992, cleaning many identified problems and including numerous improvements, are:

  • v4.31 (2005)
  • v4.39RC (2006)
  • v4.40 (a leaked-out beta, 2006)
  • v4.41 (Feb. 2008)
  • v4.42 (Dec. 2008)
  • v4.43 (Apr.2011)
  • v4.44 (Jun.2011)
  • v4.45 (Nov.2011)
  • v4.46 (Jan.2013)

The new SpartaDOS X 4.46 runs on the following hardware platforms:

  • intSDX128
  • intSDX128 “flash”
  • Maxflash 1Mb
  • Maxflash 8Mb (contains MAN on-line help)
  • Altirra and Atari800 emulators
  • Turbo Freezer 2005 (contains MAN on-line help, use with Freezer ROM only)
  • SIC! Cartridge (256k version contains MAN on-line help)
  • IDE Plus 2.0 (contains MAN on-line help)
  • Ultimate 1MB (contains MAN on-line help)

SDX Toolkit:

  • Set of additional programs, drivers and utilities
  • Set of SDX command descriptions for MAN utility (excerpts from the User’s Manual).

SDX images for SIDE:

  • Customized SDX images with SIDE driver are available at Jonathan Halliday’s website.

Dowload:

source: sdx.atari8.info wikipedia

Categories: Atari, News & Rumors, Today

New Years Disc 7th edition (2013) for Atari XL/XE

January 4th, 2013 No comments

This is the 7th edition of the New Years Disc for Atari. In this issue you can find a lots of interesting things to begin a new year with our beloved Atari.

In this issue you can find:

NYD2013 Disc 1 – multidisc.atr:

  • Hello 2k13 by PPs
  • Frosty animation (Beware it’s mature ware!) by CharlieChaplin
  • Fireworks by CreatureXL, 505 and Flash
  • Xmas 2012 animation by CharlieChaplin
  • Chicks on Chips by JAC!
  • Doomsday demo by Inspiration Soft
  • Happy 2013 by Sikor, Miker & his wife

NYD2013 Disc 2 – Blowjobb part.atr:

  • A bootable disc with a DOS. When it’s ready loaded type in: N* and press RETURN.

NYD2013 Disc 3 – 320k animation.atr:

  • A nice animation from miker. You’ll need at least 320k on your machine!

NYD2013 Disc 4 – multidisc.atr:

  • Happy New Year animation (Needs at lease 128k!) by miker
  • Sprite multiplexer  by playsoft

NYD2013 Disc 5 – ipc viewer.atr:

  • After booting you’ll get into a viewer, where you can load ipc pictures. More about the whole thing can be read in the designated readme file. Synthpopalooza did a great job here. Simply press D and you’ll see, what pictures are on this disc to load them.

NYD2013 Disc 6 – ipc pictures.atr:

  • Another disc with ipc files on it. Load them with the viewer of disc 5.

NYD2013 Disc 7 – multidisc.atr:

  • Rough Rider by XXL & Irrlichtproject
  • Dice 2013 by Sikor & Miker
  • Rolling Stars by MaPa & PG

Download: New Years Disc 7th edition (2013) (1214)

source: pouet.net

Categories: Atari, News & Rumors, Today

Hoxs64 Commodore 64 Emulator Updated v1.0.8.1

January 3rd, 2013 No comments

Hoxs64 written by David Horrocks is a Commodore 64 emulator for Microsoft Windows 2K/XP/Vista/Seven (DirectX 9+)

The emulator substantially reproduces this legacy machine in minute detail.

Changelog:

  • Added the EasyFlash 1MB cartridge. A simplified emulation of the AMD Am29F040 EPROM permits writing and passes EasyProg v1.6.3 tests.
  • Fixed freeze and soft reset to spread randomly through the frame to improve the chance of a successful freeze.
  • New cartridge emulation with freeze function. Peter Schepers CRT format is supported. The following cartridge emulations are supported: Action Replay v[6 - 2], Final Cartridge III (v3 only), Retro Replay 64K RAM, Magic Desk, Ocean 1, Fun Play, Super Games, System 3, Dinamic, Zaxxon, Simons Basic, Normal Cartridge. The CRT reader uses the in file reported chip bank numbers and not the order they appear in the file.
  • Fixed misreported raster position in the debugger when starting a new frame.

Download:

source: hoxs64.net

CBM prg Studio v2.5.3 released

January 3rd, 2013 No comments

CBM prg Studio Version 2.5.3 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:

  • New source conversion tool to convert Develop64 files to asm format.
  • New tutorial explaining how to use projects to manage assembly source files.

Bugs fixed:

  • Relative addressing with offset, e.g. BMI *+4.
  • Some invalid relative offsets not detected.
  • Excluding source files from a project.
  • Removing source files from a project.
  • Assigning a variable to another variable.
  • Warnings if invalid BASIC jump (goto, gosub etc.) destinations are detected.
  • Unknown labels not detected.
  • Screen designer not retaining ‘reverse off’ after new line.
  • Forward-referenced cheap labels not working.
  • Duplicate cheap labels not detected.
  • Some UI issues.

Download: CBM prg Studio v2.5.3 (825)

source: ajordison.co.uk

C64 Game: Retron Phase One +2H / Blok Copy – PETSCII Edition …

January 2nd, 2013 No comments

(Italian) Jurassic News numero #45

January 1st, 2013 No comments

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Categories: Magazine, News & Rumors, Today

Commodore Single Drive Floppy Disk VIC-1541

January 1st, 2013 No comments
Commodore Single Drive Floppy Disk VIC-1541

Autopsy:

The motherboard is the same of Commodore VIC-1540 (Rev A/B PCB 1540007 (C) 1981 made in Japan) with a old HIGH Rom MOS “901229-03″ instead of “325303-01″.

The Commodore 1541 (aka CBM 1541, and originally called VIC-1541), made by Commodore International, was the best-known floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64 home computer. The 1541 was a single-sided 170 kilobyte drive for 5¼” disks. The 1541 followed the previous Commodore 1540 (meant for the VIC-20).

Here you can find the US version of the Commodore Single Drive Floppy Disk VIC-1541.

Testing the Floppy Drive:

Commodore Printer 4023 (IEEE 488)

December 31st, 2012 No comments
Commodore Printer 4023 (close-up)

Autopsy:

The Commodore Printer 4023 is a printer with a IEEE-488 Bus and may be daisy-chained with other IEEE-488 devices. This printer is fully compatibile with all computers Commodore PET/CBM.

Model 4023 Printer Specifications:

  • Printing Method: Serisal Impact Dot Matrix.
  • Print Rate: 45 LMP with 80 columns printed. 78 LPM with 40 columns printed. 124 LMP with 20 columns printed.
  • Print direction: Bi-directional.
  • Column Capacity: 80
  • Character Font: 8 x 8
  • Line Spacing: Programmable.
  • Character Size: 0.094″ high, 0.08″ wide
  • Copies: 3, including original.
  • Ribbon Type: Cartridge.
  • Ribbon Life: 1.2 x 10(6) characters.
  • Ribbon Cartridge: Commodore P/N 613160550
  • Paper Width: 10″ computer folded paper.
  • Forms: 7.5 + (0.5 x 2 sprocket margins) Pin-to-pin distance .5″ longitudinally, 9.5″ laterally, 5/32″ diameter.

Commodore Printer 4023 self test:

Atari SAP Music Archive (ASMA) v3.6

December 30th, 2012 1 comment

Atari SAP Music Archive (ASMA) is a Atari XL-XE music collection. It is one of the largest and most accurate computer music collections known.

ASMA v3.6 contains 4630 tunes, 315 of which are new! Moreover, ASAP has been updated to the latest version and SAPMaker has been recompiled to run under the latest Windows.

Download: Atari SAP Music Archive v3.6 (1559)

source: asma.atari.org

Categories: Atari, News & Rumors, Today

AspeQt v0.8.5 (Atari serial peripheral emulator for Qt)

December 30th, 2012 No comments

AspeQt is a cross-platform, free and open source Atari 8-bit serial peripheral emulator. The name is an acronym for Atari serial peripheral emulator for Qt, Qt being the cross-platform application development framework used by AspeQt.

AspeQt emulates various Atari 8-bit peripherals like disk drives and printers via an SIO-2-PC cable. If you are familiar with software like Sio2Pc, APE, Atari810, AtariSIO etc., you probably won’t have any problems getting used to AspeQt.

Even though AspeQt is not fully mature yet, it is easy to use and, despite its shortcomings, has many features that you may find useful, the highlights being:

  • 8 disk drive emulation.
  • Up to 6x SIO speed.
  • Support for ATR, XFD, PRO and ATX (preliminary) disk images.
  • Mount folders as emulated disks.
  • Disk image explorer.
  • Directly boot Atari executables.
  • Text only printer emulation with PC print, save, and ATASCII font support.
  • Cassette image playback.
  • Multilingual GUI (English, Polish, Turkish and Russian)
  • AspeQt client module (AspeCl) for Atari, downloads information from the host to the Atari. Time/Date is an example with more functionality to come in the future.

Changelog:

  • MainWindow of AspeQt is now fixed and can not be re-sized manually. Minimum screen resolution required is 800×600 for a proper fit on the display. Use of 1024×768 is recommended.
  • Tooltips are added to display extended mounted image information.
  • Added option to display/suppress message log window, setting is saved in registry/session file.
  • Increased the supported drive numbers from 8 to 15 for SDX compatibility.
  • Added option to display/suppress additional drives, setting is saved in registry/session file.
  • Fixed SDX incompatibility of Folder Images.
  • Added browsing capability for Folder Images. This release only allows read-only support with drag and drop file copying from the Folder Image. Multiple Folder Images can be mounted.

Download:

source: aspeqt.sourceforge.net

2013 C64-RetroInvaders calendar (English/Spanish)

December 30th, 2012 No comments

2013 C64-RetroInvaders calendar by Nautilus.

Download:

source: noname.c64.org

Timex Sinclair 1000 (16k Ram Exp and Software) Boxed/Unwrapped

December 30th, 2012 No comments
Timex Sinclair 1000 Boxed and Unwrapped

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia homepage:

The Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS1000) was the first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint-venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982.

The TS1000 was a slightly-modified Sinclair ZX81 with an NTSC RF modulator instead of a UK PAL (Units sold in Portugal have a PAL RF modulator) device and the onboard RAM doubled to 2K. The TS1000′s casing had slightly more internal shielding but remained the same as Sinclair’s, including the membrane keyboard. It had black-and-white graphics and no sound. It was followed by an improved version, the Timex Sinclair 1500.

Like the Sinclair ZX81, the TS1000 used a form of BASIC as its primary interface and programming language. To make the membrane keyboard less cumbersome for program entry, the TS1000 used a shortcut system of one-letter “keywords” for most commands (e.g. pressing “P” while the cursor was in “keyword mode” would generate the keyword “PRINT”). Some keywords required a short sequence of keystrokes (e.g. SHIFT-ENTER S would generate the keyword “LPRINT”). The TS1000 clued the user in on what to expect by changing the cursor to reflect the current input mode.

The TS1000 sold for $99.95 in the US when it debuted, making it the cheapest home computer to date at the time of its launch (its advertising angle was “the first computer under $100″.) This pricing initiated a price war with Commodore International, who quickly reduced the price of its VIC-20 to match and later announced a trade-in program offering $100 for any competing computer toward the purchase of a Commodore 64. Since the TS1000 was selling for $49 by this time, many customers bought them for the sole purpose of trading it in to Commodore.

source: wikipedia

Atari 1200XL SIO 5v Enabled / Repairing Keyboard

December 30th, 2012 No comments

I have gathered all photos of some phases of the work that i have done on the Atari 1200XL.

Below the descriptions:

  • SIO 5v Enabled (you have to short-circuit the resistor R63 to get the 5v on the SIO of the Atari 1200XL)
  • Repairing Keyboard (i have stretched the springs of a few keys for make the right pressure. The work must be completed using the liquid graphite where the contacts are more ruined)

Atari 1200XL Boxed

December 30th, 2012 1 comment
Atari 1200XL (NTSC)

Autopsy:

from AtariMuseum homepage:

In 1982 Atari’s Home Computer Division (HCD) introduced the new replacement computer to its aging Atari 400/800 line. The new computer brought to Atari’s home computers line a high-tech and sleek low profile modern look. The case design and the “XL Look” were created by Regan Cheng of Atari’s Industrial Design group. The all new design took the 7 separate boards that made up the Atari 800 (Main, Power, CPU, OS and 3 16K Memory boards) and integrated them into a single motherboard with 64K of memory. The system also brought with it probably “THE” best keyboard for any Atari system.    

The system featured many new internal and external enhancements. Some of the obvious ones were the new Function keys and built-in HELP key that programmers could incorporate their usage into future programs. The tangle of wires from the system were now out of the back making for a clean and uncluttered arrangement. The cartridge port and controller jacks were now on the left side of the system. The new OS was designed for a new era of SIO “Plug n Play” devices to automatically load their device drivers and even on-board applications right into the 1200XL memory, also an International Character Set and built-in Diagnostic features were now part of the system. Other OS enhancements were included as well.    

However the downside was that many programs by both 3rd party companies and even Atari itself were incompatible with this new OS in the machine. The loss of 2 of the 4 original controller jacks from the earlier Atari 400/800 systems didn’t seem like much of a big deal to the 1200XL engineers, however the end users did seem to mind. The system was supposed to have a better video display output signal, however to most end users, the system appeared to have a fuzzier display then the Atari 800. The true sticking point for consumers:  No expansion whatsoever.   While the idea of a “Closed Box” design seemed like a good idea to Atari’s Marketing Department, the consumer felt exactly the opposite.

Atari’s whole design philosophy for their home computer line was that these would be Consumer Oriented, not Hobbyist Oriented Systems. Therefore that meant buffering the user from the actual electronics and chips within the machines. This design was very well executed on the Atari 800 with its easy to remove top cover and its various OS and Memory modules fitted into easy to install packages. The SIO connector also gave users a universal, easy to handle and understand expansion system. Atari felt it could take this philosophy to the extreme with the 1200XL and completely cut the users off from ANY internal access. Even the simplest of users still wanted to tinker and expand their systems and the 1200XL just didn’t give them the flexibility found in Apple ][e’s, C64s or Atari’s original 800 line of computers. The collective shortcomings of the 1200XL unfortunately overshadowed its many new enhancements. Atari’s new prodigy became its “Edsil” The introduction of the new 1200XL actually increased sales of the Atari 800. Users began to buy 800′s in fear that they would be stuck with a closed and incompatible system.

Atari 1200XL Video:

source: atarimuseum.com