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1. 15 9 Jml Spow ae 51 MOK NO NEMD Fay 3 8 5 9 3 3 11 9 38 3124 9 ny Alin MWe Si gw 581 e em 3 v S N O a 6 v oO O O Commodore Free Magazine It s easier to have mimesis breaking puzzles in graphic adventures I would think to implement a Fifteen puzzle or Towers of Hanoi in text would be more work than it s worth though the 15 puzzle has actually been done Text adventures had hunger and sleep daemons turn limits and mazes Graphic adventures have arrange these items in the correct order puzzles timed sequences and mazes The medium dictates what you can do to annoy the player Q Were the games all text based or did some graphics scenes exist Most of the Infocom games were all text but they did produce a few games with graphics Beyond Zork had a graphical mode where it would display a map of your Surroundings and a special rune font Zork Zero Arthur Shogun and Journey had illustrations and graphical puzzles Towers of Hanoi Nim etc Later a few mostly graphical games including two adventures Return to Zork and Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 were released under the Infocom label but that was after their acquisition by Activision Q Do you think Graphics from adventure games detracted from the gameplay Graphics pretty much started out as illu2. I ve managed to come into possession of several games with their feelies it s just nifty to have something tangible along with the game itself Shows the extra effort the company spent to immerse the player in the world Plus hey piracy protection Which worked about as well back then as it does now Q I presume these games are highly collectable what are the top 10 most valued games Top ten is hard to say but by far the most collectable items are the original Starcross Saucer packaging and the original Suspended Mask packaging They often go for several hundreds of dollars on eBay Everything else 1S way more commonplace except the oddball games like Fooblitzky or Quarterstaff a Mac only RPG and the product that caused the downfall of Infocom their database system Cornerstone Q Ok there must be at least one duffer what is the worst Infocom game you played and why was it so bad My two least favourite Infocom games are Beyond Zork and Journey The former is an adventure RPG hybrid which does neither part very well the latter is a glorified choose your own adventure style game which has endless possibilities of getting you stuck at the very last puzzle because you run out of something you need much earlier Like I said I never completed it myself despite multiple attempts Q Recently memos and e mails about a possible Hitch hiker s sequel were made public Do you think Your greatest challenge
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4. COMMODORE128d AND A 22 BOARD PICTURE tersciu Commodore Free Magazine Although the picture wasn t truly accurate colour problems it was good enough to use and stable as can be seen in the screen shot sorry it s off my phone I didn t take my camera although it does show a very clear image You can also see a picture of the A 22 board Allan has spent time adapting to get the full colour display of the 128 and a stable picture so the colours are not all bleached out I see in some forums the users seem to think the board can be purchased and used as is the problem is this isn t a perfect picture especially if you want to use Geos and Wheels www commodorefree com without this machine side by side to one running the demo on a commodore monitor it would be hard to spot and the demo did still look impressive If you can t get the demo to run try watching the demo on the YouTube link Although the Demo will run under Winvice the timing is incorrect I think the Winvice emulation of the 128 is limited to lmhz and so some of the effects don t work properly especial ly the end picture again this must be the emulators the problem is the final picture is well in my limitation worth seeing and a main part of the demo COMMODORE 128D on a TFT TV Now booted in 80 column mode glory was a 128d with a TFT screen Allan then booted the wheels operating system and updated version of Geos and the screen spra
5. Issue 38 March 2010 Free to download Commodore magazine Dedicated to Commodore Computers Available as PDF Text SEQ HTML and D64 image www commodorefree com COMMODORE COMPUTER CLUB U k MINI MEE in LEEDS Page 14 Interview with Gunther Schmidl infocom Documentation site PAGE 10 Interview with Gunther Schmidl infocom Documentation site PAGE 10 a Pid At vap 4 Wee NA y x A 5 5 ws 8 7 hes d Pa 4 pne Interview with Michael Kirche inihrafic Vic 20 PAGE 19 222 4 ia 0893999929920 TTITO 69 E 3 30908 wr Commodore Free Magazine CONTENTS Editorial News C64 Copy Ps2 Keyboard for Pet C64 new website Vice updated 2 2 Amiga encyclopedia News Ide V41 Available Starcommander upgraded Jim butterfield tells a story Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 8 bit Experimental album LukHash News Protovision News News Hardsid New products Working PLA Replacement for the Commodore 64 Interview with Gunther Schmidl infocom Documentation website Commodore Computer Club U k Mini Meeting Leeds Minigrafix For Vic 20 Minigrafix For Vic 20 User guide Interview with Michael Kircher Creator of Minigrafix and Minipaint For Vic 20 Minipaint For Vic 20 tutorial ADVERTS Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 10 Pag
6. both text and graphical and I ve written a few text games myself These days free time doesn t really permit authorship so I m playing and occasionally reviewing adventures instead though I d like to dabble in some authoring again I m also interested in the history of Interactive Fiction and have managed with the invaluable help of people like Stephen Granade and Graham Nelson to unearth several obscure games and bring them to a greater public My name s Gunther Q Are you an Infocom fan in general or do you have a bias to a particular machine I know we are Commodore users but we wont be mad if you preferred another system I m an Infocom fan in general I actually grew up on PCs our first computer was an insanely expensive IBM laptop with two 3 5 floppy drives and no hard drive and the first two games I played were Space Invaders and Space Quest 2 Friends of mine had a C64 an Atari and an Amiga so all the big home computers were available to everyone Naturally I still have an affinity for the PC but I know my way around the other machines as well Q Do you own any Commodore systems lover net index html OcOoOm I know a so I can get but I rarely do it these days Only in emulation I m afraid Like I said bit about both AmigaOS and C64 BASIC stuff running Q Did you ever finish any of the Infocom games yourself and if you did did you need to use hints I finished most of them with the nota
7. its heart 38 a pixel oriented Before I had written MINIPAINT of creating graphics were either using MINIGRAFIK itself to do programmed graphics or import images from PCs or other sources converting them into the format specified by the LOAD and SAVE commands One of these programs IMPORT does a fairly good job of translating a 80x192 pixel 256 grey scale level PGM file into a MINIGRAFIK multi colour screen dithered to 13 intensity levels the PGM Still the VIC chip is capable of displaying really stunning pictures when a good graphician has complete control over the finest aspects of the displayed picture This is what MINIPAINT is designed for Of course it can also be used to fix up conversions Q I see you have an example piece of art work Tutankhamun can you take our readers through the process to draw this on the VIC with MINIPAINT A I used a cropped photo of the mask of King Tut and a variant of PGM IMPORT to produce a first workstage in the colours blue orange light orange and white Since I had selected white as foreground colour I could add shades in black as another foreground colour within MINIPAINT Another small part the snake at the top was repainted in cyan colour as well It was mainly a matter of luck I had no problems with attribute clashes of the foreground colour with this picture and so it turned out quite well Q How long did the picture take to complete A The preparation o
8. 0 amp 1 1 oNo power supply required Use it with a notebook just anywhere o Supported by the HardSID 4U Winamp Plugin seeking sub tune handling IR remote controlling Superior sound quality 1 110 is a HardSIpD eSupport for one SID chip of any version old 6581 new 8580 6582 eUpdateable firmware over USB oDrivers for Windows XP Vista Win7 eCycle accurate playback of your favourite SID tunes eDigitized sound high speed playback with low CPU utilization eSeamless playback of your PC Connectors eOne analogue SID sound output jack USB connector for connecting the unit to a desktop PC or a Notebook forget the emulation Sid tunes while you work on you need the REAL ONE HardSID UPlay Do you need both old and new SID versions for playback You need the HardSID UPlay then eYou can install two SIDs in it one old 6581 one new 8580 6582 o Switch between the two SIDs simply from the player software eTdeal for SID Players C64 Emulators SID Trackers eUSB connection compatible with both 2 0 amp 1 1 oNo power supply required Use it with a notebook just anywhere o Supported by the HardSID 4U Winamp Plugin seeking sub tune handling IR remote controlling o Superior sound quality sat is a HardsSID cUpdateable firmware over USB eDrivers for XP Vista Win7 eCycle accurate playback of your favourite SID tunes eDigitized sound high speed playback with low CPU utilization 5 Seamle
9. 2OO9 change device Tile mane Press RETURN te coHHence oction nter HEty file nang te cancel Hires Aulti 7 for hele te cycle Commodore Free Magazine Here s King Tut pixeled with MINIPAINT O5ef0a8eae2a4f4a skydrive live com self aspx Public vic 20 minigrafik minipaint king S20tut prg I used a suitable cropped and re sized photo anda variant of PGM import to obtain a first workstage in white light orange orange and blue The lower part of the snake in cyan and the black shades were added in MINIPAINT Outside MINIGRAFIK or MINIPAINT the file must be loaded 8 not 8 1 and then RUN You ll need at least an 8K RAM expander to view the image this way MINIGRAFIK FOR THE VIC 20 http www sleepingelephant com ipw web bulletin bb viewtopic php t 952 amp start 49 New version 4 02 of MINIGRAFIK Improvements to version 3 2 The command point plot line draw and the function have been extended to support Multi Colour mode SAVE LOAD command added faster start up time see below Symbol explanations lt gt denotes parameter expressions denotes optional parts of a parameter list Commands ON initialises the 160x192 pixel graphics The screen is recentered correctly regardless of MINIGRAFIK running on a NTSC or PAL VIC CLR clears the hires screen Furthermore the Colour RAM is initialised to the foregrou
10. Special application needs and designs in hardware and software can be realized in close cooperation with Arcade Retro Gaming engineers CONTACT For more information on any of our products or services please contact us at contact arcaderetrogaming com www arcaderetrogaming com Items included in shipment Multiple Classic Computer MCC Mini USB Power supply 110 240 V S Video Cable User Manual Micro SD Card with C 64 core C64 Forever CD with 100 games Competition Pro Joystick Technical Specification Reconfigurable hardware core including main CPU graphic engine sound engine and interfaces Integrated SDR Memory 16 MBytes Integrated non volatile memory 2MByte for different classic computer platform realization programs and games enable up to 150 and more games in a closed system Support of external keyboard and mouse PS 2 S Video output Stereo Audio Output Micro SD card interface for external programs Mini USB Battery or external power supply support Arcade Retro Gaming Dimensions 140 x 130 x 40 mm Medeor feb United States of America contact arcaderetrogaming com www arcadretrogaming com Commodore Free Magazine Issue 378 March 2010 Editor Nigel Parker Spell Checking Peter Badrick Text amp HTML Conversion Pau
11. The pictures can easily be used by your own programs in BASIC and machine language For BASIC programmers the MINIGRAFIK extension provides powerful commands for loading saving and manipulating pictures in this file format There are some projects where these two programs already have contributed to VIC toria Gold Edition a strategy game set in the times of Ancient Rome some of the graphics in Realms of Quests III were designed in MINIPAINT and quite recently Island of Secrets has been re released with additional Graphics I hope to have piqued your interest and maybe yours is the next program or game to use bitmapped graphics on the VIC 20 with MINIGRAFIK and MINIPAINT Here s MINIPAINT MINIGRAFIK bitmaps het a pixel oriented editor for O5ef0a8eae2a4f4a skydrive live com self aspx Public vic 20 minigrafik minipaint 2009 11 01 zip n 34 e Hires Hulti te cuctle 7 for help H Ctr The main screen is divided into three windows At the top a scrolling window of 40x32 pixels into the 160x192 picture zoomed to 4 times the size in the bottom left the same window in original size gt in the bottom right it Supports both hi res each 4 8 x16 cell the program and the stored pictures are PAL NTSC compatible by design as MINIGRAFIK already is the pictures contain a stand alone viewer and can easily be used from both BASIC and ML as the game VICtoria readily
12. lies ahead and downwards Page 12 Commodore Free Magazine it could have been a success and do you think the company information should have been revealed With the built in audience for Hitch Hiker s I m pretty sure the game would have been at least a moderate success I don t know if there were plans to add graphics to it but probably yes I think that the kind of graphics available then would have worked against the HHGG world There s a reason why the books and radio series were vastly more successful than the TV series and the later movie As for the infamous Infocom Drive it is sad that the information was revealed the way it happened I m sure nobody wants to see their dirty laundry aired in public and I m also sure that because this happened it will be much harder to get actually interesting stuff out in the public you don t antagonize the people you depend on for goodwill Q Are there many documents manuals that you are still looking for And Can you give or readers a plug about the website We have a full set of the available Infocom documentation Unfortunately Infodoc has not been updated ina long time due to time constraints by Roger J Long who did the majority of the work and myself and thus it has been surpassed in some ways by other websites most notably http infocom elsewhere org gallery We do still however offer fully OCR d and a few 100 screen reader friendly versions of the
13. manuals with all the important information as well as a number of neat things not readily available elsewhere such as a full set of the company newsletter sent out to customers information on the Japanese version of Zork 1 anda few other surprises Q How was all the information collected to the site The manuals were readily available in PDF format from the Masterpieces of Infocom collection Other material was scanned or photographed and OCR d or just typed in We cleared the rights with Activision who gave permission readily We didn t hear back from the rights holders of HHGG and Shogun which is why those manuals are not available INTERACTIVE FICTION BY MARC BLANK WITH ON LINE HINTS O TH INTERACTIVE FICTION PLUS BY BRIAN MORIARTY Q If our reader can help out or wants to help what do you need or want If anyone wants to take up the transcription of the manuals into screen reader friendly format they are welcome to do so I don t think however that much is going to happen with the site in the future It mostly stands as it is and is hopefully useful to people Q How many Infocom games were released in total http infodoc plover net goodies files gamelist html has a full but now out of date due to the discovery of the Drive list of all the released games by Infocom Infocom released a total of 36 text adventures 9 Was there a fan b
14. some feedback mostly by Denial fellows While I did the design and coding of MINIGRAFIK all by myself for MINIPAINT I got some very important feedback during development from Shane Fell and Vanja Utne MINIPAINT wouldn t be the program it is now without their suggestions Q Have you had any thoughts about other applications that will utilise the MINIGRAFIK add on for the VIC A The hires screen can be used to host output from a 40 column emulator Even though there are some of these programs around like FAT 40 they all suffer from a sluggish output This is mainly because they replicate the whole BASIC editor functionality within themselves there s not much room to optimize things when the API focuses on single character output Text output on a bitmapped screen is heavily sped up when a routine that can print complete lines at a time Such a routine already has been used for the dialogue boxes in MINIPAINT These ideas might end up in a 40 column text editor Together with an assembler it might even be possible to produce a new kind of programming environment for the VIC 20 Q What 3 things would you change about the VIC 20 if you were able to go back in time and help redesign the machine A The 3K RAM between 1024 to 4095 should have been populated as well That would have allowed to locate the screen at 1024 not only increasing the amount of accessible RAM for the VIC chip but there would also never have been
15. the screen in a chequered pattern up to X 6 and Y 15 the whole top left attribute cell Cut the cell with the DEL key and then sketch the bottom ground and tree with the INST key H IPB I pJ ntr te cucol for help first put a two pixel thick line in green between ground and sky Then add blades of grass with verti cal lines To draw the apples change the foreground colour 2 to Red Place the apples within the tree top While doing this some parts of the branches might change colour from Black to Red This is the colour clashing mentioned in chapter 2 Leave the Ez eT affected parts alone for the moment 4l TI ns T gt P Hires Hult i arC tr te cycle for help Page 22 Commodore Free Magazine H 46 8 11 diver Multi HeCte l te cycle 7 for hel pe faa 5 88 Y 107 1 fees 8 8 HFCtrl te cycle 7 for hel pf When you have placed all apples take a look where the branches have changed from Black to Red There replace the Red colour with Green Since that colour is taken from the border colour 3 this does not incur yet another colour clash and later will hide that a colour clash had happened in those places Then within the outline of the treetop apply another chequered pattern of Green over the background so the Green pixels are aligned with those used to conceal the colour clashes This step completes the
16. CTION This 1s a short expose introducing MINIPAINT and its accompanying BASIC extension MINIGRAFIK I d like to introduce two programs designed for doing high resolution graphics on the VIC 20 MINIGRAFIK and MINIPAINT MINIPAINT is an editor for a 160x192 pixels graphics mode and MINIGRAFIK is an accompanying extension for CBM BASIC Unlike to the Commodore 64 where the VIC II chip provides a dedicated graphics mode on the VIC 20 there is only a text mode available However the character definitions can be placed into RAM and by painting the text screen with unique characters it is possible to set up a bitmap Only the internal memory is accessible to the VIC I and the layout of the bitmap has been carefully chosen to only allocate the upper 4K A RAM extension is required at least 8K for MINIGRAFIK and 16K for MINIPAINT The zeropage is untouched and so both programs are compatible to KERNAL and CBM BASIC The main screen of MINIPAINT shows three windows All edit operations are done in the first largest window which shows a zoomed view into the picture This window is overlaid by a dialog box when you invoke the help screens or want to access storage media A second window and third window show the same view in original size and additional status information Pressing the SPACEkey toggles between editor and a full screen preview MINIPAINT and the stored picture files are compatible to both PAL and NTSC
17. D of COMMANDER LASERSTRAHL has been released at the end of December 2009 MacGyver Protovision speaks a little guest role in one episode Learn more at http www welle erdball de commander laserstrahl HOME PAGE The Protovision homepage experienced some updates Find out what is new in these sections Hardware section http www protovision online com hardw hardwstart htm Links section http www protovision online com links htm PRICELIST UPDATED There is also a new pricelist can find it here http www protovision online com pricelist htm 01 10 available You http www protovision online com Commodore Free Magazine NEWS HARDSID DEVELOPES NEW PRODUCTS http www hardsid com Dear Sid Fans We re proud to announce two new lower cost HardSID products designed for C64 music lovers who want to play back SID tunes play games on emulators and create C64 tracker music without buying a more expensive SID synthesizer The new devices x HardSID Uno x HardSID UPlay Please visit our new products page http www hardsid com products php Please send a Tweet about us http tinyurl com promotehardsids Regards The HardSID Team http www hardsid com Follow us on twitter http twitter com HardSIDOfficial HardSID Uno Enjoy over 36000 wonderful C64 tunes in high quality played back on a real SID chip eTdeal for SID Players C64 Emulators SID Trackers eUSB connection compatible with both 2
18. any problems because of a relocating text screen with bigger RAM extensions Nice would have been an error free shift register in the VIA chip That would have given us fast floppies right from the start without the necessity for the CBM developers to re implement the IEC protocol bit banging style in software Separate luma and chroma instead of composite video output These features would have kept the essence of the VIC 20 And for any other enhancements regarding graphics sound and memory there s still the C 64 around 7 Commodore Free Magazine www commodorefree com MINI MINIPAINT TUTORIAL CREATED BY Michael Kircher As a comprehensive manual for MINIPAINT is in the works a complete coverage of the editing functions is given there For the following tutorial it suffices to know that cursor controls work as usual pixels are set with the keys 1 to 4 their colour assignment is changed with CTRL 1 CTRL 4 SPACE toggles between editor anda full screen preview and while editing it is always possible to invoke the on line help system with SHIFT MINIPAINT requires at least a 16K RAM extension When you draw a picture in MINIPAINT at first you need to think about which colours appear most often in the scene For an example consider a single apple tree against the sky with the sun some clouds and a few birds The three most common colours are Light Blue for the sky Green for grass and leaves an
19. ase with newsletters for the games There was the official company newsletter The New Zork Times later renamed to The Status Line after the New York Times complained There were also unofficial fan clubs and these days there are course multiple fan websites of As an example of the dedication of Infocom gamers consider this hand drawn map of Dungeon the predecessor to Zork 1 3 http almy us image dungeon jpg Q Were there phone lines providing hints and tips Involuntarily people called the Infocom office for help and hints The Zork User s Group ZUG was created to handle these calls on a pay per hint basis This eventually led to the creation of Invisi clues the hint booklets in invisible ink to take some load off the poor employees Q Do you know the shortest time it took to complete on of the games Unfortunately not Q Is there anything else you would like to add Thanks for the questions tience Gunther and thanks for your pa Commodore Free Magazine www commodorefree com CCC U k Mini Meeting I left my house and drove down to Preston Train station shortly after my arrival I met Shaun Beb bington and Chris both Commodore Computer club U k Members www commodorecomputerclub co uk we exchanged greetings then all boarded my car and set off to Alan s house Intense fog roadwork s and sheer amount of traffic meant the going would be slow but eventually we arrived parked up and were g
20. audio output allows the keyboard mouse waiting for a device which allows them to go back to the connection to each TV set amplifier or computer DB 9 Joysticks and good and easy operation and gaming experience from has USB micro SD monitor to explore enhanced sound Different versions the past card interface for PAL and NTSC regions allow seamless usage and Many people still have unique software and programs compatibility All this paired with the newest available which are still unbeatable when it comes to user ENHANCED FEATURES hardware and new interface like USB micro SD friendliness ON TOF OF THE Card S Video improve the picture quality and the The reconfigurable and generic design will allow an easy ORIGINAL DESIGN openness of the systems switch between multiple different realizations and New algorithms An internal memory enables the permanent storage of improve the sound and representations of classic computers The MCC support picture quality Commodore C 64 emulation The Commodore Amiga favorite games and applications the menu overlay allows for easy selection of the application or game emulation will follow soon with a simple Software and the desired Classic Computer upgrade Easy selection of platform games and application software with enhanced human machine interface TECHNICAL SUPPORT MCC home page allows download and upgrade of application software APPLICATION SUPPORT
21. azine WORKING PLA Replacement for my C64 1 Weak Le er ae 3 r EEN Z S ee ee ee pied a Fe a 208 Si 524 ets be ASR To use zies As 5851 eure pLa hea ee 1 1 mom eevee BES LE iara te 1 1 1 ve 8 E 1 4 Fel be n Par Ts BA j is Ml Pace pia 5 EE 1 1 ES gt Cian Coa BE ae a ota ai 81 Aa Emagen Goan 5 to 35 808 are fe 4 VAU i 8521 111 ig nape ama a CA ie ocr GE GE enb ME RnD 5 Case Pg es fo a EASE F4 6 eeng P o Ba ij We A E a Lat Hello All Just wanted to let all of you know that I FINALLY created a WORKING PLA Replacement for my C64 I have only tested it in one of the Breadbox C64 s so far I use Ray Carlsons Diagram LA eprompla jpg http personalpages tds net rcarlsen tdsweb EPROMP Info http personalpages tds net rcarlsen tdsweb EPROMP LA eprompla txt C64 PLA chip replacement using an EPROM and adaptor latest updates and corrections 11 20 07 The supply of replacement ICs for Commodore computers has been shrinking since Commodore stopped making chips mor
22. ble exception of Journey but few without hints I managed to finish SUSPENDED and got a horribly bad result it was the first I actually finished by myself but Q What s your favourite Infocom puzzle Hard to say One of the most well executed puzzles is the Babelfish puzzle in The Hitch Hiker s Guide to the Galaxy but I can t actually call it a favourite I think the time travel puzzle in Sorcerer was pretty good if extremely hard LGOP s T Remover is also fun Q Do you think text only games are better at stimulating the imagination I think both text and graphic adventures have their merits Text can of course do things that non text can never convey the famous voice of honey and ashes and are more precise what is that four pixel object on the screen supposed to be was a common question in parser driven graphical adventures until pure point and click games took their place where after pixel hunting became the new guess the word Graphics are easier to convey exactly what the author wants to show but you couldn t pull off things like surprise the player with a character s gender race as easily Through strange savage zones your way will be shown by the magical stone called INTERACTIVE FICTION FANTASY INTRODUCTORY LEVEL Page 10 yoimvad SIH 55 Kannu FUIN 31 ec 4 3441 9 49 340 awy 9 Woaw Mi 8395 49 2 28
23. d Brown for the branches and trunk of the tree where the darker version of Orange is the best approximation for One of these three colours mustbe chosen from the lower 8 available colours because it is assigned the border colour In this case there is only one choice Green In case you do not want a visible border appearing around the scene you might choose background and border colour the same in high resolution mode set foreground the same as border colour fill with foreground and draw the scene as negative image in background colour Even though this normally restricts the picture to two colours the paint colour now can be any one of the 16 available colours or in a similar fashion in multi colour mode fill the picture with pixels in border colour beforehand Press M to show the full palette display in the status window Then change background 1 to Light Blue border 3 to Green and auxiliary colour 4 Refine the details by clearing pixels to background to Orange The foreground colour 2 is used to draw colour and adding pixels in Black or Orange fitting everything else for the moment you should set it to to the pattern Sketch the outline of the treetop in Black Press CLR with SHIFT to clear the screen Green The grass at the bottom is painted in two steps Orange is toned down to Brown for the branches and trunk of the tree For this mix Orange and Black in the top left corner of
24. demonstrates status and help info and multi colour for Within the editor Cursor controls work as usual Keys 1 2 3 4 set a pixel Ctrl1 1 2 3 4 cycle the colours for that palette entry H enters hires M enters multicolour mode HOME and CLR work as expected DEL and INST cut and paste whole attribute cells SPACE toggles preview editor 2 Shiftt toggles help editor 1 3 f 5 enable different draw modes fl set pixel advance cursor repeat 3 set pixel advance cursor don t repeat this is the default after start and load picture 5 set pixel don t advance lt gt left arrow key toggle cursor draw mode f5 only Shift L S will load or save the picture C 4 shows the disc directory Shift Q quits MINIPAINT Within the load save dialog box DEL deletes the last char RETURN starts the load or save and f7 cycles through the devices 1 and 8 11 Further plans mostly concern the completion of the batch processing suite MINIPAINT as such is feature complete Version 1 2 fixes some small issues in the directory display The batch processing suite makes use of MINIGRAFIK to convert PGM files into MG format export MG files to Koala bitmaps and convert to and from charset bina ries 1K or 2K at 4096 5120 6144 and 7168 thus transforming MINIPAINT into a comfortable charset editor HINIPAINT 1 bu A LOAD picture fl brasil HB hircher
25. e Gons Eilecuuac vemapulible QE detected A very powerful 6502 Disassembler TEXT HEX and D64 HEX editors FILE viewer gt BASIC unlister D64 D71 D81 D80 amp D82 directory customizer Check disks and T64 ZipCode G64 F64 and CRT files for errors ROM image manipulation splitting resizing conversion to EPROM burner formats A whole lot more 64Copy v4 43 has been released and is available from the downloads page The CHANGES TXT file for this release is very large I still have not fin ished the CheckDisk for GEOS disks and VLIR files but this is still planned for a future release PS2 PET KEYBOARD ADAPTOR http ps2cbm blogspot com PS 2 Keyboard on a PET CBM If your CBM PET keyboard is not working too well Here is the answer A PS 2 interface that lets you connect a regular Personal Computer keyboard with PS 2 connector to your PET CBM The interface is installed inside the PET CBM and does not take up any ports other than an internal expansion power connector As an added bonus pressing Ctrl Alt Del on the keyboard will reset your pet AMIGA VIRUS ENCYCLOPEDIA VICE UPDATED V2 2 http ave teyko com Amiga Virus Encyclopaedia The Amiga Virus Encyclopaedia has been updated This web site dedicated to analysis and descriptions of viruses for the Commodore Amiga computer The database has now information of more than 500 viruses New features in version 2 2 are Imp
26. e 14 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 22 Page 24 REALLT p o r a mI as unin Hi J i it ii Commodore Free Magazine EDITORIAL SID ORCHESTRA Recently I thought about Rob Hubbard and his recreation of SID tunes using an orchestra I also thought back to the BACK IN TIME LIVE events I have attended where people and bands like Press Play On Tape http www pressplayontape com and of course others perform SID music tracks on real instruments guitars keyboards drums and added vocals in the Visa K ster Se COMMODORE amp 4 A CAPPELLA se 7 FeRHEOA 1 STHULATOR AOR SHUDEARD 1495 ne l 2 aera on F SL SPEE case of Press Play On Tape while both attempts were truly superb heck we have even had a group at one of the events SINGING SID music accapella Visa R ster http www livet se visa I thought wouldn t it be fun to do this the opposite way around Maybe take an orchestral score star wars for example and rework it to a SID format hmmm done before I here you say Hold on though wait until you hear me out fully First you take 16 Commodore 64 5 chained together via MIDI with a master machine as the sequencer then rework the score and play it back using the SID chips of the 16 machines Now that to my knowledge hasn t been done before I did have some success with 3 machines however the amount of space required for 16 machin
27. e than a decade ago Most of what you find now are used pulls from existing equipment some good some bad The most common failure in the C64 has been IC U17 a pre programmed 28 pin generic 825100 programmable logic array or PLA That IC normally runs very hot and should have been heat sinked It was in later versions of the 64 Since the supply of obsolete unprogrammed 825100 ICs has likewise dried up a way to replace the Commodore PLA with some other kind of device has been discussed many times on the newsgroup comp sys cbm and elsewhere A 64K EPROM programmed with the code from a working PLA and rewired via a circuit board or other adaptor to cross connect a few pins has had some success in duplicating the logic of the original PLA There are several different versions of this modification on the internet Note that the code for the EPROM must match the pinout of the adaptor that goes with it The modification I found takes only a few pin swaps to make it work The other one takes more Guess which one I chose to use With a burner on my PC I began experimenting with various types of EPROMs when my stock of PLA chips was depleted The original PLA averaged a rather speedy 50nS The best information I had early on was that a very fast IC was needed to simulate it Most reprogrammable UV EPROMs are much slower at 150 to 300nS and I already had some of those A one time programmable OTP Atmel AT27C512R45 seemed fast en
28. es prohibits my further experiments also I don t have 16 Commodore machines and interfaces at my disposal but it would make an interesting concept not sure how well it would work live though maybe 16 or 32 people could play 16 or 32 commodore s live using the keyboard from the Commodore sights and sounds range now that would be impressive in my opinion anyway SIDaroke I keep thinking of this rather silly idea a SID singing Contest where you take 3 people to perform a SID karaoke or SIDaroke I am sure you can visualise this in your mind right now Of course this would need to be performed live to avoid cheating and external help from electronic processing etc I do know some people who can do very convincing saw tooth waveforms with there mouths I suppose it s something I do all the time really although usually when I am alone I will Buzz out a pulse width modulated tone along with the lead sound of the real SID tune usually on my car cassette player yes I can t afford a CD player in the car We could have heats like the X factor working up to a semi final and then the grand final with presentations I wonder if Simon Cowell would be interested in purchasing the idea from me Of course this would need to be at a reasonable cost I suppose 100 million pound would convince me to alleviate the copyright from my possession and a 10 fee on royalties from spinoffs etc AN EXPERIMENTAL 8 BIT ALBUM FROM LukHash The th
29. hips of a certain speed may work with the original PLA but not with the sub PLA In one experiment a sub PLA worked with all 200nS RAM then one 150nS RAM chip was substituted and the bytes free at startup was reduced although the Original PLA worked fine with that arrangement I conclude that C64 ICs work within a narrow window of acceptable pulse timing neither too fast nor too slow The use of a substitute PLA in some boards obviously creates timing errors some fatal blank screen and others producing subtle screen glitches and program crashes If an EPROM works in a particular board that s fine But what do you do if no sub PLA seems to work One workaround I found was to add a small Capacitor one end tied to ground to the replacement IC output pin 18 the CAS line to the RAM which adds a bit of delay to those pulses I experimented with values between 50pF and 220pF and got good results The bottom line here is that whatever board you have may or may not work 100 with a sub PLA It may need to be tweaked and most users will not want to do that So a drop in replacement for the original PLA that will work with all boards without any problems is still unavailable When I repair a C64 that needs a replacement PLA I can make the sub work in most cases with chip Swaps selecting an optimum speed of the substitute EPROM and or by using the time delay capacitor Testing the final product involves 1 observing the byte
30. ill new features to implement A AS it stands the current version of MINIGRAFIK already gives a good starting point for graphics oriented programs Many graphics primitives can be coded with pixel plots and line drawing alone For example I didn t include a BOX command as that can Simply be expressed as sub routine with 4 line commands Some sensible candidates might be a colour selection command circle ellipse draw flood fill and text output Even though the usefulness of a dedicated colour selection command can be disputed because it would only replace up to 3 POKEs for eye candy but no other advantage The other features will most probably be implemented as SYS callable library routines in machine language leaving the kernel of MINIGRAFIK untouched Currently a program using MINIGRAFIK can count on using nearly its whole code so there is no baggage of unused parts of MINIGRAFIK around when it is loaded Q Apart from the obvious VIC 20 limitations like Hu o e a a Saui al Ten T Me memory and screen resolution what main problems did you face implementing MINIGRAFIK A The main concern was that MINIGRAFIK does not operate on its own but acts as support library for user programs That required a seamless integration into the BASIC interpreter I also wanted the extension to work
31. ing that re sparked my interest on these SID related ideas was another 8 bit inspired album this time from the band LukHash you can read about this more in the News section of Commodore Free where you will find a link to their website that has features a option to download the songs as music files for free The combination of SID sounds with Rock music works very well hmmm in my opinion INTERVIEW WITH Gunther Schmidl INFOCOM Documentation Website Also in this issue we have an interview with Gunther who maintains the INFOCOM Documentation Website the interview did take place some time ago and has taken some time to complete but that s the problem with real life getting in the way of projects This interview was on the Commodore Free back burner for a number of years and now finally its been checked and included for your enjoyment Schmidl MINIGRAFIK FOR THE VIC 20 all that wasn t enough I have included some information about MINIGRAFIK FOR THE VIC 20 you can read about the project and the paint package that uses the extensions MINIPAINT at the end of this issue CCC U k Mini Meeting Oh nearly forgot to mention this Myself Alan Chris and Shaun all met up to mull over some Commodore related ideas and test out the latest Commodore monitor Connection setup Alan has bee working for some time to get an off the shelf board working to display Commodore video on a flat panel monitor to some extent he is
32. l Davis D64 Disk Image Al Jackson PDF Design Nigel Parker Website www commodorefree com Email Address commodorefree commodorefree com Submissions Articles are always wanted for the magazine Contact us for details We can t pay you for your efforts but you are safe in the knowledge that you have passed on details that will interest other Commodore enthusiasts Notices All materials in this magazine are the property of Commodore Free unless otherwise stated All copyrights trademarks trade names internet domain names or other similar rights are acknowledged No part of this magazine may be reproduced without permission The appearance of an advert in the magazine does not necessarily mean that the goods services advertised are associated with or endorsed by Commodore Free Magazine Copyright Copyright 2010 Commodore Free Magazine All Rights Reserved
33. n the PC and the conversion maybe took 15 minutes Adding the black shades incurred the longest part of completing the picture roughly 2 1 2 hours Q Can MINIPAINT drawings be used in user programs or called as standalone PRG files for demos etc A Since MINIPAINT and MINIGRAFIK share the same picture format the save load function in MINIPAINT is implemented with MINIGRAFIK commands the pictures can simply be loaded and displayed by your own programs with the LOAD command The picture files themselves are actually executable PRG files That means even if one does not currently have MINIGRAFIK or MINIPAINT available that picture can be displayed by LOADing it 8 not 6 1 and then typing RUN Q Are both applications well documented with user guides and examples A MINIGRAFIK is still being discussed in the thread in Denial about hires graphics I had posted quite some example programs there over time many of which are now also hosted on my SkyDrive account MINIPAINT features a small system but handy on line help which is invoked by pressing the key For both programs I am currently preparing a comprehensive manual which includes a tutorial for MINIPAINT example programs and utilities using MINIGRAFIK and additional documentation for those who want to access the hires screen from machine language Q Have you had much feedback from users of the applications A There has been quite
34. nce noise that may come from your PC via USB Many PC parts sometimes the USB controller itself are generating electromagnetic interference EMT which travels through the USB cable into your USB Audio device HardSID 4U in this case Even if you use a cable with built in EMI suppression some of the noise will work its way through to your audio device So if any part in your PC isn t properly electromagnetically shielded the EMI noise will be audible when low level audio is played EMI noise can not be perfectly removed by any suppression method except by expensive physical separation of circuits connected to the PC from the audio circuits Suppressed EMI noise is still perfectly acceptable for hobby usage but if you re planning to record your work art in studio quality you should consider going for the HardSID 4U Studio Edition since it physically separates your audio circuits from the ones connected to your PC We re using expensive technologies to replace direct electrical contacts between the PC driven circuits circuits and the audio Connectors eFour mono dry outputs for the best sound quality 2x stereo jacks oMixed output for the easiest usage 1x stereo jack mono Signal eFour mono inputs for filtering external sources with SID filters 2x stereo jacks USB connector for connecting the unit to a desktop PC ora Notebook eDC in connector for connecting the power supply 1A 12VDC Commodore Free Mag
35. nd colour RETURN returns to text mode If an error occurs during program execution this command is executed on your behalf before outputting the error message lt colour gt lt x gt lt y gt TO lt x2 gt lt y2 gt Draw line in lt colour gt from lt x gt lt y gt to lt x2 gt lt y2 gt If the TO part is omitted a single point at lt x gt lt y gt is plotted lt colour gt denotes a logical colour lt x gt and lt x2 gt may range from 0 to 159 lt y gt and lt y2 gt from 0 to 191 The origin x 0 y 0 lies in the top left corner All arguments can be written as numbers variables or arbitrary numeric expressions In High Resolution mode M 0 colours are O clear pixel to background colour G 1 set pixel in foreground colour F the allowed logical In Multi Colour mode M 1 become available 2 set pixel in border colour B 3 set pixel in auxiliary colour A two extra logical colours In Multi Colour mode the resolution is halved so that when lt x gt is even lt x gt and lt x gt 1 address the same pixel F 0 7 The foreground colour and Multi Colour enable M 0 1 are set individually for each 8x16 pixel cell The background colour G 0 15 border colour B 0 7 and auxiliary colour A 0 15 apply to the whole screen To assign a physical colour to the logical colours issue the following POKEs POKE 36879 16 G 8 B set background border colour POKE 36878 16 A
36. ng into action again very clear and usable although there were some problems like the mouse pointer colour although still usable it tended to blend in with the background on some areas of the wheels desktop so the board isn t just plug and play as some forum members suggested Allan booted up Post print and as you can see it worked perfectly with all areas of the screen visible and clear and in full colour POSTPRINT PICTURE The quite remarkable thing about this was that the demo Risen from Oblivion ran without a hitch although the colours were not 100 accurate but opinion Still a very impressive demo it after all this time from its initial release link is for version 2 of the demo even viewing The RISEN FROM OBLIVION the VDC experience The demo itself needs some bizarre hardware to actu ally run in the real world so we were quite surprised 1 firstly ran And secondly that it didn t look to bad on the screen again apologies for the poor screen shots from my Camera phone GEOPLINK PICTURE lt ECOMMOG ORezcCompu Page 15 Commodore Free Magazine www commodorefree com SUBHUNTER meee Of course no meeting would be com Hees plete without some for of game play and this was in the form of Richard Bayliss s sub Hunter Possible Richards finest work to date After a quick dance around to the music we took turns sadly no one completed the game on this sessi
37. ngly enough for me 1 found many of these methods could be transferred back to the machine language of the 6502 if one was willing to throw some false suppositions over board All in all it was quite an interesting time then together with a friend I published some demos and a disk magazine called Hardliner under Architects thehandle group name Even though today there is nothing much more than the PC monopoly One good thing about it is that nowadays emulators and cross developing allow programs to be written for our first machines that we Simply couldn t do in former times without those tools at hand Over the time one main interest for me always had been computer graphics So when emulators had matured enough I thought what I could have achieved with the VIC had its PSU not given up early Q Can you tell our readers about the VIC 20 graphics extension MINIGRAFIK A MINIGRAFIK is a compact tool for the VIC 20 that provides a high resolutiongraphics screen of 160x192 pixels with at least a 8K RAM extension being present It features commands for changing between text and graphic modes pixel plots line drawing and it can save and load the graphics screen There is support to mix hires and multi colour graphics on the same screen the latter which allows up to four colours being placed nearby on the screen at the cost of resolution Q So when and where did the idea for MINIGRAFIK come from A A friend
38. of mine gave me a tape with the original version of MINIGRAFIK in 1985 It had been published by a German computer magazine as type in program The original version had been written for an unexpanded or 3K expanded VIC 20 and featured a 128x128 pixel screen Line drawing and graphics load save commands were not included but even so I wrote some programs for it like function plotters pie charts anda simple joystick driven graphics editor The tape the extension later got lost in time and I had subscribed to the Denial forum late 2004 and in 2006 there appeared a discussion thread about hires graphics in general which gave me the incentive to reconstruct MINIGRAFIK this time with a resolution of 160x192 Only the internal memory of the VIC 20 is accessible by the VIC chip and I chose this resolution as it is the maximum one which can be displayed without clobbering the lower 1K used by CBM BASIC and KERNAL Besides the increased resolution the added line draw and load save commands I also included enhanced support for multi colour graphics A He ve nn T i D n a m m 86 ay nan E m nn Commodore Free Magazine il l a q Q Is the extension still evolving for example are there st
39. on both PAL and NTSC TV systems For this the two versions of the VIC chip must be programmed in a different ways an auto detect routine takes care of that Q Can you explain to our readers how to use the MINIGRAFIK extension from their own programs for example can you use BASIC commands to use the features of MINIGRAFIK A MINIGRAFIK installs itself as extension to CBM BASIC The new commands and functions are all prefaced by an character QON CLR RETURN select graphics mode clear the graphics screen and return to text mode LOAD and SAVE access tape or disc to load or save the graphics screen on its own specifies a pixel plot or line drawing command with a syntax similar to the DRAW command in BASIC 3 5 or 7 0 Finally the function takes a co ordinate pair as two parameters and returns the pixel colour within a numeric expression I could have added additional tokenizing and de tokenizing routines to give the commands their own names Still the combination of a flagging character and standard BASIC 2 0 tokens with fitting descriptions of the intended use seemed satisfactory to me The screen bitmap has a simple address function so programs written in access machine language have fast Q I presume the whole of MINIGRAFIK is implemented as machine code How big is the code when loaded into memory A Indeed MINIGRAFIK is 100 machine code only 1K in size Even though the memory f
40. on though All to soon my day pass ran out and With regret I had to leave Allan and head back to the motorway although it was rush hour when I left and the road had a large number of roadwork s I made it quickly back home drank a cup of fruit juice and went to bed CCUK UPDATE At this mini meeting various CC U k problems were tried to be resolved like banking issues and I asked for a list of stock to sell via Commodore Free magazine Allan is compiling a list of items the CC U k shop has Hopefully this will be included in this issue maybe One thing that was causing confusion was the membership its quite confusing with the various options 6 months 1 year and life so we decided that we should just have one option that of life membership mee for 30 Also we suggested a crap 29 game competition More on this when details arrive COMMODORE 64 SETUP FOR GEOLINK From Allan s router we could see the Commodore 64 machine on his home network and even ping the commo dore 64 from a pc the software with the aid of the DHCP client 18 so easy to use and takes any confusion from the user who is new to networking and or IP addressing filling in IP address Subnet mask gateway and DNS server settings Paar a tion C 5151361 112151 23 53516151 9154232 611915 Page 16 Commodore Free Magazine MINIGRAFIK FOR THE VIC 20 INTRODU
41. onstruction of models and playing a good game of chess Q What is your first Memory of computers and Commodore A I became interested in computers at quite an early age when I could try out my uncle s ZX81 in the summer of 1982 The most fascinating thing for me at that time was that a TV set actually could display something different than the normal TV programme something one could think out oneself I had been tinkering around with electronic kits already for some time then having built an AM transistor radio at the age of nine I really didn t focus on Commodore until I got my first computer Q What was the first Commodore Machine you owned and did you progress through the C64 and onto the Amiga A My first computer was a German Commodore VC20 as a Christmas present in 83 Even though it was considered as family computer at first it was soon monopolised by me Intrigued by those strange DATA statements full of numbers in BASIC type in programs I even wrote my first ML programs on the VIC until its PSU gave up mid 86 I already had a C 116 then and later on I had a C 128 which then was my main computing platform until early 91 I changed to Acorn and bought an Archimedes A3000 which was followed by an A5000 So at least I could avoid the PC world for quite a long time During that episode I taught myself ARM machine language and C This led me to vastly different methods of program design Interesti
42. ore 1541 1570 1571 1581 BIE spect Boo drive optionally in turbo mode and also converts to move between options or ees te A OK 1 Cancel Next 1 Previous Recalibrate comfortable user friendly and fast giftware soft ware with online help and is very similar to The Norton Commander by Symantec Inc 1986 1995 and Jim Butterfield Tells a Commodore Story While rummaging around various Beta VHS Digital 8 and DV tapes I came across a VHS tape that was given to me Its label was printed Chicago Commo dore Expo October 24 1998 Jim Butterfield Tells a Commodore Story I viewed the tape and though the video quality is only fair the audio is good and of course Jim tells a good story of the early days of Commodore http blip tv file 3066765 cue Thanks to BIOS for the upload sis puttar Robert Bernardo Fresno Commodore User Group http videocam net au fcug AN EXPERIMENTAL 8 BIT ALBUM FROM LukHash http www lukhash com deadpixels html DEAD PIXELS is an experimental fourth long play album from LukHash A fusion album with an interest ing 8bit sounds blended into Rock music Songs were recorded using real chiptune DMG Gameboys and Commo dore 64 online WWW LUKHASH COM Album is distrib uted free of charge In 2009 LukHash began experimenting with original chip
43. ough with its 45nS response time and they were cheap at the time so a batch of the OTP chips was purchased and some adaptors made out of sandwiched IC sockets One adaptor was needed to extract the PLA code and get it into my computer and another adaptor to make the programmed EPROM work in the C64 I m putting up both adaptor Commodore Free Magazine schematics and the code on my site if anyone wants to make their own substitute PLA The resulting replacement ICs do work in many C64 boards but not in others even ones with the same board number Now to the reasons One of my C64 boards 250407 will work with Just about any PLA substitute EPROM from the slowest 250nS to the fastest OTP Other boards are very fussy about the replacement PLA Results with those boards varied from blank screen to less than the normal bytes free at startup to random character colour errors or program crashes common indicators of a failing OEM PLA or bad RAM The Sub PLA could be made to work in some boards by replacing the VIC the MPU and or the CIAs For example a CPU with a later code date worked ina board with a sub PLA whereas the earlier CPU chip wouldn t even boot up blank screen My oldest 64 board a 1982 326298 gave me the most trouble Most of the chips in it are early versions Swapping some of them out with newer ones made that board work fine The original RAM ICs Commodore used were either 150nS or 200nS RAM c
44. ransfer rate is more than 100 times the rate of the floppy drive 1541 The IDE cartridge contains a 128kB ROM EPROM or flash EPROM with IDE DOS Machine Code Monitor File Manager and Setup a 28kB RAM used for internal buffers a real time clock chip powered by a battery two LEDs to indicate the presence of the cartridge and HDD activity a Short BUS for new peripherals Amiga Clock Port mini USB Device Port PCLink and an ispLSI chip Its price is 99 Euros including shipping STARCOMMANDER UPGRADED The Volkov Commander by Vsevolod V Volkov http sta c64 org sc html 1991 2000 The Star Commander and the Star Utilities have both been updated to version 0 83 More information and ee download links can be found at the website Normal Transfer mode 1541 Drive type None Serial cable Never Extended 1541 disks None Parallel cable Speed DOS DOS type The Star Commander is the ultimate DOS shell that Auto Async transfer can handle the image file formats of the C64 Soft Fe Gea Canes H Delay value Full Disk copy mode ware Emulator by Miha Peternel 1994 1997 CCS64 None Invalid CCR error by Per Hakan Sundell 1996 2009 Personal C64 port H Nun of smart retries LPTi Serial interface Detect disk changes by Wolfgang Lorenz 1994 1997 and VICE by the LPT1 Parallel interface 1 Endless retry VICE Team 1993 2009 it copies files and disks All Detect port modes x Verify write between the PC and a Commod
45. reeted by Allan The first order of the day was a strong cup of tea and then after a brief tidy up Allan invited us into his Den of computers Now I have been to Allan s on 2 other occasions but this time marked a new and cleaner Computer room actually a converted garage Allan said he was installing more storage and shelv ing so to excuse the mess although it was scarily tidy every paper filed neatly away and every disk labelled and stacked in place even nuts bolts and screws found there own storage boxes and a shelf to house them in Moving further into the garage I was greeted by an almost complete looking Dale scarily pained in grey like it had come out of a mould and was getting prepared for world domination or some such similar event maybe like scaring small chil dren In the picture you can see how truly evil the machine is without power and a full armourment its still intent on attacking a florescent jacket If you want to follow the Dale project you will find it here http commodorescene servebbs org dalek html Allan said he was still working on his Commodore setup but did have his Commodore 128D with SCPU RAMLINK and Cmd hard disk setup all connected to a Flat panel TV So this begs the question Allan did you get the A 22 Board Working Allan s reply was sort of have a look seers we a ae b Peers LS HHH tt 7
46. rom addresses 4096 to 8191 is permanently allocated for graphics display while the extension is active With the minimum required 8K RAM extension that means there is still 7K available for BASIC programs Commodore Free Magazine Q Has MINIGRAFIK been used in any recent VIC 20 games A It found use in VIC toria Gold Edition a strategic board game set in Ancient Rome which Alessandro Ubiali and I co developed in late 2008 Some graphics for Realms of Quest III by Ghislain de Blois were prepared off line with MINIGRAFIK enhanced conversion programs A few weeks ago the text adventure Island of Secrets had been re released with a new LOOK command to show screens of more than 30 locations in the game And while it might not strictly qualify as game in the usual sense I ve also written aLIFE simulator which uses MINIGRAFIK Q When or where did the program MINIPAINT evolve from A Really MINIPAINT started out from the editor part of the LIFE simulator I just mentioned To get the features of a full fledged graphics editor and for speed reasons I had to translate many parts to machine language but there is still a main part written in BASIC which interfaces that ML library to MINIGRAFTIK I did the first drafts of MINIPAINT in 2008 the project then lay dormant for nearly one year until I picked it up again last year Q What was the main idea of MINIPAINT A MINIPAINT at graphics editor two main methods
47. roved C128 VDC VIC 20 and PAL emulation ReSID s resampler optimized SFX Sound Sampler and SFX Sound Expander emulation http vice emu sourceforge net VICE v2 2 VICE is a emulator for the 8 bit Commo dore computers The software can be used on a vari ety of platforms Unix Linux MS DOS Win32 OS 2 Acorn RISC OS BeOS QNX 6 x Amiga GP2X Mac OS X AROS64 QNX 4 x HPUX Atari Mint Solaris Express and SkyOs C64 SCENE WEBSITE http www c64scene n1 C64S cene Home html A new Dutch Commodore 64 website has been created by Marc Teunissen This site s especially for the Dutch Commodore Community with a emphasis on the Commodore 64 but doesn t exclude non Dutch users who speak Dutch Added EasyFlash Digibooster SID Mega Cart and Final Expansion cartridge paddle and lightpen lightgun emulation userport joystick adapters Commodore Free Magazine wrarecommedorefree com NEWS IDE V4 1 AVAILABLE AGAIN http news ide64 org Developer Josef Soucek has announced that IDE64 V4 1 is once again available for ordering Go to http news ide64 org to read up on the latest news for this well supported device The IDE64 cartridge is a device for connecting an IDE hard disk drive and CD ROM drive to a C64 and or it can be used with a Compact Flash card It is plugged into the Expansion Port and connected to the hard drive by means of a 40 wire cable IDE hard drive t
48. rst time it s installed It doesn t need to be heat sinked like the original PLA should have been the new chip runs cool Much appreciated for the info Ray Since I m using a Promenade Cl I had to break the file into two 32k sections as there is NO WAY to program an entire 64k file with a Promenade Cl Each file will need 00 20 inserted into the Beginning of the file they will be 32770 bytes in size In order to program a 27c512 EPROM BEST to use 45ns for the PLA you will have to run a ground wire from the CASE of the Promenade C1 to PIN 1 on the IC This will allow you to program the FIRST HALF 32k of the EPROM Remove the wire to program the SECOND HALF of the EPROM a T Fi cy I am using Promshell to do this You can find the disk on my FTP site ftp wwuw n2dvm com Co mmodore Programs Eprom promshell zip Here are the files I used for the PLA They already have the 00 20 added to them to make it easier on you ftp www n2dvm com Commodore Programs Eprom PLA Files rar Have fun Commodore Free Magazine www commodorefree com INTERVIEW WITH Gunther Schmidl INFOCOM Documentation Website http infodoc plover net index html INFOCON Documentation Project Preserving the Lore and Legends of Infocom Q Please introduce yourself to our readers I live and work in Austria unsurprisingly in programming I m a big fan of adventure games
49. s free on the opening screen to see if it s normal 2 looking for glitches random colour shifts or odd characters anywhere on the screen while a program is running 3 testing with several different cartridges such as CBM Jupiter Lander which refused to load in one board when everything else seemed to work and a passing grade using the C64 diagnostic cart some kind soul gave me years ago Making the substitute PLA 35 pretty straightforward With a few pins rewired via an adaptor schematic is readpla jpg I made with two sandwiched IC sockets I used my ERPOM burner to copy the code from a working PLA chip The burner reads it as if it were a 27C512 EPROM and the resulting file pla bin has a checksum of hex DAAO That code was burned into a standard 27C512 EPROM I then used another cross wired adaptor schematic is eprompla jpg to install the EPROM in my C64 The files mentioned above are on my schematics website at http staff washington edu rrcc uwweb eprompla One last thing replacing a PLA with an EPROM in an adaptor socket that plugs into a board mounted IC socket may cause intermittent operation if the board socket has loose contacts One way around that is to use an adaptor socket with round pins that are thicker than the standard replacement types Of course the mod PLA socket can be soldered into the C64 board directly It s likely to be the last time it will be replaced anyway as long as it works correctly the fi
50. set auxiliary colour POKE 646 8 Mt F set foreground colour and enable disable MC mode Physical Colour Table O Black 8 Orange 1 White Light Orange 2 Red Light Red 3 Cyan 11 Light Cyan 4 Purple 12 Light Purple 5 Green 13 Light Green 6 Blue 14 Light Blue 7 Yellow 15 Light Yellow SAVE lt filename gt lt device gt Save screen to device A device number greater than or equal 8 addresses the disc drive In that case a filename must be given If the device number is omitted or equal 1 the screen is saved to tape SAVE without any parameters saves an unnamed screen to tape A tape save notifies the user with a border flashing black red to press RECORD amp PLAY on the tape drive When the save has completed your program continues execution The file contains a stand alone display routine to view the image via LOAD and RUN without MINIGRAFIK in memory If MINIGRAFIK is loaded use LOAD instead inside a program Code Memory Map MINIGRAF IK MINIGRAFIK active not active S1LOOO SLOEF char map not saved S10FO free 10F1 10FD 1201 120D 2008 SYS 8584 S10FE 5 120E VIC register 36878 value S10FEF S120F VIC register 36879 value 1100 1FFF 6 1210 S210F bitmap S2000 S2077 S2078 S20EF 2110 2187 2188 21FF colour RAM compressed stand alone display routine QLOAD lt filename gt lt device gt Load screen from device A device number greater than or equal 8 addresses the disc dri
51. ss playback of sid tunes while you work on your PC Connectors Windows eOne analogue SID sound output Outputs the sound of the actually selected SID chip jack USB connector for connecting the unit to a desktop PC or a Notebook HardSID 4U a HardSID for you The HardSID 4U is the most powerful SID synthesizer Since the legendary C64 9 CPUS and main memory eUSB connection compatible with both 2 0 amp 1 1 eTsochronous USB endpoint for low latency audio eVSTi interface with 8000Hz update rate on all SID registers free oWave in VSTi pin for routing 8000Hz signals to any registers example playing other VSTi s sound on the volume register oFull automation of all VSTi parameters o Superior sound quality it is a HardsSID o Support for up to four SID chips 6581 8580 6582 in any combination cUpdateable firmware over USB eMicrosoft Vista compatible Win2000 XP Vista drivers for and if you re a C64 fan eCycle accurate playback of your favourite SID tunes eDigitized sound high speed playback with low CPU utilization e Seamless playback of sid tunes while you work on your PC by providing a huge playback buffer for non VSTi applications o Supported by the HardSID 4U Winamp Plugin sub tune handling IR remote controlling The HardSID 4U Studio Edition oFull physical separation of the SIDs from the USB driven circuits seeking 100 elimination of EMI Electromagnetic interfere
52. strations of the scenes 88 in Sierra s Mystery House the first graphic adventure What they did do was dumb down the parser so you d have to guess from the line drawings what object exactly you were seeing on the screen and then issue two word commands and hope the parser would understand you Thus yes the games interrupted play pulling the players out of the game world by throwing I don t know what you mean messages at them This problem was mitigated by going point and click however Douglas Adams later made Starship Titanic a full graphic adventure which was advertised as having an intelligent parser to let you communicate with the denizens of the ship Let s say it wasn t very intelligent after all and leave it at that Q Do you still own any boxed Infocom games with their feelies can you explain about the feelies Feelies were and are sometimes a way of getting people to buy instead of pirate the games One you d get a nifty box with for example a glow in the dark stone a rubber centipede some gemstones booklets or hieroglyph rubbings etc Two in later games material from the game box would actually be needed to pass copy protection in the game A game might ask you to type in a word from the manual or set a code wheel to some specific www commodorefree com position and type in a number from it question to be learned from the feelies or answer a etc
53. successful However there are some limitations at the moment but we think these can be ironed out Although others have attempted this once working the plan is to purchase in some boards for CCC U k and sell them to order when you see a Commodore 128 displaying 80 columns on a TFT Screen its guite an amazing sight Ok thanks for Reading Nigel www commodorefree com www commodorecomputerclub co uk Commodore Free Magazine 0 OR NEWS 64COPY RECIEVES AN UPDATE http ist uwaterloo ca schepers personal html What is 64Copy 64COPY is an all purpose DOS and C64 emulator file manager modelled after Norton Commander and runs under the Windows XP 2000 DOS VDM or in real DOS session 64COPY will run in a Windows Vista 32 bit VDM but Vista 64 bit has no VDM support at all It specializes in converting and manipulating emulator files between various formats 64COPY does not do any communication to the 1541 71 81 floppy drives to read disks If that is what you need download Star Commander for that task Some of what 64COPY does includes 4508 4 58 lt v gt 1994 2005 File conversion between Do4 all types including cs dat aca aaa ME the F64 variant D71 D81 D80 D82 DNP D2M T64 Eara dirc dvaly G64 ZipCode all types PC64 Pxx Sxx Uxx Rxx a LNX DOS binaries ARC CRI SDA X64 LBR ARK SPY SAGA Latics und id wavs Errr and CPK files 8 File huudles uy
54. tBoot the original boot a c64 via tftp cartridge image KipperKart net booting application server and more KipperGo a gopher and simple telnet PetSCII cartridge image KipperTerm telnet client vt100 and PetSCII plus XMODEM support See http netboot65 sourceforge net for more SID player web 100 and GEOLINK VERSION 0 96 BETA IS OUT ShadowM implemented IP65 a TCP IP stack for RR Net into GEOS and wrote a small chat client for it Look here http lyonlabs org commodore geoLink geoLink html THE STAR COMMANDER amp STAR UTILITIES UPDATED The STAR COMMANDER and the STAR UTILITIES have both been updated to version 0 83 More information and download links can be found at the website http sta c64 org sc html VICE 2 2 SUPPORTS 4 PLAYER INTERFACES The latest version of the popular VICE emulator contains support for some 4 Player Interfaces including the one by CGA Classical Games which is being distributed by Protovision Downloads are available from the VICE homepage http vice emu sourceforge net URL mind the new COMMANDER LASERSTRAHL DOUBLE CD Commander Laserstrahl is the name of the protagonist of Metal Dust Some time has passed since his mission within the SuperCPU game His new mission is to study the earthlings and to explore Planet Earth as a possible New World He does this in the form of a radio play in German language produced by Welle Erdball The new double C
55. tree 888 10 ie He Cte 1 te cycle 7 for help a y www commodorefree com To draw the sun change the foreground colour 2 to Yellow and press H to Switch to high resolution mode Place the sun in the top left quarter of the picture Draw the outline first then fill the inte rior Then add some clouds Change the foreground colour to White and place the clouds in good distance to both sun and tree to avoid colour clashes Add some structure along the top left facing part of the clouds by clearing pixels to background colour For the finishing touch change the foreground colour back to Black again and add some birds the picture below to the right hand side shows the result n 3 Y 48 11 2 Hires Aol ti ufCtrel te cycle for help aiie i aii ia a Page 23 CLASSIC COMPUTER SUPPORT One hardware design which can emulate multiple different classic computers e g C 64 and Amiga Easy to reconfigure for different emulations All emulation done in real HW design and not Software based This ensures the original behavior and reaction time for games and applications This Multiple Classic Computer Platform lets dreams EXPANDABLE DESIGN come true Old Joystick interfaces allow the usage of classic G Allows user to add The Classic Computer and Classic Arcade fans are input devices A stereo
56. tune machines including the COMMODORE 64 and a couple of modded DMG Nintendo GAMEBOYs to create a blend of original 8bit sound from the 80 s and Rock music Commodore Free Magazine NEWS PROTOVISION NEWS UPDATE http www protovision online com DISTRIBUTION CHANGES Our Online Shop is available again for a while after being offline for a few weeks in October November 2009 The most important changes 1 Distribution is now being done by our new member Stefan Schauf Doc of Desire Hence our new postal address is Stefan Schauf Schoetmarsche Str 25 32791 Lage Germany Our banking details and our PayPal address changed The means of payment will be shown during the order process and will also be transmitted to you after successfully completing an order Oliver F rster Poison who took care of Protovision s distribution for over six years stays member of Protovision and still takes care of organization as well as our website 2 For orders under 20 Euros we have to charge a low order fee of 3 Euros Within Europe shipping is free for orders over 20 Euros For orders outside of Europe shipping costs will be charged according to the weight 3 Because of tax changes German VAT will be listed from now on Customers from outside of the EU don t have to pay VAT Happy shopping HARDWARE MMC REPLAY is completely sold out It is still unsure whether there will be another batch of MMCRs The manufac
57. turer is currently concentrating on the new CHAMELEON cartridge However a remaining stock of the RETRO REPLAY freezer cartridge is available again limited stock The COMPETITION PRO JOYSTICK can be obtained again as well either as single joystick s or in form of the limited COMPETITION PRO 4 PLAYER BUNDLE 4 Competition Pro joysticks and one 4 Player Interface at a reduced price The Ethernet card RR NET is on stock again too Did you know RR Net and MP3 64 also fit on the new IDE64 available from http www ide64 org Last but not least CARTRIDGE CASES are also available in yellow now GAMES Almost all titles are available again The only exception here is NEWCOMER ULTIMATE NEWCOMER English and Hungarian version is still under development completion is very close See the updated Newcomer section for more information http www protovision online com games newcomer htm VANDALISM NEWS 52 THE MARKET Issue 52 of the Australian based disk magazine VANDALISM NEWS has been released on 31st October 2009 at Syntax Party 2009 The Market chapters contain information about game projects Protovision is involved in GRUBZ PIECES II PROTO Wi gt rOoOn TANK WARS ULTIMATE NEWCOMER Leech at http noname c64 org csdb release id 84122 NETBOOT65 TFTP TELNET GOPHER AND HTTPD FOR THE C64 There is a new release vl 0 25 of the increasingly inaccurately named NETBOOT65 by Jonnosan which now includes Ne
58. ve In that case a filename must be given If the device number is omitted or equal 1 the screen is loaded from tape LOAD without any parameters loads the next screen from tape A tape load notifies the user with a border flashing black green to press PLAY on the tape drive When the load has completed the image is displayed on screen and your program continues execution after the LOAD command There is no wait for a key press DO NOT load anything else than a SAVEd screen with LOAD Functions 9 lt x gt lt y gt This function returns the logical colour at lt x gt lt y gt lt x gt may range from 0 to 159 lt y gt from 0 to 191 Both arguments can be written as numbers variables or arbitrary numeric expressions For a High Resolution 8x16 pixel cell the function returns 0 for background and 1 for foreground colour If the cell is Multi Colour and lt x gt is even then lt x gt and lt x gt 1 share the same logical colour and you must be prepared for the function to return values from 0 to 3 Commodore Free Magazine INTERVIEW WITH Michael Kircher CREATOR OF MINIGRAFIK and MINIPAINT FOR THE COMMODORE VIC 20 Q Please introduce yourself to our readers A Hi I m Michael Kircher 37 years old and working as electrical engineer in Nuclear Fusion research I m posting as Mike in the VIC 20 Denial forum When I don t use my spare time for programming I enjoy swimming cycling photographing c
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