Commodore Free Magazine
Issue 13 October 2007


Free to download magazine dedicated
to Commodore Computers
Available as Text Html PDF and
Commodore 64 D64 disk image
www.commodorefree.com 


Editor


I have again been busy revising so
the issue will feel a little rushed
and rough (although many people claim
its always that way) The weather is
now in the UK. at least back to
normality rain with the occasional
rain and some days we get rain and
wind and a bit more rain. 


But then out of the blue we have 
a
fine sunny day, it only lasts for 
a
few hours so we have to make the most
of it with everyone setting of at the
same time and heading to the beach.
The motorways blocked and after 
3
hours you make it to a beach Full of
people then spend another couple of
hours looking for somewhere to sit
for a picnic but in the back of your
mind you thing must set of soon to
avoid the traffic so you jump into
the car speed of the the motorway and
find everyone else has had the same
idea and the motorway is full, couple
of hours later you get back home
unpack and it starts to rain for 
a
week. 


It does make you wonder why anyone
would want to live in the Uk, but 
I
suppose with the world all doomed
from global warming and ready to burn
up any second then anywhere on the
earth could be a bad place. The thing
that always cheers me up is someone
coming out with a gadget or software
item that proves other people wrong,
a demo most would think impossible,
hardware that couldn’t be made or
some other none producible item. 


This seems to be the Theme for old
Commodore systems at the moment
making the impossible possible. 


Finally I caught up with the new
owner of 8 bit designs Charles Gutman
and the inventor of the Commodore
1541-III, Also read about how the
Doom clone Mood was created  Hey
stop reading this it’s the boring
boarding bit turn the page. 



Thanks Nigel
www.commodorefree
commodorefree@commodorefree.com


Contents


Editor and Contents
Page 
2


News
Protovision
Page 
3
General news
Page 
4


Readers Comments
Page 
5


Reviews
Amiga forever
Page 24 


Interviews
Interview with Klaus Andersen
Page 
6
Interview with Jan Derogee
Page 12
Interview with Charles Gutman
Page 20
Interview with Robin Eriksson
Page 23


Projects
1541-III Faq
Page 
9
Commodore Scene Databasefaq
Page 
8


Advert
8 bit design’s Catalogue
Page 15
Prophet 64
Page 23


Programming
Hexfiles part
Page 27


SID
Could sid chart
Page 29


BBS systems
Village BBS history
Page 16
BBS
Page 18


HOW CAN I HELP COMMODORE FREE
Ok the best way to help would be
write something about Commodore
(yes for the observant I spelled the



company correctly this time) _grin
seriously though articles are always
welcome, 


WHAT ARTICLES DO YOU NEED 
Well they vary contact me if you have
an idea but I am looking for
Tutorials  (beginners and Expert)
Experiences with Commodore
Why I love Commodore machines
Interviews  maybe you have access to
a power user


Thanks Nigel
www.commodorefree
commodorefree@commodorefree.com


NEWS 
PROTOVISION NEWS SEPTEMBER 2007


ADVANCED SPACE BATTLE MUSIC
COLLECTION BY ROLE
Not long ago, JSL had the idea of
releasing the tunes for Advanced
Space Battle by Yogibear as an
official music demo. And so it
happened: The collection contains all
eight tunes of the game Advanced
Space Battle by More.Gore and
Protovision in one file, along with
the single files are on the disk. The
whole thing was coded by NEO and
Stirf, while JSL and Shake took care
of the graphics. The music collection
has been released under the ROLE flag
at the Primary Star 2007 party which
took place from 10th to 12th August
2007 in Reusel, Netherlands.


Grab the collection at CSDb and visit
the games section of the Protovision
homepage for details on Advanced
Space Battle.


Advanced Space Battle music
collection CSDb entry:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?
i
d=51652
Information on the game Advanced
Space Battle: http://www.protovision
online.de/games/asb.htm


AVAILABILITY OF MMC64 AND RETRO
REPLAY
Both the MMC64 and Retro Replay are
out of stock. The manufacturer has
confirmed that there will be new
editions of both, but unfortunately
it is still unsure when that will
happen. It could be weeks or even
months. More information as soon as
we receive it.



1000 ORDERS SHIPPED VIA PROTOVISION
ONLINE SHOP
It is time for a little anniversary:
Around one month ago, on 22nd August
2007, the Protovision Online Shop
reached the magic number of 1000
shipped orders!


Software news for hardware we
distribute:


NEW MMC64 PLUGINS (FAST MMC64 D64
READER AND REU PLUGIN)
At last a faster and more reliable
D64 reader for MMC64 has been
released. Reads a disk side in about
80 seconds instead of almost 10
minutes. The archive includes
versions for the C64 and C128. The
C128 version is slightly faster (
5
seconds). At the moment the plugin
will only work with FAT16. Get it at
CSDb.


CSDb entry:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?
i
d=52431


Download:
http://greg.geekmind.org/d64read/d64r
ead-20070903.zip


Changelog:
http://greg.geekmind.org/d64read/Chan
geLog
Lemon64 thread:
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopi
c.php?t=24397
hannenz has released a REU Plugin for
MMC64 that can dump and restore your
REU contents from or to a dump file
on the SD/MMC card. Currently it
works on FAT16 only. Head to the CSDb
for it.


CSDb entry:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?
i
d=52707
Lemon64 thread:
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopi
c.php?t=24440


Please give the authors some
feedback! Thanks!


NEW MMC64 DEMO: MAIN-#2 INVITE BY
FAIRLIGHT
At Stream 2007, Fairlight released 
a
Main-#2 invite. It was coded by
Hollowman while Zabutom composed the
music. Main-#2, coupled with the Data
Airlines Festival, is going to take
place from 1st to 4th November 2007
at Espace Julian in Marseille,



France. 


Check the party homepage at
http://www.mainparty.net 
. 


You can download the invitation demo
from CSDb at
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?
i
d=53728 
. 


An MMC64 version is available as
well.


0XPAINT 1.2 RELEASED
Oxidy/Fairlight released a new
version of 0xPaint: version 1.2.
0xPaint (formely known as WDStudio)
is a tool for creating C64 graphics
under Windows. It supports RR-Net:
There are options for transferring
pictures to C64 or 1541 and a small
CodeNet GUI.


New in v1.2:


The following features were added:
undo, recent, line, continuous line,
circle, different pens, fullscreen
preview, integration with
BMP2SpriteConverter. Several bugs
have been fixed. Renamed to 0xPaint
due to change of group.


For more information and download
visit the 0xPaint homepage or CSDb.


0xPaint homepage:
http://www.oxidy.com/0xPaint


CSDb entry:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?
i
d=52822


http://www.protovision-online.de 


NEWS 
Tulip wants to buy Commodore back!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/
27/tulip_wants_commodore_back/print.
h
tml


Tulip sold the rights to the
commodore name to Yeahronimo Media
Ventures in 2004 for 22m
euros


Tulip is planning to make a bid of 
1
dollar per share making the company
value worth 81m dollars


Commodore Super computer



> I would like to print about this
item "The Commodore 64 Parallel
Super-Computer" in the free to
download magazine
www.commodorefree.com Can you let me
have any more information about the
project


Hi Nigel.
Well, we are still working on it.
We're finalizing the design and
several prototype configurations have
been tested. We have secured sixteen
Commodore 64's thanks to Robert
Bernardo of the Fresno Commodore
Users Group, so we think we have all
the hardware we'll need.


I hope that by the middle of October
we'll be mostly done with the build
and will use the remaining time
before the VCF to finish the
software.


Sellam Ismail
Vintage ComputerFestival


SCACOM Issue 2 released
Issue number 2 dated (October 2007)
of the new German language Commodore
format PDF magazine SCACOM. Is
available for dowload


Content:


renderering pictures - part 2 
/
feedback / interview with C16 Chris 
/
information / background image 1541
II / interesting things / Commodore
award / Tulip wants Commodore stocks
back / disk cover / computer stories
/ Did you know? / 10 reasons 
/
pictures


Available for download from 
www.scacom.de.vu 
or c64-mags.de.


CCS64 v3.4
CCS64 v3.4 - Per Håkan Sundell has
released a new version of the
Commodore C64 emulator. The emulator
runs on Windows Pc with DirectX 9.0
and is available for (98 / ME / 2000
/ XP). There has been a lot of bug
fixes so more games and demos run
without problems. 


http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/


VICEplus v1.0
Version 1 has been released from the
Vice this is based on version VICE



1.22 


VICEplus is the Versatile Commodore
Emulator Plus. Its most important
extension over VICE is support for
the C64DTV as well as a few general
bug fixes and improvements.


Binaries available for:


* Win32 (Windows
9x/ME/NT4/2K/XP/2K3/Vista)
* MacOSX
* MSDOS
* BeOS
* QNX
* Solaris
* Minix
* Amiga based and derived systems
http://viceplus.wiki.sourceforge.net/


Vintage Computer Festival East 4.0
Video on youtube
> I'm proud to announce that the
first 2 parts of the
> Vintage Computer Festival East 4.0,
starring CBM engineers Chuck Peddle,
Bil Herd, Dave Haynie, Bob Russell,
and a slew of admirers, is now up at
http://www.youtube.com 


Just type in the search for hazydave
and then look for VCF East 4.0 1/
4
and VCF East 4.0 2/4.


The last two parts are now up on
YouTube -- 3/4 and 4/4.


Hoxs64 Updated
Hoxs64 is a Commodore 64 emulator for
Windows with DirectX 9 (Oct 2006) or
higher


Features
Cycle based CPU, CIA, VIC and SID.
1541 Disk drive.
Tape deck.
Full screen mode.
Configurable keyboard and joystick.
TAP PRG P00 D64 G64 FDI T64 file
support.


http://www.btinternet.com/~hoxs64/ 



READERS COMMENTS


Taken from Various messages from Lord
Ronin in response the the letter from
Lee about Beginners guides


>>>SNIP>>
>


Though that would be a good thing,
for the future. Such is not the
impression I gained from Lee's
letter. Nor the aspect that I feel on
many lists and chats.


You are the man that is ineterested
in the C=. For some unknown reason.
You have gained it from the attic,
father, uncle, grandfather, jumble
sale etc. Now what the smeg do you do
with it? You have seen things on the
net and the web with your newer
platform. Heard about the fantastic 
8
bit system, But what can you
personally do with it? Turn it on and
see the blue screen.


The above is the level that I am
talking about. People that are
entering for the first time, like 
I
and the members of the users group.
Or returning after a decade of
messing with other machines. As a few
of
The long distance members of the
users group are doing. Bypass for the
moment emulation.


 I understand Lee's comments. As the
echo what I was saying in 93 when 
I
joined the local group. What does
this thing do? So I suggest that 
I
start out with 


that sentiment in mind, do a series
of rank first time, on the KB turn it
on and go from the blue screen to ..
.
sort of articles. Written for the
first timer, the absolute beginner in
mind. Questions on the use of
advanced basic, ML/ASSM, in-depth
gear head talks on the 


additives. That just drives the
newbie away. As it doesn't make any
sense. I know electronics from the
60s and 70s. Not the new stuff. We
barely had
transistors in the field. In fact we
jargoned the ICs of that time as
centipedes. Because of their size and
the legs. Trying to explain what you
do, based on your background, would
be a loss. As you would need to
retro it to when I last worked in the
field.


 Language here is the big part. When
dealing with the diverse people that
want to go to the C=. A word
association that I give to illustrate
this point is the word "disk". First
thing that pops in my mind is a 33
1/3 LP or for you in the U.K. an EP
record. What popped in your mind for
that one word?


What I am suggesting is a series of
article, that can possible be
compiled as a separate disk. Just for
the first timers. Reason for this Is
based on what Lee stated and my own
experiences. On lists and especially
in the #c64friends chat. You want
some beginner info. Don't bother
asking. People there, well they have
been in the system for a couple of
decades. They forget what it was like
looking at that screen. Filled with
wonder and excitement. They had the
resources, today these are limited,
and people don't know where to find
them. What I think is needed is 
a
primer for the beginning C= user.
Sine that is my level of use. I offer
to start it off. When it goes past
me. Others can access the idea and
add to it.


>>SNIP>>
>


That returns me to Lee's letter.
REally I am seeing more and more from
that letter and my own experiences
that there is a need for an absolute
ground "0" introduction to the C=. 
I
mean how many people that score up
the C= have access to the users
manual? Most that I have bought for
re-sale are missing the manual. That
is also the first thing that my local


U.G. members use for programming and
familiarity lessons. 
Saying that I am working on an idea
for a test on an example article. My
hope is that I can find a way to UL
it to you. If that works, the
article will be ion 80c Ascii.
Translated by Geos Wrong is Write. 
I
can
then make fiels of the original to
send to you to pass to Al in
stock/standard PET in 40c. Well it is
an idea that needs help from Rod and
Galynne.


BCNU
Lord Ronin from Q-Link



Thanks to everyone who contacted me
about beginners guides it does seem
that many a real beginners guide 
I
will start a guide next month for the
real beginners the point of view that
you received a machine from a friend
and have never seen it before what
can it do how does it work etc 


Thanks for everyone for there
comments 
Regards
Nigel
www.commodorefree.com
commodorefree@commodorefree.com


Interview with Klaus Andersen
Commodore Scene Database (CSDb)
By Commodore Free magazine
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/


Q. Please introduce yourself to our
reader?
A. Hi. My name is Klaus Andersen (aka
Perff), and live in Aarhus, Denmark
with my girlfriend & cat.
I got my first C64 in 1987, and have
been coding ever since. In the early
days I was rather isolated, so my
only inspiration was from intros and
the few demos that "accidentally"
tagged along with the games i got my
hands on. In 1994 I met with
Ghostrider of No Name, and at The
Party 4 I joined No Name and started
to produce for real. Actually 
I
didn't produce that much, but I guess
most of you have heard about M.O.O.D.
:) While studying Computer Science at
Aarhus University (1996-2003) I got
a part time job as web developer
(PHP/SQL), and got some free hosting
at the place I worked. I wanted to
use what I've learned, and the new
hosting spot for more then just our
No Name website, so I began working
on the idea for CSDb in spring 2001.
Q. Please tell our reader about "the
Scene 64 Database" What were the
original intentions of the project?
A. I wanted to make a place where as
much information about the C64 scene
could be gathered at one place, with
heavy cross references, so it
Would be easy to see who had made
what and which groups they were

members of. Inspired by IMDb 
I
decided to make a site where it was
the users who provided the info. 
I
got Kilroy (our webmaster in No Name
at that time) on the project as my
skills in designing website is very
poor. I coded, he designed. (Later on
he started coding as well.) Also
other members of No Name helped with
ideas. We named it the C64 Scene
Database (CSDb)
.


Q. How many people maintain the
project?
A. Originally we were two coders. Me
and Kilroy. After a few years he
left, so now I'm the only coder left.
KBS and Cyberbrain have been active
as admin`s since the beginning.
That’s about it.
Q. Our reader may be asking why
create such a database, what was the
motivation behind the idea?
A. Back in those days (late 90's) 
I
thought it was rather difficult to
figure out who was who and made what.
There was websites with bits and
pieces of information on this, but 
I
thought there was missing a place
where it all was put together.
Q. Are all the database entries added
by volenteers?
A. More or less yes. To begin with we
got hold of SAL (Sceners Addy List)
,
and used the information about
sceners in that to start it up, but
except that the database was more or
less empty when we went online.
Q. Has the idea/project changed or
evolved over the years?
A. The basic idea about the project
has always been the same. To make an
open database where the users
maintain the info in it, and use it.
It has
however evolved quite a lot i guess.
A lot of new features have been added
over the years. It's a bit less open
now than it was to begin with, as
people can lock entries. Later on we
got some "trusted" users who had more
permissions than others to help us
keep the database clean, and now
we’ve got official moderators taking
care of all that.
Q. The "open" nature of the database

makes it difficult to moderate  what
have been your worst experiences?


A. There have been quite a few
episodes that I don't like to think
back on. I guess my worst experience
was one time when a user decided to
delete as much as possible. When 
I
found that out I got pissed and acted
so fast that I accidentally hit the
wrong button, deleting the user AND
the backup of all the deleted
entries. :( (That system is now
changed so that won't
ever happen again). That caused
several 100 entries of the most
popular demos; groups and seners to
totally disappear from CSDb. Luckily
people were willing to add this info
again. :)Then there has also been
episodes with people like Wanderer
and Nata/Bamu and the like, where I,
rightfully I guess, was accused of
inaction to solve the problem. This
is why we started the moderator team
to avoid similar problems in the
future.
Q. Would it make sense to create 
a
companion database for games  the
companies, programmers and artists?
A. Hm. Perhaps? It's not something 
I
plan on doing, but if anyone would do
something like this, I'll be happy to
cooperate with them, and create ways
of sharing info and linking between
the two sites.
Q. What have been your favourite
additions (of any sort) to the
database since it began?
A. Hm.. Don't think I have such 
a
favourite.
Q. How much of your time does the
database take up, in an average
day/week/month?
A. It's not very often that there
goes a day when I don't check CSDb
out to see what is happening, but the
time I spend on it varies very much.
Some times it's just a few minutes 
a
day. Others it's several hours. 
I
just checked the stats. It says I've
been online on CSDb for almost 2500
hours. Dividing that up over the
aprox 2000 days CSDb has been online,
that comes to a bit over 1 hour a day
on average. :) (The top users have
been online for 3350 hours! I'm only
in 5th place)

Q. Would you think of adding an
online emulator (like the Java JaC64
one) to the database pages, allowing
people a brief look/listen to items
in The database?
A. Though about it, but only briefly.
I guess this requires that the files
people upload would be in specific
formats like D64, T64 or something,
and
There is no quarantine to ensure that
people upload in that format.
Personally I don't think it takes
that much time to hit the download
link, and let your OS open the file
in your favourite emulator. :) (Of
cause you should transfer it to the
real thing for the true experience!
;) 
)
Q. How big is the database now, in
terms of kilobytes of data?
A. The latest backup in txt-format is
267 MB. On top of that comes about
350 MB of screenshots /scener photos
and some MB of code. Additionally
there is 2.7 GB of files which people
have uploaded.
Q. Have you ever thought of creating
a DVD of the database?
A. The idea has crossed my mind, yes.
But I think that there might be to
much work in it, that could be
better spent on other things. Also
CSDb is online, and continuously
updated, so I don't see the big use
for such a DVD+ it would be outdated
the moment it was made.
Q. Can you tell our reader about the
use of colour, Can the colour scheme
be changed by the user?
A. The colour scheme was made by
Kilroy back in the early days. We
decided to go with the classic blue
C64-colors with a black background.
The colour
Scheme can not be changed by the
user. At least not yet.
Q. Has the amount of new information
slowed down or is it the opposite?
A. The first years it was rather
stable. After about 3,5 years
something happened, and people
started to add even more info almost
doubling the amount of new entries
per. day. This speed of new has more

or less stayed the same, even though
it's slowed a bit down. On average
there are currently 30-40 new entries
added per day. You can see the stats
on
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/funstuff/
e
ntrystat.php


Q. What can our reader do to help out
with the Scene Database?
A. Sign up for an account, and start
adding/updating info. :) Remember to
take a look at the help/docs first. 
A
donation would also be nice, as the
hosting is no longer free. ;
)
Q- The Mood project was a superb
effort to recreate a 3d game
environment on an unexpanded
Commodore 64 are there still plans to
maintain this project or release the
source code, also have you thought
about using additional hardware like
the Super cpu, or even a Commodore
128 version in 80 columns, Many
people still think Doom is impossible
on the 64 but this project at least
gave us hope


A: Even though the project has never
officially been declared dead, 
I
doubt that I'll get around to make 
a
full game out of it. Actually M.O.O.
D
started out as a demo effect for
Obscene Code. As I saw it was
possible to add a few monsters etc. 
I
had a potential game. We released
some previews, but after that, and
proving that a 3D texture map game
was possible on a plain C64, I was
kind of satisfied. Even though there
were plans for additional levels, and
putting it all together to a game, 
I
had a hard time
finding the time and motivation for
it. :( I have thought about releasing
the source code for it, and I might
just do that one day. But don't
expect a lot of documentation or
level designer tools! :
)
There have been suggestions to use
additional hardware to make an
"improved" version of M.O.O.D, but 
I
don't want to do that, as it is
against my original idea of making it
for the original hardware.
Commodore Scene Database 


F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions)
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/

Where do you get the information
from?


This is a 100% user based database.
We get all the information we
catalogue from users who, as we, see
the importance of preserving as much
information as possible on everything
concerning the C64 Scene.


Who's responsible for this?


We cannot take responsibility for the
content of this database as all
information is submitted by users.
But if you find something you have 
a
problem with in the database just let
us know and we will take a look at
it.


Can I help?


Yes! You can help this database grow
by contributing information about
yourself, your group, your group's
releases, parties you've been to,
etc. etc.


I want to add some information. How
do I do that?
To add information you first of all
need a CSDb account. If you don't
already have one, get one here.
Then you need to log in, and from
your personal userpage you can now
add information.


Why do I need to register?


Because of the amount of information
we get into CSDb there is no way that
we can actually check if the
information is correct. Therefore we
have to log who enters what into the
database in order to spot and kick
people who is filling crap into CSDb.


I don't want to register. How can 
I
add information?
You can't!! You can try to ask some
of the people who are already
registered to do it for you.


We however recommend that you
register no matter what. We only need
your E-mail and we will NOT abuse it
for anything.


I forgot my password to CSDb. What
can I do?
Click here and enter the E-mail you
used when signing up for CSDb. Your
password will then be mailed to your.



Who gave you permission to include me
in your stinkin database!
?
Information about who was/is a part
of the scene is considered public
information, so you might find
yourself here if you have or had any
relation to the scene. 


However, personal information like
real name, address, phone, E-mail,
photo, etc. is of course strictly
personal and you are of course in
titled to remove any such, or contact
the CSDb admins and we'll deal with
it.


I found some wrong/missing
information in the database, what to
do? To update information you need 
a
CSDb account. When you are logged in
with your account you can change
information by clicking the Update
button at the bottom of every
group/scener/release/event page.


What is this maintainer / "locked
record" all about?
Anyone can maintain a record in CSDb.
This means that only they can edit
the information for that record.


If you want to change information in
a locked record you should contact
the maintainers of that record (send
them a CSDb private message, or email
them)
, 


and ask them to correct the
information, or add you as 
a
maintainer for that record. If they
don't answer, or reject your request
you mean you are in titled to, you
can contact the CSDb admins and we'll
look into it, but only then.


Please note that you should only set
yourself as a maintainer of records
that are somehow related to you (your
scener record, your group record(s)
,
releases you are credited in etc.)
. 


And only if you really don't want
others to add or update information
in those records. You should also
note that when you are maintaining 
a
record, you have the responsibility
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Project: 1541-III
http://jderogee.tripod.com/project154
1.htm
How it all started:


I wanted some extra hardware to fit
the big 'hole' inside my SX64. That
hole was created by the previous
owner who liked some additional
buttons (reset, device selection
etc.) and replaced the complete disk
storage compartment for an ugly
glued on front plate. 


Also the extra hardware I would like
to build must be compatible with my
other CBM machines (C16 and VIC20)
and the usage of .D64 files seemed
like an obvious choice. Therefore an
IEC based device with standard DOS
commands. So no extra software or
cartridges and D64 files can be found
all over the internet... Strangely at
that point in time this did not
exist. So I decided to build it
myself, from scratch. 


Therefore I had to learn the IEC-bus
principles and low level command
structures and since these docs are
rare, I had to build my own (PC
based, LPT-port, VisualBasic6.0)
logic analyser first. 


Also how files are stored on 
a
MMC/SD-card, how to access these



files, how to interpret .D64 files,
how to interpret real IEC-bus
commands etc... Fortunately the FAT16
code could be reused from another
project. 


Having only one or two hours each
day, it took me a year to come this
far. But I like the results and what
it can do, I'm very proud of it and
this is only the beginning.


Allmost 1.5 years after the initial
start of the project, I finally
managed to build the 1541-III inside
my SX-64 and although it looks VERY
retro (with those big switches and
large red reset button), I’m pleased
with the result. Mostly because it
helps me to keep a tidy workspace and
I can take it with me whenever I want
to show the project. A happy end
after all..
.


Project: 1541-III


This project got a lot of attention
on the Commodore show Feb. 18, 2006.
The prototype is build inside an old
mouse joystick switchbox. It made me
realize that the 1541-III project is
very interesting for other commodore
fans as well. Therefore the project
has been transformed into an already
assembled kit
. 


For those who are interested read the
how it all started. The prototype
holds a 2 line character LCD, but
during further development of this
project it quickly became clear that
a 2 line char LCD could not hold all
the relevant info in a convenient
way. Therefore the Nokia 3310 display
(PCD8544, cheap, small, graphical,
84x48pixels) completely replaced the
character LCD in this project. The
final design changes have resulted in
a version smaller and easier to
construct.


 What it does:


The 1541-III is a PIC microcontroller
controlling an FAT16 MMC/SD card with
.D64 files. It is connected to the
Commodore via the standard IEC bus.
The circuit as a whole behaves like 
a
1541 disk drive 


(therefore the name 1541-III). The
MMC/SD card contains D64-files (or



normal .PRG files). The user can
select one .D64 file with standard
LOAD"$",DEVICE commands. Once a .D64
file is selected it can be accessed
like it was a real 5 1/4"
floppy. The nice thing of this
solution is that you can download
these D64-files from internet to your
MMC/SD card without the need of extra
tools or cables. 


Because the 1541-III doesn't need to
be inserted into the expansion port
or require additional software or
kernel it will work on every
commodore computer (and even the
hacked C64 DTV) that has an IEC-bus.
It has been successfully tested on
the following machines: VIC 20, C64,
C16 and Plus4 since the C64 is the
most common 8-bit IEC machine this
page will be written out of the C64
perspective.


Because the circuit is based on a PIC
microcontroller and not a fancy FPGA
or 65xx processor it will never act
100% the same as an 1541. This is the
main reason why fastloaders will not
work as on a real 1541. Still it is
an affordable alternative for using
.D64 files on a real commodore
computer. Because things can always
be better... the 1541-III is capable
of upgrading its firmware (using an
PC with HyperTerminal and RS232
port). AND... since the firmware
(programmed in C) of the 1541-III is
released as open source software,
everybody can develop new features.
Or otherwise download the latest
version of the firmware from this
website.


For developers and hackers..
.


The main idea behind this project is
open source. Giving away the source
code development on IEC based devices
is encouraged. The hardware of the
1541-III is set up in such a way that
it can be re-used for other
applications other then the 1541-III
itself. For instance the PIC has
several unused pins that can be used
as ADC or I/O so an oscilloscope or
digital voltmeter for your C64 can be
build. Or it can be the base of an
IEC-based network drive so you can
connect your CBM computer to 
a
network. And instead of a disk you'd
access files on your network. But
(off course) this all would require
some serious firmware development.



A more interesting side project that
can achieve a near 100% compatibility
is using the 1541-III electronics as
a replacement of the real 1541-drive
mechanics. Mimicking the GCR
datastream and keeping the 65xx of
the real 1541 the ultimate upgrade
would be within reach. The 1541-III
PCB is already prepared for this task
but requires some extra serious
firmware development (and soldering
skills for making the required
connections inside your 1541 drive)
.


Current features:


Some pictures of the information that
can be shown on the1541-III’s LCD.
Loading flimbo’s quest


Required power supply:


The best option would be a datasette
connector to interface to the
cassette port, but since this
connector is difficult to obtain an
alternative would be drawing power
from the cartridge-port, this way 
a
connector can be made from PCB
material only. And since the 1541-III
is not (yet) compatible with most
cartridges (final cart., power cart,
etc.) this should not be a problem.
For those who wish to keep the
cartridge-port free they have to
sacrifice a datasette in order to get
the connector. Down below is an
overview of option to steal power
from your precious C64. 


Finally, for everyone who doesn’t
like to draw power from their
precious computer an alternative is
allways an additional stabilized 5V
DC power supply.


1541-III : Frequently Asked Questions


Q: Some MMC/SD-cards do not function
on my 1541-III
A: FAT-16 (with a 512 byte blocksize)
is the only type of file system that
the 1541-III can work with.
A: Subdirectories are not supported,
and should not exist on the card as
they may confuse the FAT-algorithms. 
Q: When I try to put some files on my
card windows says that a new file

cannot be created on the media, but 
I
don’t have reached the 512 files
maximum yet. What’s wrong?


A: When you try to save files that
are longer then 8.3
(8_characters_for_the_name.3_characte
rs_for_the_extension), FAT-16
requires more space for these
filenames. Meaning that you only
store up to 512 files in the root
directory as long as you make sure
that all files are according the 8.3
format.
Q: Why can’t I update the firmware
using the MMC/SD-card?
A: Writing a bootloader that reliably
uses the MMC/SD-card is a very
complex task. First of all, you have
to make sure you support all cards
correctly and bug-free... if you
don’t, how would you update to the
new firmware version if you only have
non-functional MMC/SD-cards !?!
?
Currently it seems that all kinds of
cards are supported, but that’s what
I thought in the first 6 months of
developing the 1541-III. Untill 
I
used a Sandisk RS-MMC card. It did
not even initialise !!! It appeared
after intensive research that Sandisk
DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT follow the
general protocol that suppost to be 
a
standard... (This still makes me mad,
what’s the use of standards). So
after I accepted that Sandisk did
not respect standard protocols and
that there are still peoply who
‘whish to use their products
(basically because they are a big
player that overwhelms the memory
card market), I decided to write 
a
recovery routine that handles these
kind of cards with an alternative
initialisation sequence. 
Second: the MMC/SD-card bootloader
routines would take a very large
amount of extra program memory space
inside the micro controller.


Third: overwriting the bootloader
application using the bootloader
itself, is not possible, so if a bug
is found inside the bootloader
application you have to reprogram the
entire microcontroller using
expensive programming equipment that
a normal 1541-III user will not have.


By the way, never ask my opinion
about Sandisk, since they tend to do



all sorts dirty tricks on
CompactFlash cards as well. And funny
enough nobody seems to be aware of
these problems; even the distributors
of these cards will deny this, simply
because they claim that they never
heard of these problems before. And
that’s because normally developers
use the cards in an non embedded
application, using windows or UNIX
drivers that are developed by other
big players who ARE informed by
Sandisk since they DO have the money
to be connected to the SD Card
Association (www.sdcard.org). 
A
‘membership’ to such a association
would cost a lot of euros every year,
just to be informed by other who wish
not to follow the specs of the
association (do you still get it)
.
This makes it very very very
difficult for a someone who just
wishes to implement MMC/SD-card
support in their hobby projects.


Q: My D64 filenames seemed to be
messed up, only the first few
characters are visible
A: The 1541-III can only handle 8.3
filenames. Filenames that are longer
then 8 characters and/or have an
extension longer then 3 characters
are stripped down to the 8.3 filename
format. The files are not damaged and
only the stripped down filename is
shown. You can access these files as
normal. Although not required, for
clarity it is best to use only the
8.3 filename format.
Q: My contrast settings do not
change when I press the
darker/lighter-buttons (no MMC/SD
card placed in 1541-III), why?
A: The 1541-III uses recycled
nokia 3310 displays, some display
feature an automatic contrast
regulation. This means that the
display automatically compensates for
the contrast drift due to
temperature. When you attempt to
change the contrast stetting of such
a display nothing happens.
Fortunately the contrast of such 
a
display does not need to be changed,
since it is always ‘perfect’
.
Q: Are there any ‘tricks’
regarding the implementation of the
save routines.
A: Basically the routines work

the same as the real routines in the
original 1541 and 1541-II, with 
a
small exception... The directory
entry is written to disk AFTER the
complete file has been written. The
real drives write to the directory
entry several times. The only
difference that you might experience
is that if you shut-down/reset the
CBM computer system before the file
write has been finished, that the D64
file has less free blocks but no
unclosed file in the directory entry.
But shutting down the system during
write is never a good idea. Therefore
this solution is accepted


Q: When I load a file or directory
from my 1541-III it suddenly resets.
A: When you connect a second drive to
the IEC-bus (a printer or a real 1541
drive for instance) make sure that
these are switched ON. During the
loading process the charge on the
IEC-reset line changes (briefly) to 
a
level that triggers the sensitive
1541-III’s reset circuitry. Solution
is simple, turn the other devices ON
or remove them from the chain.
Project: 4K-pixel beamer


The 1541-III project has evolved and
a new and better display has come up.
This LCD is from an old nokia
telephone and can be bought new on
marktplaats or eBay for a few euros.
With some small modifications this
display can be used as an frame
inside a slide-projector. Since I did
not have a slide-projector I decided
to build one myself. Also I needed
this project to free my mind (due to
some medical problems regarding my
wife and newborn son). So in order to
prevent writing bugs, I decided to
build a small spin-off I could use
for my next presentation at the
commodore meeting in Maarsen. 


What it does is simple and I’m very
pleased with the result. The
projector projects the image of the
1541-III’s display onto a wall or
screen so it can be seen by more then
one person. And also it draws
attention to my project in an simple
way..
.


The display that’s producing the
picture with it’s reflective foil
still in place



The beamer open. As you can see from
left to right: the transformer (230V
>12V), the 50W halogen lamp, the
rectifier and fan. The fan is driven
with 9V instead of 12 to reduce the
noise, the airflow is still
sufficient. 


Then two sheets of thin glass to
isolate the heated air, then a credit
card sized fresnellens (sold as an
portable unbreakable magnifying lens
years), the LCD (84x48 = 4032
pixels) obtained from an old nokia
phone (the reflective foil had to be
removed and wires soldered directly
to the LCD’s controller). Then last
but not least a lenses from an unused
magnifying glass. The total cost was
under 20 Euros. If you try to
replicate this, build cardboard
versions first, this works quickly
and saves a lot of mathematical
effort. I can assure you, working
with low cost materials like these
the trial and error method is much
faster then the theoretical.


The splash screens of the 1541-III
project now the size of a normal
bedroom-door Now you can see why this
project is called 4K-pixel beamer.


The main screen of the 1541-III, here
you can see the : File index
number/total number of files on card,
name of currently selected .D64 file,
after reset no file is selected
therefore all actions refer to the
root directory, 2 empty lines that do
not really have a final definition
(currently it states the processed
command), a progress bar (show
loading status), device-id (8 or 9)
,
current track, current sector


Interview with Jan Derogee
creator of 1541-III
http://jderogee.tripod.com/project154
1.htm 


Q - Please introduce yourself to our
reader 


Hello, I'm Jan Derogee. I'm an
electronics engineer. The C64 was my
first computer and a while ago 
I
needed a project that I could fill my
time and the hole in my second-hand
C64SX with, the 1541-III was just
that project.



Q - How were you introduced to
computing? 


As a kid I just wanted a machine that
I could tinker with and build things
for, but the first years i was only
simple basic programs and games..
.
lot's of. The C64 was switched on
everyday and it thought me a lot..
.


Q - When did you first come across
the Commodore Brand? 


My sister’s boyfriend had a C64
computer and it was an easy source
for software... so I wanted a C64.


Q - Please tell our reader about the
'project 1541-iii' what does it do
for the user 


The 1541-III is the missing link
between .D64 files and a 25 year old
computer without the hassle of cables
of difficult PC-tools. And because it
is a hobby project it can always be
better, many years of tinkering
ahead... the perfect project for me
and because others like it so much it
encourages me to keep making it
better.


Q - Was there a version 1 and 2? or
is this reference to the 1541 version
1 then came a redesigned version 2?


The 1541-III is named 1541-III simply
because there already where the 1541
and the 1541-II, because i wanted my
project to be the next logical step
in IEC drives i named it the 1541
III, by naming it 1541-III it became
a name that people could easily
remember, a small bonus I did not
think of when I started the project,
simply I never expected that anybody
else wanted it..
. 


Q - Can you talk our reader through
the design process?


When I started this project I did not
knew anything about the IEC-bus, but
how difficult could that be? What 
a
mistake that was. Although I still
pleased with the IEC-bus concept, it
is a very difficult concept when you
start digging deeper, it are the
details that are difficult to figure
out. 


Because it is a bus, it is difficult
to see what device/computer is doing



what, so monitoring the IEC-bus with
a logic analyser is not really
useful, but since good documentation
is difficult to find..
. 


Monitoring the bus is the only
option. But since i did not have 
a
logic analyser, i decided to write
some software for my PC's parallel
port and that should do the trick. It
has helped me out a lot, but still 
a
lot of 


Questions are not answered, but I'm
still learning. Then after knowing
how the bus works, you still have to
handle the medium itself... MMC and
SD-cards, HELL it was HELL. The
documentation of this is very clear
and although not all information is
available for 


free there is info to be found. But
when you start coding software that
uses a card MMC or SD you start to
discover that every manufacturer uses
his 


own variation of the MMC standard and
you start wondering why the standard
was invented. Scandisk was the worst.
But after a while coding for all
exceptions you discover that it only
works if you test all situations for
all sorts of cards..
. 


So I've bought a lot and borrowed
some from work and some users where
very friendly in sharing there
results... and finally it resulted in
a stable situation where most of the
cards are excepted (again I'm
learning the hard way)
.


Well then there is the DOS, simply
because the DOS commands are required
for using the device. I decided I'd
take a shortcut and implement only
the LOAD and SAVE commands, this
makes it a lot easier since you do
not have to handle all the
independent dos commands as long as
you mimic the behaviour of a real
drive a small detail that is now
causing trouble, simply because my
little shortcut prevents me from
using the 1541-III with the Prophet
cartridge, because the P64 uses low
level DOS commands instead of load
(regarding directory reading)
. 


This behaviour is nothing special but
it does requires a complete rewrite
of all my open-close-etc command



handling inside the 1541-III. Ohhhh
and off course I wanted to use a nice
display I first uses a 2 line
character LCD, these are easy to
obtain but they cannot handle a lot
of characters.


 So I decided to use a cheap nokia
display that is very small, cheap and
holds a lot off info and is
completely graphical, the result is
very nice and i decided to not
support the char LCD anymore.


Then .D64 decoding, this was very
easy. D64 files are an exact copy of
the 5 1/4 disk format, so when you
open up any disk drive book, you know
how to decode a D64. But still there
are a few details that are not
described in any book but do need to
be handled correctly. 


And so every little detail and step
is solved and learned about with the
end result a 1541-III. Regarding the
FAT driver, i was fortunate, I could
copy it from another application
(saving me a lot of work)
.


Q - How can our reader obtain such 
a
device, do you sell them 


First I started the project as a DIY
project, but to help-out those who
are not skilled technicians I decided
to sell some complete assembled
units. And suddenly nobody can handle
a soldering iron any more. So my
first batch was sold within no time
at all. Although it took me quite 
a
while to solder all those little
PCB's test them, drill, vile and glue
taking up all my spare time. 


Then a lot of people registered for
the second batch which now more then
a year later is finally being handled
within the end of 2007 (if nothing
comes between). This is the last
batch because some components are
hard to get and I'm not a company 
I
have a life also, this project is
taking up all of my spare time and
that's not good... socially.


Q - I notice you used recycled nokia
phone displays was this an
environmental decision?


Nope, purely practical. Since using 
a
display that is produced in such
large quantities. It should be easily
obtainable and cheap. An ordinary



character LCD holds less characters,
uses more current, is bigger,
requires more wiring and is cannot
display graphics. The nokia LCD beats
the char LCD on all fronts. And off
course because the nokia display is
very small it can be glued in the
case very nicely without noticing
that it is an recycled old telephone
display.


 In short, the nokia display is
perfect for this project. Ohhhh..
.
and ehhh off course the environment
was indeed a very important part in
my decision <smile>


Q - You mentioned your design is
'open source' so others can make
modifications and sell completed
units


Correct, I designed this project for
myself and I consider it as a great
compliment that others are liking the
project and want to use it. So if
they want to build it and sell it..
.
go ahead. But please mention my name
and keep it compatible if you add
some changes. By building more units
that use the same firmware, bugs are
detected more quicker and solving
them should be easier. 


I consider it an positive point that
more people are using it and having
fun with it. Example is pyrofer,
these guys made a perfect DTV version
of the 1541-III hardware. It is
compatible with the 1541-III itself
and therefore it uses the same
software. It helped me in finding 
a
lot of "bugs" (nasty word) and by
reading the forum I've learned about
a lot of detail I'd otherwise never
would have thought about.


Q - Would you be upset if 
a
commercial company started
manufacture of the devices? 


Only if the did not ask me
first...There are a lot of users
wanting the 1541-III and I could
never build a unit for all of them,
so I don't see what's wrong in 
a
company building 1541-III's. My goal
is building a useful device for the
commodore computer.


Q - How do you feel with the other
'clone' projects Using your design
guides, i guess it makes you feel
Good because after all you gave the



design away 


Correct... it motivates me greatly.
And it keeps me going regarding
improving the firmware.


Q - Why did you give the design away
what prompted the decision 


The C64 was my first computer and 
a
lot of good memories I have to thank
this machine. During my first
presentation on the HCC Commodore
Gebruikers Groep show in Maarssen, 
I
found out that I was not the only one
who wanted such a device, so the most
logical things was publishing the
whole design on the internet, for all
who want to build it, go ahead and
please... have fun with it.


Q - What is open source?


In my opinion open-source is making
your source code available, so
everyone can see how it works and
learn from it or improve it, helps
fixing bugs or alter it to suit your
personal needs. I.o.w. giving it away
to everyone who want to have it. 
I
expect that people who use it and
alter it will notify me in some way,
or at least this is what I would do
when I find something on the net and
want to use it.


Q - Did the device need amending to
work on other commodore machine like
for example the Commodore 16 or plus
4 


The vic20 has a smaller screen then
the C64, so I tinkered some with the
directory routines in order to make
it display more nicely. Other then
that it required no special coding.
But mainly there are not many vic20
or c16/plus4 users using the 1541-III
or at least they are not reporting
bugs. 


There is a small problem with the
C128 in C128 mode, for some reason
there are some problems during start
up. But I think it has something to
do with my "shortcuts" as described
earlier.


Q - Did you come across any 'design
features' (rather than calling them
bugs) of the IEC protocol


To be honest, there is not much
documentation on the IEC bus, there



is one document written by Jim
Butterfield (which was considered to
be the most sacred document of all,
due to its clear way or writing)
. 


The things that weren’t described in
that document could not be found
elsewhere so the things I found out
where all unknown and I guess there
are some "design features" between
them, but since I did not know they
should not exist I do not care in
finding them the hard way.


Q - What’s next then is there more of
these device Designs to come from
yourself or are you happy with the
hardware as it is


The 1541-III stays unchanged his in
order to maintain 100% compatibility
with the current firmware. Maybe in
the far future there will be some
spin-offs using the IEC routines, but
I can't think of a short term
application.


Q - I notice on the website that 
a
kit is available for purchase but you
are so busy that user will have to
wait a long time to receive such kits
due to you having little time, so
your design is more a reference than
a purchase item can you comment 


Correct, and my spare time was also
the main reason in publishing this
project in such a way that people can
build one themselves. So indeed it is
not really a purchase item.


Q - So the project is really a labour
of love and a design guide rather
than a product to purchase off the
shelf 


Correct indeed. But I want to make
sure that everyone understands that
this is a very nice DIY project (for
the skilled technician)
.


Q - Haven’t you thought about
approaching someone else to mass
produce the design? 


Yes, but I know it will never make me
rich and I do not intent to make
myself slave of my own hobby
project..
.


Q - With the age of Commodore
hardware I guess there will be a time
when all units will fail, from 
a
Personal perspective I wanted to hand



my Commodore machines to my young son
so he can experience the thrill of
computing, do you think one day
Commodore machines will fail and be
beyond Reasonable repair 


Yep, this is a fear that I keep in
mind constantly, fortunately there
are a lot of people coding FPGA
versions of the C64, VIC20, etc.
(even the AMIGA by Dennis van Weeren
is a great example)
. 


This keeps the hardware alive in some
sort of way. But personally I think
that the retro computing is something
that will last for another 25 years
tops.
Most people who are retro computing
now are people, who started with such
a computer when they were young, 


These people will get older with the
same age as their machines and by the
time the last C64 dies retro
computing will not be as big as it is
now and the hardware itself will not
be required any more as there are
plenty of alternatives regarding
emulators on PC's or FPGA versions.


But honestly, I love the attention
retro computing has now. And when 
I
attend to a commodore meeting and 
I
start my good old C64 and I connect
my drive... I feel young again
(considering I'm 33), when life was
only fun and almost without problems
(the only problems were finding
enough empty disks)
.


 So to be honest, I hope retro
computing stays for at least another
50 years! And when my C64 dies, 
I
guess I have to redesign the part
that is broken using modern
components.


I hope my answers are not too long
and that they are capable of
publishing.
Good luck with your article.
Regards, Jan


PS: regarding my personal status:
I was born in 1974, making me 33
years old.
I'm married and have 3 kids. 
A son 4.5 years old,
a daughter 3.5 years old,
a son 1.5 years old. 


You can imagine that they require 
a
lot of time and that they do not



always understand their daddies
passion for "old computers". They are
my main "project" and motivation in
life. 


They can amaze me with the simplest
things, they can frighten me with 
a
single move, they put my patience to
the test without knowing it, they ask
questions I'd never thought off, they
drain my energy and make me fall 
a
sleep before my head hits my pillow,
then wake me before my alarm-clock
does. 
But most off all they give me
strength, a simple smile or thanks,
the kiss goodnight, the hug before
daddy leaves to go to work or reading
from the bed-time-story-book before
they go to sleep. Those are the
things that make me happy.


1541-III related projects:
1541-III DTV


The 1541-III stripped down to 
a
version perfectly suited for use
INSIDE the C64-DTV. A great idea made
into a real product by Pyrofer. This
is a project that uses the 1541-III’s
source-code on a slightly different
PCB in order to suit the C64DTV. For
info, updates and support about this
project refer to 


Pyrofers website 
:
http://www.pyrofersprojects.com/15413
.php


Pyrofer also has a very useful forum
which is worth visiting, even if you
do not have a DTV:


http://www.pyrofersprojects.com/forum
/index.php?sid=e0ce333e3c4e6494995b5c
2d30868bc1


MMC2IEC
Lars Pontoppidan has made an AVR
version the 1541-III DTV. This
version is has very few components
and is easy to rebuild. His project’s
development was stimulated by the
1541-III project and is rewritten
especially for the AVR
microcontroller. Read all about it at
his website and be amazed by this
tiny PCB that will easily fit into
your C64DTV. For info, updates and
support about this project refer to


Lars’s website 
:
http://pontoppidan.info/lars/index.ph



p?proj=mmc2iec


8-Bit Designs Catalogue
http://www.8bitprodserv.spaces.live.
c
om


BNC Splitter Cables
Here's a couple of BNC Splitter
Cables for those of you that are
running BNC related hardware. $20.00
Sounds like a fair deal for BOTH of
them. 


C-128 VIDEO RAM UPGRADES!
Update your FLAT 128 to the FULL 64K
of VIDEO RAM so you can utilize it
with "MAVERICK," or other utilities
that can make use of it. $30.00 +S&
H 


Tandy Printer Cable
Here is a ribbon cable for the tandy
brand of printers. $10.00 EACH 


Various Commodore Chips for
Sale/Trade
I have a stockpile of Commodore chips
for sale or trade for those that need
them. Call for specific chips and
prices. 


1541 Drive Device Switch Installation
I also install device switches for
the 1541 disk drives for those that
may be in need of this service.
$20.00 EACH 


Joysticks
Assorted joysticks that are all
TESTED AND GUARANTEED 100%
FUNCTIONAL. Most are $5.00 EACH (Call
for specifics) 


Commodore REU Upgrades
Service for upgrading your 1700/1764
to the FULL 512K (1750). $25.00 EACH 


Tandy Communicator Plus Cable
Cable for connecting your Tandy's
internal modem directly to the wall
jack for internet access. $10.00 EACH


S-Video Cable
S-Video Cable for use on devices that
support S-Video. $5.00 EACH. 


QUAD PORT PLUS
The "QUAD PORT PLUS" is a "NEW
PRODUCT" that has been added to the
8-Bit Designs line. It is a box that
plugs into the serial port on the



computer and gives out 4 serial ports
all being simultaneously resetted by
a single reset switch. Price- $25.00 


Memory Chips
Set of 8 Memory Chips for the
Commodore 64/128 Lines of Computers.
$5.00 FOR SET! 
128 RGB Cables


Here are the 128 RGB Cables that have
become harder and harder to find in
recent years! They give the 128 user
the "TRUE" 80 Column display that's
usually found on PC's. PRICE-$20.00 


Serial EXT. Cable
The Serial EXT. Cable is used when 
a
user runs short on connecting 
a
serial device. PRICE-$15.00 


HD81 EXT CABLE
The HD81 EXT Cable is useful when you
need an extension to the power supply
for the CMD-Hard Drive, or the
Commodore 1581 Disk Drive. PRICE
$20.00 


The Universal Video Module
The Universal Video Module allows the
Commodore user to make use of the
"stock" A/V cables that are so ever
flooding the market these days. It
also has S-VIDEO capabilities and an
audio input for use by someone with
the software know-how. PRICE-$30.00 


+4 Edge Connector
The +4 Edge Connector is used
whenever a user needs to use either 
a
VIC, or a C-64 cassette recorder on 
a
+4 (the +4 cassette recorders are
RARE!). PRICE- $20.00 


Serial Bus Reset Switch
The Serial Bus Reset Switch is 
a
simple but handy device that allows 
a
user to reset the I/O Ports on the
computer whenever "lockup" occurs.
Nice little unit for being "cheap.
"
PRICE-$15.00 


Serial "Y" Adapter Cable
The Serial "Y" Adapter Cable is
useful when a user uses up all the
serial ports and needs to connect 
a
new device. Just a simple splitter
cable for the Serial Port basically.
PRICE- $20.00 


User Port Commander
The User Port Commander is a user
port interface that is "backwardly"
compatible with Geocable. It has many



marvellous "extra" features that make
it a ONE-OF-A-KIND device! PRICE
$40.00 


Serial Cables
COMMON Commodore Serial Drive/Printer
Cables! If you need one, just let me
know and I will get one rigged up for
you on request. PRICE-$10 (3Ft), $15
(6 Ft), $20 (10 Ft) 


+4 Joystick Adapter
The +4 Joystick Adapter allows a +
4
user to implement the use of an
Atari/C-64 joystick controller on 
a
+4 computer. PRICE-$20.00 


The Village BBS,
and its History
By Lord Ronin


At this moment in time. We can't
welcome you to The Village "where you
and your days are numbered" {G}. As
it isn't up and running for the
reason that the HD mech is in the
hands of Maurice Randall for data
recovery.Since that is taking a spell
<fire ball spell would be nice> We
are recreating the BBS from Scratch.
Was only up in one form or another
for 11 years.


 Lets back up a bit on this one. 
A
quiz I made for members of the local
users group, asks the question of
"What is the name of our first BBS?
"
Really this is a trick question. The
first BBS was on a 64c with jiffydos,
one 1571 and a 1581. Running the PD
release of Color64. 


At the most it lasted one month.
Called the £ MicroSkirt. A reference
to a skirt I bought for a girl in
London on Carnaby <sp?> street in
1969ce. Don't ask any more about
that, or the rating of this mag will
go up to "R" for certain if not "
N
17" {VBG}
.


 The next BBS ran Omni 128 and was 
a
part of the Omni World Hub, with even
a contact to the German Omni 128
board. Now that one was called the 
£
2 10s 6d Vacuum Tube. 


Pronounced as "Two Pound ten and six
Vacuum Tube". A tribute to my
recently deceased Brit Cit mother and
my time in electronics tech. Ran that
bugger on a 500 MB CMD HD, with 
a



14.4 US Robotics modem. Had a few
games, as that was All there was to
install. 
Created the message bases for C=
,
Amiga, Geos, User Group and of course
for the Role Playing Games crowd in
the users group and through my shop.
When that died in January of 2000ce,
ah because the author of the prg did
a split on us and left us high and
not so dry. And no I never did get
all I paid for in the distribution. 
I
needed something else. Dr. Video had
for a time been pushing the Centipede
system. OK I DLed the version from
the site, and then..
.


 Welcome to the Village. A vastly
superior system than Omni. 300 files
per file area rather than 100. 1,000
line for msg over the 200. One
frelling lot more games for the
players. Right then, lets compare, ah
around 20 on Omni and most where CG
only. 105 on Centipede <10 more if 
I
can refund a disk that was given to
me by the old HubOp> 85% of them are
playable with C=, Ansi and Ascii. 


Hey even non C= users can change
colour and use reverse video. OK 
I
don't follow the RAW part for sounds.
But I iz jist da dum ork lamer in any
case.


 Lets not get into the problems of
bringing over the files from one
system to another. OK it is easy to
take the mess in Mcopy. But now
things have to be catalogued in sub
partitions on the hard drive. Not too
big of a problem right? You don't
know me and 


Subdividing things into their
smallest bits. {VBG} No the big
problem is that in Omni in regards
to The code for the up loaders
comments for the file it starts off
with the pound sterling symbol.
Great, except that is the MCI code
thingy for Centipede.


Guess who has to rename all the up
loader comments from the Omni system
to the Centipede system that uses the
"@" symbol. Ah like 2500 files had to
be 


renamed. Thankfully it was done in
JiffyDos. Using
the@r0:newname=oldname method.Was 
a
nice BBS, I was learning more things



as I went along. Got many a fixed PAL
to NTSC crack from the MHI crew and
Mad Max. In fact we hadaround 3,542
files for downloading. 


Must tell you that the regular
callers were in the Empire games more
than any other game section. Message
bases where a direct port from the
old BBS. Before the close of theBBS.
We had 4 PBEM <Play By Electronic
MAil> games running. Doing weekly
turns. Was getting about 3-5 calls 
a
day. 


Not great, but as the last BBS in the
entire county. Pretty frelling good.
Had more long distance callers than
had local callers. Add to that, they
weren't all just members in other
states and countries who were 
a
member of the ACUG.


But in December of 2005ce. The HD
stopped working. In January 2006ce
Maurice Randall said he could give it
a look see, after his first test.
Said that one of the heads had locked
in an unused space. Data should be
intact. 


He was going to strip out an exact
same model for the heads and then
data transfer to another HD. I am
still waiting for that to beSent to
me. Only has the BBS, my Geos, Whels,
Wave, PostPrint, user group library
and other such non important things.
Like all the SceneWorld diskmags.
Since we were/are the official
SceneWorld BBS.


That brings us to today. A great guy
who goes by the handle Eddie the One
on the IRC, has upgraded my BootRom
to the latest version. I had been
using a 4.5GB mech at the time. He
replaced that for me. Sadly it went
out on me. 


He was able to find out in some sort
of verification trip. That 25% of the
mech thingy had gone bad. So I am
getting another one, well it takes
time to ship from the east coast of
the states to the west coast. He was
able to save all the work that I had
started upon in the recreation of the
HD. 


Oh what he is getting for all of
this, well nothing was asked for. But
he is going to be a long time member
of the Anything Commodore Users Group



CBM Reg. #447


When it is back in my hands and work
reaches a point that I can open the
board to callers. The Village <yes it
is a reference to "The Prisoner" show
from the 60s> will be open again at
the same number. But lets
Leave that till I can offer something
to the callers. Ah but will it have
you may ask. As much as I can
recreate from the last one. Same PBEM
games in
The message bases. Most of the same
msg bases, as I had them on a scratch
paper that I found, mind you can't
find what I am looking for, just
other stuff. {BG} Games will be set
up again and the different menus for
them created. 


A few pretty pretties will be added.
Most of the regular members 
I
remember their numbers. These will be
reset for them. File area is what
will take the longest. As every file
must be tested, and these are coming
form a large collection of over 3,000
41/71 disks a few hundred 81/FD disks
and a handful of about a dozen CDs.
Some are from other boards that have
folded.


 Most come from disks that I have
bought in lump sums over the years.
Disks will be catalogued, UL comments
written down for them, and then in
some form compressed. Large ones are
usually in a .D64 and then I use the
pasi system to zip them. In order for
a caller <we term them decker> can
put that file on a 1541 disk for
storage. 


Long process that must be done again.
But it is a labour of love and I am
just a bit peculiar in the head
anyway. Board will be open 24/7, well
unless there is another caller on
line. Only takes one at a time. Have
a dedicated number for it and at this
point in time for my Inet work. Runs
or will run on a 1084S monitor, along
with a 128Dcr that has Jiffy Dos,
coupled to the SCPU with a full 16MB
or Ram. Tied into a CMD HD controller
with the 4.5GB mech. Plugged into 
a
FD-2000, mixed with a 1581. Through
the HD controller I will again be
able to look
at CDs with the CD Rom Commander. And
now we will be running at least at
28.8bps with the option at the moment
of going to around 33. That last part



isn't stable.


Sure at this time it isn't up and
will be weeks of work to make it
barely presentable to the public.
However it may be the last know dial
up C= BBS in the states. For certain
it is the last one in Oregon that 
I
can find.
Yeah we could go to telnet as well. 


But that isn't at this time something
that I can afford, financially or
mentally. When it is ready I will be
announcing the re-opening on the
different lists. Theme is of course
C= but also Role Playing Games. Mind
you that the head SysOp is
anovertalkative, exceptionally biased
guy. {VBG}


BBS
{Lord Ronin from Q-Link}


Flickering light from the monitor
dances over his expectant face in the
darkened room. His mind is full of
plans and plots for this session.
Fears too are seen to no-one on his
face. Is anyone else on at this time?
Will he make it before his opponents?
Are those files up now in the file
areas? He sits and waits. Yes! he
almost says aloud, as the modem makes
the squealing sounds that he
anticipates. No busy signal this time
around.


Heaven is just a few keystrokes away.
The screen appears in 16 colours. He
sees the familiar Shadowrun SAN
[System Access Node} icon. Last time
he read that a new entry screen was
being made, and now he sees it, with
amatrix city scape from that game. He
is now asked if he wants Commodore
Graphic, and that is quickly followed
by a request for information on if he
wants it to be 40 or 80 column.
Making his selections with trembling
hands. Hoping that he is able to
enter the games before his opponents.
He waits and at the prompt line,
changes from his mundane existence
into the decker known as "Neon
Samurai". Handle typed in, then the
usual message about just putting in
his account number would be faster.
Now he must carefully type in his
password. A closely guarded secret.
Looking around and seeing only the
gold looking eyes of the cat.



Watching him closely. Neon Samurai
takes the last step in making his
true identity known to the
cyberworld. Ah, here is the message
from the last caller, they call them
deckers on this board. Great it is
one of the Sys Ops. Vixen, the main
Sys Ops girl Friday. She handles the
files, and her statement is to check
the news file for the recently
released files. He wonders if he
should look at the news first or go
to the games. While he waits, he
finds out that he has mail. Looking
at the list, he sees that there are
some form letters from the Sys Ops on
prospective changes to the message
bases and file areas. Nothing too
important, just stuff 


That is presented in case the news
isn't read. Oh oh, there is a message
from one of his opponents. Looking at
the time and date. He worries at the
content of the message. He should
read it now he thinks, he only has
two hours of online time. Might give
him an idea for how to fight this guy
in the game. Opening the mail he
suddenly..
.


 Choose your ending


<A> Phone line goes dead
<B> That cat jumps on the keyboard
and disconnects Neon Samurai 
<C> "Villy, to the dinner table you
should be going, it is Passover
.
Comes from his mother.
OK A & B have happened to me. Me mum,
well I was 45 when I started calling
the BBS scene, and running my own
one. She was also 400 miles away from
me. But from the above you can get
the idea that I spent way too much
time, or not enough time, playing 1st
Ed. Shadowrun as well as being on 
a
different BBS systems. The purpose of
this little drivel of mine is to
present the world of the almost
forgotten BBS scene.


Would you believe that there are
people in the computer world of
today, people that in my home town
who are taking computer classes at
the high school, the college and even
at the Job Corp centre. Taking these
classes for a career in computer
work. Who never heard of a BBS? True
man, I meet them in my game store.
When I tell them about a BBS. They
seem to think that this form of
telecommunication is a new and great



idea. So then what is a BBS and what
does the smeager do in the first
place?


The where and when of the start of 
a
BBS is lost to me in space and time.
I understand from things that I have
read and heard over the years. That
this grew out of the mega corps
method of contacting their individual
computers to the central one for data
sharing. I have heard also that they
worked at incredible speeds. 35bps is
one of them. I can't swear to that
but I can attest to seeing a setting
on an old BBS for as low as 75baud.


Like many other things in the
computer world. The truth is lost in
myth and legend. Goes something like
this in the legend, so take it with 
a
bag of salt for accuracy. Somewhere
along the line in the mid 70's.
Before the Pet and Apple stuff. Back
when you had to assemble the computer
onto the actual circuit board.
Somewhere along this time frame. Some
computer electronics geek. Found 
a
way to connect over the phone lines,
at a price that was comfortable to
the pocket book, a home computer
modem.


Anyway that is the legend, and it
grows from there to this next part.
Which I can attest to having spoken
to people that claim they were in on
these styles of computer access over
the phone lines.


At first it was just contacting the
other guy. A simple term programme
and a set time to call. Some of the
modems had to be hand dialled to make
the connection. I have seen in some
old books, the type where you had to
dial and then put the transceiver
unit in the cradle. Shades of that
show VR5 several years ago. But about
all you could do was send text
messages to each other. Now does that
sound old school with the cell phones
of today and text messaging {BG}
?


Along the way a method of being able
to keep these messages was found. In
order that other callers could read
and comment. This is how the term
Electronic Bulletin Board, came to be
coined. Shortened down later to just
BBS, with the S standing for System.
Because that is all you could do,
read what was already posted on one
topic and make a reply at the end of



it.


Personally I have never seen one of
these boards. The closest that I have
come to that one is a BBS called
FRPBBS <IIRC>. That one was 40c
Commodore GFX, and at best 1200baud.
There where 10 message bases for your
topics. As I remember the initials
stood for Fantasy Role Playing BBS.
As that was the main and about only
purpose for the board. A DM would
contact the Sys Op for a game he
wanted to run. Then be assigned one
of the 10 areas. Each was secured
with a sort of password. Making entry
only to those that where registered
for that game. Creating at most 10
areas for PBEM games<Play By
Electronic Mail>. This has a big
disadvantage.


That disadvantage was that only
Commodore 40c mode PCs could access
this BBS. Not that this is a big
thing to me, the guy that thinks all
the world should use 128s and nothing
else. {EG} But it is an irritant when
you can only log onto a BBS if you
are running the same computer as the
BBS. That is what a lot of them where
for the different PC platforms at one
time. Platform specific to just one
system. Back to this in a bit.


Well according to the people I spoke
with over the years. The ability to
create different topic areas was
created. Today we call these,
generally speaking, by the term
"message bases" Where a main topic is
created or a theme of a topic, right
an example is needed. GEOS on my BBS
is message base area #5. Only a Sys
Op can create the main area. Sub
areas, such as in this example,
GeoWrite, GeoPaint, GeoPub and
others. Can be created by Sys Ops or
high access level <read that as
trusted> callers. These have subs to
them, where the average caller can
start a new thread on the subject.
Yeah sounds a bit complicated I know.
Lets not get to the hub networking
stuff.


OK that out of the way. Another
reason, and to the guys I spoke with,
the important of all reasons for 
a
BBS. Getting files, OK if you think
we are speaking of pirate stuff here,
you are right. The guys I spoke with
where copy freaks. Somewhere along
the development, a way to send the



data from a disk was discovered. 
I
understand that it was at first 
a
manual system. I mean that you had to
swap disks to send or receive the
data. Then press the proper key for
your terminal programme. Both for
sending and receiving. Today about
all you need to do is make certain
that your protocol is the same as the
BBS. Before you start to DL or UL
<DownLoad and UpLoad> files.


Games are an important part of life.
They are also an important part of 
a
BBS. I've run three different
Commodore BBS systems. Been the games
Sys Op
for non Commodore Boards. In this
area where I live, the games are more
important to the callers than the
file areas. Now then I don't know
what was the first game on any BBS. 
I
do know that the most popular game in
the 80s was Empire. There are many
versions of Empire. Some are
expansions of the older ones that 
I
have seen. Some are rewrites with
more features. Others are copies of
one that has a lot of new names and
story. But still primarily the same
engine. I may be called on this one.
But my biased opinion is that games
for the other BBS platforms, such as
Legend of the Red Dragon, and
Usurper. All draw heavily from the
basic concept of Empire. Games
themselves are really a mutated form
of a message base. Well when you look
at the Basic programme line that is
what I felt. You enter information in
regards to the situation. Like
replying to a message. A result
happens, like an answer to your
message. OK and the fact that the
games and the message bases as well
as the mail, generally will use the
same writing editor programme to some
degree. Past all of that they are
fun, and are limited only by the
imagination and the programming skill
Of the creator. Yeah I am trying to
learn how to write them myself. But
that is another and longer story.


Mail as mentioned above. Now that is
a growth out of the messages posted.
A private e-mail to and from specific
BBS users. Unseen by anyone else.
Well not exactly true. I had a file
that was taken from some Supreme
Court <USA> ruling that basically
said the Sys Op was liable for what
happened on his BBS. That is why
there isn't real private e-mail. Sure



no one but who you sent it to can
read it, Except for the Sys Op. Who
is running the BBS. And yeah, I do
spot checks on mine. Because of some
smeaghead sexual predators that where
in the area on the other boards.
Anyway, what the mail programme can
do is different for each BBS. I have
one now that will allow quoting. The
one I used previously didn't.


Now lets put this together. We have
message boards. These are like mail
lists on the Inet. We have mail, also
like the Inet. We have online games,
and again that is like the Inet. We
have PBEM games, and that I can most
assuredly say is like the Inet. Since
I just received an invite today to
play in one. We have file areas. Sort
of like doing a web hunt for specific
things of interest. Hmm see any
similarity to the 30 some odd year
old BBS concepts to the Inet? {BG}


What we don't have is pop ups. Nor
are we usually infected with virus
and Trojan horses or worms. Gotta
make that a bit general at this
point. As I run a C= BBS. A good Sys
Op will check each of the files that
are uploaded by the users to his
board. Before he releases them to the
public. 


Just in case they have these nasty
things. In my case, I don't run the
heretic windrone system. The files
that I have for that system are old
ones. That I inherited from 
a
multiplatform users group. Who ran 
a
Commodore BBS.


There can be adverts on a BBS.
Generally these will be found in 
a
login and the log out. Simple screens
that are made by the Sys Ops. On
mine, I have at the logout, the
different clubs and the game store
for the fact that they are the ones
that sponsor the BBS. I will say that
in an old magazine I read about 
a
programme to create adverts fro the
BBS, and sell the time/space for
them to your local businesses. 


Thankfully it doesn't work on a C= 
I
suspect. On the heretic boards. 
I
have seen a series of adverts done in
ansi for local businesses. But 
a
quick press of the space bar gets one
through them, at least on the systems
that they were using.



Well today a BBS is forgotten by
many. Unknown by a greater number,
and still a fantastic invention. One
of my sayings for a local BBS is that
you can meet at the grocery store,
the guy that you just whacked out in
a game. Hard to do that on the Inet. 


Even the telnet BBS boards, there is
something that is more personal and
friendly. I used to be on some of the
C= and Amiga ones in the past.


 OK there is adown side to the BBS
scene in the old days. A lot of them
where out there. I mean that I live
in a county of 36,000 population.
Atone time there where 15 boards. 
I
was on most of them in some form or
another. This doesn't count some of
the nearby but still long distance
ones. One can spend their entire day
on the boards at that time. Sending
and receiving files. Hey I remember
reading a story about the light
speed of 300baud. But even at 2400. 


You can spend a lot of time grabbing
files and using up disks. Even with
all the inventions of Arcing, SDA
ing, Lynx, Library and others of
that time. Not to add the Zip and
.D64 things of today. People spent an
ungodly amount of time during the
night on the boards. I recently spoke
to a guy that did just that in his
teen years. He now does that with the
Inet and chat rooms.


So then what use is there for a BBS
today? I can't answer that for you.
Not because I am being secretive. No
it is because the answer is personal
just like the reason a guy put one up
in the first place. Sure there are
many a reason. Groups can use it as 
a
communications thing. 


Friends can play games that way over
distance. People of similar interests
can join together in their interests.
There are thousands of reasons for
starting a BBS. Which today are the
same reasons for calling one. Mainly
I can say it is a specific thing. 
A
thing of very tight and alike
interests. 


Or call it a Special Interest Group.
My board is going back online. This
board is support for the members of
the Anything Commodore Users Group
<CBM Reg #447> A support place for
those that play dice Role Playing



games. <RPGs> Fans of Geos and well
you get the idea. A Commodore and RPG
themed board.Far away from the
influence of the www and the Inet. Or
as we said in the 60s, we aren't
plastic or corp. Just simple, clean,
and pure. Well as much as can be
expected with the bias of the Sys Op.
<BG>


Interview with Charles Gutman
8 bit designs
http://www.8bitprodserv.spaces.live.
c
om


Q - Please introduce yourself to our
reader. 


A- Well my name is Charles J. Gutman
and I have been in the
computer/electrical/electronics field
now for over 15 years! I first
became acquainted with electronics in
High School where they were offering
their first year of Electronics
classes, which I eagerly enrolled in.
From there, I took the second
semester class, and then transferred
to another school where I enrolled in
Auto Mechanics instead. Little did 
I
know that my electronics background
would come back my way again many
years later. ;);
)


Q - Please tell our reader about 
8
bit designs.


A- 8-Bit Designs is a company founded
in 1993 by a guy named Michael Hunter
up in Alaska, U.S.A. The reason for
this, I think, was to support those
interested in the older 8-Bit types
of computers. He must have seen the
need and the lack of support for
those that were still interested in
using these "older" machines. So he
met that need by designing,
producing, and selling these nifty
products and services from his home
in Alaska. (If this is incorrect,
please contact me and let me know,
Michael)
.


Q - Do you have electronics
qualifications? 


A - As mentioned previously in my
introduction, I have 1 year of
electronics "THEORY" under my belt,
but what I haven't yet mentioned was
that in 1995 I ran a electronics,
automotive, and appliance repair shop



in the back of my home until my
divorce ended that in 1997 (4 years
of experience). Then I was employed
by a CB Shop in Arizona where we
diagnosed, upgraded, repaired, and
installed many types of electronics
devices (mostly CB's) from radio's to
tracking devices and computer video
conferencing interfaces. (There’s
another year of experience)


Q - Can you tell our reader how you
first came across the Commodore brand
name? 


A- Came across for the first time, or
the first time I actually used one?
The first time I ever seen one was
back in 1981 when I saw this HUGE
MAINFRAME computer sitting on this
desk at a DMV (I think, it might have
been a Social security office). It
had clear resolution and big, hard,
black keys and a green display.
Little did I know what kind of
computer it was, nor did I know that
it would one day become a classic of
ALL CLASSIC'S! Obviously we are
speaking of some type of PET
computer. :):):):
)


The first time I ever "USED" one was
when my neighbour invited me over to
play some video games on his "NEW
COMPUTER." So I walked over and found
it plugged into the back of his
television. It was the first time 
I
EVER TOUCHED A C-64 Computer! ;
)


A couple years later when I was in
the U.S. Navy, one of my supervisors
was selling his 128D for $300.00 with
ALL SUPPLIES!! Naturally I purchased
it and was VERY HAPPY with its
performance. This 


Was the first computer that I ever
ACTUALLY OWNED!!
!


Q - So you purchased the company from
Michael Hunter is this correct? 


A- Nope. I knew who he was when 
I
first bought a 4-IN-1 Printer
Interface from him back in 2003 for
my C-64 that I was running GEOS on. 
I
also knew that he was selling the
business due to his daughter being
born and wanting to spend more time
with his family. It wasn't until 2005
that I found out that the owner of
C64DIEHARDS.COM was the "New Owner"
of the 8-Bit Designs lines of
products and services. He only owned
it for about a year or so before he



started taking "offers" in the Google
Comp.Sys.CBM Group for "OWNERSHIP" of
some of the individual products (Yes,
unfortunately he BROKE UP THE COMPANY
FROM IT'S PRODUCTS )
.


 Well after many negotiations, and
much time and deliberating we finally
came to an agreement that resulted in
a FIRM CONTRACT that stated that I am
the SOLE OWNER OF ALL 8-BIT DESIGNS
PRODUCTS, LOGO's, CONTRACTS,
SERVICES, and all other assets either
stated clearly or unstated, but
ASSUMED. Once the contract was PAID
IN FULL (in 2005), I am now working
on making new products and offering
new services to the community.
> At first, the discussions were for
only 3 of the many products ( User
Port Commander, Bus Reset Switch, and
the Serial-Y Adapter Cable) that were
under the 8-Bit Designs property, but
in the end, I ended up with 80% of
the property, and as such, I am the
NEW SOLE OWNER! 


Q - What is the best product you sell
(in your opinion)
?


A- The User Port Commander. That's
actually the reason that I agreed to
purchase the business in the first
place was because I loved this
product! It just came along with the
Bus Reset Switch and the Serial-
Y
Adapter Cable in the "initial
negations," but after the FINAL
AGREEMENTS were reached, I was also
given the +4 Joystick Adapter, the +
4
Card Edge Connector, the Power Pro
250 HD Power Supplies, the Tandy
Printer Cable, and The Tandy
Communicator + Modem Cable. In
addition to these, there are 
a
variety of other "SPECIAL CABLES"
that I have "CUSTOM MADE" for
individuals requiring specific needs
for their applications. So depending
on what your requirements are, I can
make them according to your needs. 


Q - I purchased a User Port Commander
from you and its a superb product!
Can you enlighten our reader to the
devices use? 


A- Well what is is, "INITIALLY" is 
a
printer interface that's BACKWARDLY
COMPATIBLE with GEO Cable for use
within GEOS/WHEELS environments.
However, it's much, MUCH MORE THAN
THAT! It also has a toggle switch on
it that allows the user to swap



between BASIC V7 128 MODE and
GEOCABLE MODE, a 5 VDC TAP for
allowances to connect other 5 VDC
Devices to your system without having
to use up your computer ports. It
also has a SYSTEM RESET SWITCH for
the Commodore 64 Users and a I/
O
RESET SWITCH for the 128 Users.
Finally, it comes with it's OWN
SPECIFIC DRIVERS on a disk for
allowing the user to make their UPC
User Specific! Overall, this is the
BEST PRODUCT that I manufacture for 
a
variety of reasons..
.


 #1) It's easy to make


 #2) It's affordable


 #3) It's VERY FLEXIBLE!


 #4) It has GEOS USERS in mind


 #5) and finally, I have LOTS IN
STOCK! 


Q - Have you had much user feedback
about your
Products?


A- No, but I hope to now that people
are finally getting familiar with me
and my products. I went to a few
meetings to make myself known in
hopes of establishing my reputation
and recreating 8-Bit Designs under MY
OWN IDENTITY!


Q - Do you have plans for more
designs? 


A- As a matter of fact, I currently
have 3 "NEW" Products! The Universal
Video Module, The Quad Port +, and
the C2N16 Adapter. For information on
these fabulous new products, take 
a
look at my website. They give
specific descriptions, uses, prices,
and availabilities of these, and all
the other products that I offer.


Q- Do you just support Commodore 
8
bit machines?


A-Um, no, but I DO PREFER staying
99% COMMODORE (as these are the
machines that I have come to know and
love over many years)
.


Q - Many people want an adaptor that
is a 1 box device allowing you to
connect a C64 or C128 to a TFT
monitor, also with the C128 operating
in 80 column mode, have you thought



about taking up the challenge to
design such a device or modify off
the shelf components to create such 
a
device?


A- Actually, NOT SPECIFICALLY THAT
DEVICE, But I have been thinking
about and taking many suggestions on
the possibilities of manufacturing
other hardware devices. FOR example:
Many people have suggested that since
the source Code for Warp-Speed is now
in the PD that I should take on the
task of re-manufacturing it once
more. So I have! I am currently 30%
completed with the designing of the
circuit board prototype. I hope to
have that completed by the end of the
year and hopefully by next summer
have a bunch of BLANK PCB BOARDS
sitting here awaiting the EPROM’s to
be programmed so we can distribute
them to the public. I am also
checking into the 1541 8K ROM UPGRADE
FOR THE RAMBOARD for use with
Maverick!


 In addition, I am looking into the
LCD PROJECT and the ATA/IDE HD
Projects as well. So you see, there
are many things that I am "looking
into" at the moment, but if you tell
me what it is, "EXACTLY" that you
would like me to build (PLEASE BE
SPECIFIC so I am clear on what it
is), I would more than happy to
"investigate" it's feasibility and
get back with you after a full review
of my options.


Q - Do you repair machines?


A- Of course! I diagnose, repair, and
EVEN UPGRADE (if you supply the chips
to me) the C-64,C64C,C-128, C128D,+4,
and the C16 machines. I would love to
get into PET repairs, but just don't
have anything to go by here for
references. 


Q - How would our reader get in touch
with you? (now is the chance to plug
the website)


A- You can contact me using any one
the following options:


EMAIL: shifty_butch@hotmail.com


TELNET BBS:
masterskingdom.dnsalias.org


WEBSITE:http://www.8bitprodserv.space
s.live.com



OR> 


Charles J. Gutman
9590 Acacia Ave. #
3 
Fontana, CA.
92335 U.S.A.


Q - I notice you prefer Cash or bank
transfers why
cant you accept something like pay
pal? 


A- I am in the "process" of
establishing a bank account where 
I
can do that. Also in the "VERY NEAR
FUTURE," I will be acquiring a "pay
as-you-go" credit card where the
client can just send the money to the
credit card and I can ship out that
way. Please keep in mind, however,
that these are BOTH WORKS IN PROGRESS
so there are NO GUARANTEES except for
either international post office
money orders, or a MoneyGram/Western
Union money transfer. The problem
with these methods are that they are
VERY EXPENSIVE, however. 


Q - Have you thought about setting up
a stall so People can purchase
directly of the site  or approached
someone like protovision for sales of
your devices?


A- Funny you ask that question as in
all reality, Protovision APPROACHED
ME LAST YEAR about that matter! 
I
really don't know what has happened
since as I have heard hide nor hair
from them on the matter. I DID SEND
them an email the other day though
asking what had happened as I DO WANT
some of their stuff too! I had 
a
stand set up at the COMVEX in Las
Vegas this last month, but hardly
anyone came by. 


A few people did and I was able to
sell a few things, but overall it
wasn't worth the time, trouble, cost,
and labour invested in it; so I won't
be going back anytime soon until 
I
get a guarantee of SOME PROFITS so 
I
can at least cover my costs!


Q - I am a little confused by the
"The Universal Video Module" what is
its purpose and what benefits would
it give me over a standard video
cable?


A- LOTS! It's a plastic box that
offers the following Audio/Video



enhancements to the user...
.


 #1) It offers the user the
opportunity to use "STANDARD A/
V
CABLES on the Commodore Computer
(which is good as they are readily
available and very low cost)
.


 #2) It "splits" the audio out signal
to give the user a "STEREO EMULATION
EFFECT.
"


 #3) It utilizes the NEVER BEFORE
USED AUDIO IN PIN from the DIN PLUG
making allowances for programmers to
modify, create their own, or change
audio on pre-created programs or
self-made programs (I think that this
is one of the "COOLEST" features on
it)
!


 #4) and FINALLY, it utilizes the 
S
VIDEO OUT OPTION for those that want
to connect to HIGH QUALITY VIDEO
DEVICES such as large screen
televisions, or LCD Monitors! 


THE BONUS: ALL COME WITH A FREE 
S
VIDEO CABLE ( A $4.99 VALUE) !!!
!


Q - I have printed in this issue your
current Catalogue so if our reader
want to purchase an item what is the
procedure he needs to follow? 


A- Just contact me at any one of
those contact points above, and 
I
will be more than pleased to explain
anything I can to you and help you in
any way I can.


Q - Forums can be quite aggressive,
and I notice your name has cropped up
with some less than flattering
comments, does this upset you?


A- Gotta admit, at first it did, but
that was when I was still "NEW" to
the scene and there was a lot of
"FEAR" and "UNCERTAINTY" to the
stability of me and the the 8-Bit
Designs continued existence. I also
happen to believe that some of those
"flame wars" were caused by a bit of
"jealousy" towards me for not "GIVING
AWAY" the work of my hands (God says
in The Bible that a workman is worthy
of his hire) to those in the group.
So I just tell everyone the same
thing, "You know where I am if you
want something." So I don't pay the
negative no mind anymore...
.


Q - Have you anything you would like



to add?


A- Well it's been an honour and 
a
pleasure getting this invite to share
with all of you today. It's even more
so as the scene over there is MUCH
GREATER than it is over here! So I'm
much obliged. I just want to wish
everyone over there a good day, many
blessings, happiness through all
their days, happy computing, and most
of all..... LORD BLESS!


Apostle Ramswell (Charles) >8-Bit
Designs


http://www.8bitprodserv.spaces.live.
c
om


Prophet 64


Although the guys didn’t want to give
interviews to Commodore Free magazine
about there product, and as yet they
have refused all interviews from any
magazine. I did manage to ask a few
questions about Prophet 64 cartridge
and so here is a brief history about
the project 


Hi Nigel!


Q  Will there be more information
about the project so readers can get
more of a history 


A - Well, the idea was to have some
brief info on the 8bv site but it
look sike it wont be up and running
until much later this fall. To ease
your curiosity until then I can give
you some quick facts based on your
questions:


Q  What gave you the idea to produce
a cartridge with the software, also
why produce such software for what
would call an outdated machine? 


A - Prophet64 was originally the same
program as the free trial mono
synthesizer, created back in 1996.
2004 the software was awakened and
released publicly and after another
six months two spin-off versions had
seen the light of day too. With such
a great response the Cartridge could
be realized carrying an old vision of
a C64 sequencer, bringing the
wholething into the business it is
today.



One could say that the lack of decent
music applications for the C64
platform prompted this project. It's
weird that the C64, much remembered
for it's audio, never had any
programs developed that targeted
musicians. (Notice how the
terminology used in our apps are the
same as for commercial synthesizers
and software as opposed to total


incomprehensible tech-talk used in
numerous "trackers")
.


The usage of this product is probably
dominated by chip-musicians I guess.
Fact is we had never even heard of
the phenomenon until people into the
genre made us aware of it.


There are no production problems. We
have had two interruptions in our
sales so far and they were due to
delivery problems.I can't really get
into more details at the moment; 
I
hope the site will provide more
answers in time. Best regards
/Robin Eriksson, 8bit ventures


Information about Prophet64 taken
Directly from the Prophet 64 Website
Modern music applications for your
80s computer!


Prophet64 is a suite of very user
friendly music applications for the
Commodore 64 platform.
Designed to hook up to modern MIDI
equipment with either DIN-sync or
third party MIDI interfaces, it makes
your old computer become a highly
useful music tool.
The software is distributed on 
a
hardware cartridge that plugs right
into the back of your C64.
No disk or tape loading, just plug
and play!


The Cartridge contains the whole
suite of applications.
You can read more about them in the
links on the right side bar.


With an array of music software that
mimics modern and classic sequencing
devices through versatile user
interfaces, Prophet64 opens the door
for everyone who wishes to explore
the world of the legendary audio
circuit (the "SID") in the Commodore
computers.


Instead of collecting dust in the
closet, you can put your C64 at work



right beside the synthesizer rig in
your studio today! Add some in-
fashion bleeps and blops to your
latest track, an extra bass flavour,
an additional lead sound or why not
an 8-bar break with Rob Hubbard
drums?


The possibilities are endless.


http://www.prophet64.com/


Amiga Forever Premium Edition CD
Cloanto
www.amigaforever.com


Amiga users are probably aware of the
name Cloanto as being the creators
of the excellent paint package for
the Amiga called Personal Paint
claiming amongst other benefits
support for the now standard Amiga
Datatypes


Cloanto have been long time Amiga
software developers since 1987 and
released the first version of Amiga
Forever emulation software in 1997 to
the amazement of many users. Many
thought emulating the Amiga to be
impossible, but as with everything
time and machine power moves on
quickly to a point where the
emulation is now almost flawless. So
what then is Amiga forever you may
ask yourselves and what is emulation
software? Amiga forever is an
Emulator or a software package
designed to act as a real Amiga
running on an IBM PC, the software
will run nearly all 68k Amiga
software including Amiga Workbench
and most games and demos. Cloanto are
unique in offering a full and legal
version of the Amiga Boot rom and
Workbench disk files. 


The boot ROMs available within the
package range from version 1.3 to
version 3.0 and workbench versions


1.3 to version 3.0 all licensed from
the relevant owners of the files and
legal to use. The Premium edition is
packaged in a neat DVD style box
containing a CD rom of the emulation
software boot rom and workbench files
and 2 DVD’s containing videos that
are relevant to the history of the
Amiga computer. The DVD is copy free
and region free but Recorded in NTSC
format, Pal countries should have no

problem playing the files as 99.9% of
DVD and Televisions can cope with
both PAL and NTSC formats on the fly.
The disk is available from Cloanto 


directly or various Amiga retailers,
I found www.amigakit.com selling the
premium edition for £33.99 + Post GBP
various versions are available with 
a
basic download option of the emulator
and workbench files from Cloanto`
s
website www.amigaforever.com for 
a
reduced price, there are other
download options available, but check
the website for full details.


REVIEW
Taking the first disk out of the case
and inserting into your PC switching
on the machine will boot into 
a
customised version of Linux then
start the emulation and boot into 
a
customised version of Amiga workbench
version 3.0. I did have some problems
with this version not recognising my
USB keyboard and mouse. 


Note the Toolbar at the foot of the
screen with quick links to various
applications and utilities, all ready
and preconfigured. 
.


Booting your pc
Start your pc as normal and then
insert the Amiga forever disk the pc
should then Auto start the disk
bringing you to the title menu, 


you can now select the version of
Workbench you wish to start although
the options from here are only
workbench 3 or workbench 1.3, also
possible is booting one of the demos
listed on the tabs at the top of the
screen


The software is built around UAE and
Win Fellow (Amiga emulation software)
However the real power of the
software lies in the fact you can
install the emulation software then
run it from the PC without using the
disk, this improves speed and
performance of the emulation
software. Another bonus of installing
the software is that you could save
out customised versions of your Amiga
setup for troublesome games and demos
or just favourite configurations.


UAE and Winfellow have been available
for a number of years and are indeed
still available as a free download
from the respective websites, HOWEVER



the Amiga kick-start and workbench
are copyrighted and so are not
distributed with the download, unlike
the Cloantos Amiga forever where
everything is neatly packaged and in
one box ready to use. The emulation
software has been developed over many
years and improved; the Amiga
hardware has changed over the years,
unlike say emulation of a Commodore
64 where the basic hardware remained
static for a number of years and
let’s face it isn’t going to change
any time soon. Many Amiga programmes
for example require certain versions
of workbench and custom chips to be
in the hardware before the software
can run, also the amount of memory
and even the peripherals attached
could cause the application to fail.
This is fully handled through the
emulation software.


For anyone who has used Emulation
software the basic’s are the same as
something like winvice set the
options then load a disk image, Of
course for running applications as
opposed to games and demos, we have 
a
full workbench system customised by
someone who has actually used an
Amiga, various handy tool bars and
must have applications are already
installed and ready to use to no need
to hunt around for PD software to get
the system running. One thing you
will need is the disk creating as
disk images or ADF files, a quick
goggle will show this is easily
possible. 


Once my system was installed and
ready to run I was surprised to find
I could access all my Windows network
mapped drives from the Amiga
environment, this meant I could
create documents then save them over
the network onto my windows system.
To any one used to multi-format
system this is a real bonus
especially when you aren’t expecting
it to work


Cloanto package even included the
Picasso software for high end
graphics cards to obtain the full
benefit from your attached PC screen,
I tried the software on a spare
laptop and it worked without problems
obtaining very high resolution and
colour depth that even my Amiga 4000
would be jealous of also with the
software installed and running under
windows I had no problems with USB



keyboards and mice unlike booting
from the CD rom and running the live
version. As way of another bonus the
package contains a customised version
of Directory opus version 5, with
almost the whole back catalogue of
cloanto`s software thrown in for free
this is a very comprehensive package
I look forward to the next version to
see what could possibly be improved,
but do hope USB emulation has been
added to the customised Linux version
To my knowledge only Coanto has the
rights to sell workbench in this way
through emulation software Even
things like the processor and whether
you have a 68060 or a basic 68000
processor’s so we can cover almost
any machine from and Amiga 500 to an
Amiga 4000 the options are a little
overwhelming at first, but the menu
system is easy to use.


Premium edition DVD contents 
The launch of Amiga 17 mins 
Sampling sounds
Multi-tasking
Impressive launch demo`
s
Emulating and IBM pc and running
lotus 123 
Boing ball demo
Andy Warhol and Debora Harry creating
a portrait ( the interviewer says to
Andy what machines have you used
before Andy says None except this one
the crowd gasps
)


Jay Miner peach 49 mins metacom 1989
Jay introduces various commercials
Video clips from 1975 of the 2600
video system
The Atari 400/800
About moving to work on pacemaker
systems
The start of the Amiga
Jay says he wanted to work on 
a
machine that could play flight
simulators
How the design was purchased under
Ataris nose by commodore


Jay miner interview 9mins
The birth of the Amiga
Computers in society
Working for a pacemaker company


The history of the Amiga
Description of Amiga
The story of the making of Amiga
Staff layoffs


Amiga Scrapbooks (various Amiga
photos of staff)



Inside Commodore 
Guided tour behind doors
Tour of the Amiga Assembly plant and
packing rooms
Meeting some of the staff from the
back offices


Death bed vigial
The last days of commodore
AAA board shown to be real
Last party and layoffs
Chicken lips song
History of the Speedbumps
The Amiga Unix software
The hilarious story’s of property
passes to get items in and out of the
company ( one staff member had a pass
for an electronic item very funny but
sadly showing a business failing) 


David Hyne interview
How he stared working at commodore on
the Plus 4 and 128 How he bought an
Amiga 500
Made the 3000+ with DSP and new
graphics chip
Worked on the ECS graphics system
Questions where is Amiga going 


The Feature list of the package is
vast here are just some of the
features 
(taken directly from the website)
Both the Online Edition and the other
versions of Amiga Forever contain the
following items:


Preinstalled Workbench 1.3
environment (for compatibility with
older games and other software) and
Workbench 3.X environment (for
productivity, internet access, etc.)
,
running on top of a powerful JIT-
enabled Amiga hardware emulation
which also supports Amiga custom
chips, RTG, SCSI, TCP/IP, AHI, up to
512 MB of Zorro III RAM, virtual
memory, MIDI, native x86 code, etc.
More..
. 


Preinstalled games, and support for
downloaded games 


Preinstalled demos, including more
than 10 original "First Demos" by
Amiga, and support for downloaded
demos 


A multitude of carefully-preinstalled
quality Amiga applications, which
include the AWeb browser (great for
cross-browser testing), TCP/IP
support tools, Personal Paint 7.1c
(paint, animation and image



processing software, includes GIF/LZW
license), special version of
CacheCDFS CD file system, AmigaAMP
media player, DirDiff (file
synchronization and replication
software), AmiToRTF (to convert texts
from Amiga to Windows formats)
,
MailBX (to convert Amiga mail
archives to Microsoft Mail, Outlook
Express and Exchange Server), drag-
and-drop LhA, print spooler,
Directory Opus 5.5 (courtesy of
GPSoftware), TurboText (exclusive
latest version with bug fixes), MUI
(shareware version), KingCON,
FreeWheel, PowerSnap, ToolManager,
ReqTools, etc. Compatibility with
"Amiga OS 3.5"+ icons, NewIcons and
MagicWB icons 


New and fully-licensed Picasso96 RTG
software (not a shareware version)
,
maps Amiga graphics requests directly
to fast x86 calls and powerful low-
level DirectX functions (Windows
version of emulation) 


Amiga Narrator and Translator speech
synthesis components (made available
for distribution with the Amiga
operating system for the first time
since 1991, when Commodore-Amiga's
licenses expired) 


Latest versions of WinUAE and
WinFellow tested and supported by
Cloanto (non-Windows versions
included and/or available too) 


Launcher window with one-click
controls 


Amiga Files software and folder to
support future Windows systems 


Software Director for easy and
privacy-conscious emulation news and
updates


And just in case some inaccuracy came
into my review here is some
information lifted from the website


ROM and Operating System Files in
Amiga Forever
TOPIC


Q: Does Amiga Forever include all ROM
and operating system files ever
released?
A: Amiga Forever includes ROM and
system disks between version 1.0 and
3.1, including 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.04,

2.05, 2.1, 3.0 and 3.1. Beta versions


(e.g. "1.4", which was then released
as 2.0), and versions released only
for a specific type of hardware (e.g.
the relatively buggy 2.00 which
worked only on the A3000, or 
a
special version of the 1.3 operating
system to support the A2024 monitor)
are not included. These items have
been licensed to Cloanto by the
successors of Amiga Corporation
(formerly Hi-Toro) and include newer
developments by Cloanto and by other
third parties.
Amiga Forever includes a preinstalled
Workbench 3.X environment (newer than
3.1), and includes or supports
operating systems not originally
released by Commodore (e.g. AROS), as
well as hardware diagnostic systems
and operating systems not originally
meant to run on Amiga hardware. For
space reasons, the Online Edition of
Amiga Forever includes only version


1.3 (bootable floppy disk image) and
3.X (preinstalled Workbench plus
application software), which are in
general sufficient to run both old
and new software. The Amiga Forever
Plus Edition contains additional
versions of the ROM and operating
system files.
The licenses for certain third-party
files which were originally bundled
with the Amiga operating system, such
as the Basic programming language and
the speech synthesis software were
not renewed by the successors of
Amiga Corporation (formerly Hi-Toro)
,
and are therefore in part missing in
disks released after a certain date


(e.g. in version 1.3 of the Amiga
operating system as shipped with the
Amiga 3000 in 1991). The licenses for
more recent items, such as some fonts
used in newer versions of the
operating system, also expired a few
years later. Nevertheless, Cloanto
was able to license some of these
original components, such as the
speech synthesis software, directly
from the copyright holders, and to
include them in Amiga Forever.
Cloanto placed a high priority on
preserving and respecting the
original look, feel and compatibility
of version 3.1 of the operating
system as it was released before its
development team ceased maintenance
of the operating system.
Nevertheless, Amiga Forever also



includes internally developed or
fully licensed additional
preinstalled components, such as
system patches, GlowIcons, TCP/IP,
RTG, etc. Amiga Forever contains
instructions on how to disable such
add-ons without affecting
functionality, if so desired.


Last note
I tried Amithlon and had a bad
feeling about Amiga forever, but to
the less technical users this is an
excellent package because the setup
and configuration is already done, if
you run the emulation direct from CD
you have the bonus of changing
settings without them being saved so
you can experiment with full freedom,
knowing you can go back to the
default setting with just a reboot,
for the more demanding user
installing there package from the
disk give almost infinite
compatibility with the real machine.
Of course the real question is can
you tell its emulating the machine
and to most users they wouldn’t know.
So you now have your Amiga Laptop,
customise the case with a fancy logo
and pretend this is a new machine
from Commodore 


Although on the Cd there is no direct
to run the software within a linux or
Mac os environment the configuration
and workbench files can be utilised
with the Uae but you will need to go
to the Uea website to manually
download the application I liked the
package very much and I have heard
that a new version is in the works, 
I
am sure the USB compatibility problem
from booting up the Cd will be
addressed and look forward to the
extra futures (although nothing has
been disclosed at this time) 


Review Commodore Free Magazine


HexFiles part 
8
By Jason Kelk
http://www.oldschool-gaming.com 


Okay, so last issue we were looking
at $D018 and how it controls where
our screen and character set data are
held in the C64's memory and most of
you (I hope) will have noticed that
the highest place I said we could put
a font was $3800 and the highest
place for a screen $3C00, yes?



Simiarly, because the sprite data
pointers can only have a maximum
value of $FF and each sprite is $40
bytes long, the last sprite is at
$3FC0. This is because, the VIC-II
chip arranges the memory into four
chunks of 16K, on powerup, the C64 is
pointing to video bank 0, which runs
from $0000 to $3FFF, and at the
screen at $0400 and a font at $1000.
This, incidentally, is why our
examples have all had music sitting
at $1000, the VIC-II can't "see" this
RAM under there for sprites,
characters or screen data because 
a
copy of the ROM character set is
there, $1000 to $17FF for the upper
case font and $1800 to $2000 for the
lower.


The easiest way to imagine it is with
two pieces of paper. The first has 
a
piece of code written on it and is
placed on a desk whilst the second
has a picture drawn on it and is held
a small distance above the first. We,
pretending to be the processor here,
can look at the first piece of paper
by putting our head underneath the
second, but the VIC-II looks straight
down and from this angle the first is
totally obscured. This technique is
called "shadowing" and, although it
appears to be adding a limitation to
how we use the memory, it actually
makes life easier for us in that we
can still actually use the memory in
some way rather than it being locked
off for the characters. We'll come
across more examples of shadowing in
a different form in a later article.


But back to our initial line of
thought, how can we use one of the
other three blocks of 16K for our
graphics? After all, if we use 
a
bitmap picture (more on those 
a
little later) we need about 9K of
space for it, theres only a limited
space in bank 0, what with $0000 to
$0400 and $1000 to $2000 being
unavailable to us. This is where
$DD00 comes in to play. One of
$DD00's jobs is handling this very
problem, the lowest two bits are used
to point VIC-II at the correct place.
If we just put a value of $03 into
$DD00 nothing happens because, oddly,
$DD00 actually refers to the first
bank as $03 and the last as $00. So
if we want to use bank 1 ($4000 to
$7FFF) we can do so by setting $DD00
with $02.



Changing into bank 1 is the
equivilent of adding $4000 (16384) to
all of our character, screen and
sprite data pointers. If we just
change into bank 1 with no other
changes made to the VIC-II we end up
looking at a screen at $4400 and 
a
font at $5000. Since there is no
shadow of the ROM font in bank 1 that
means we just see a mess. And more
importantly, we have the entire 16K
to ourselves! And simliar rules apply
to banks 2 and 3, except that bank 
2
starts at $8000 and has a second copy
of the ROM font at $9000 to $9FFF and
bank 3 starts at $C000 and has the
video chip sitting at $D000 to $E000.
We can write to this memory, but it
requires a little trickery and, since
using it is a lot more complex, 
I
won't cover this until later. But
bank 1 is the most commonly used bank
for graphics since it's all ours with
absolutely no strings attached by the
C64, so for 


now we're going to frolic in this new
pasture and not worry about the rest.


Now we've got a play space, time to
introduce something new to fill it
with in the form of bitmaps. Remember
I mentioned them last time as well?
Right, first off, there are a number
of different editors out there, all
with different memory layouts. During
the planning for these articles,
there was some discussion about which
would be best to use for our purposes
and we've decided to use the format
set down by the editor Vidcom. In
general a bitmap is split into two
parts, the actual picture (which is
8,000 bytes of data, since 40
characters across times 25 down times
8 bytes a character comes to 8,000)
and we're only allowed to put this in
either $4000 or $6000 in this bank
(and the same rule applies to the
other banks, the bitmap can only
start at a multiple of $2000)
.


The second part is the colours, with
a monocolour bitmap we get two
colours every 8x8 pixel square of the
picture and these can be represented
by the two halves of a byte; $F4 for
example will be light grey ($F) and
purple ($4). This means we need 1,000
bytes of colour for a monocolour
bitmap. Multicolour is different, we
get the same system for defining two
of the colours, but the $D800 colour
map is also available as is the



background colour, since multicolour
bitmaps work in the same way as
multicolour characters with two bits
working together to make a colour
value of $0 to $3. This means we need
a total 2,000 bytes of colour data,
one for the screen and the other for
$D800. Vidcom arranges its files like
this:


$5800 to $5BE7 - colour data for
$D800 onwards.
$5C00 to $5FE7 - colour data for
wherever the screen is.
$6000 to $7F3F - bitmap.


We're going to take advantage of
this. Because any of the sixteen
screens in bank 1 can be used as our
screen we're not going to bother
copying the data from $5C00 to $5FE7,
oh no. We're going to tell the VIC-II
to look there for it's screen, and by
a coincidence... oh look, here's our
colour data! Now, if you download and
unzip the sample data theres an
example picture included called
tropique.prg and a piece of source
that I want you to open called
pic_show.asm. It should look like
this:


.incbin tropique.prg


*= $0900


; Black border and screen colours


lda #$00


sta $d020


sta $d021


; Set VIC-II to bank 
1


lda #$02


sta $dd00


; Turn on bitmap mode


lda #$3b


sta $d011


; Turn on multicolour mode


lda #$18


sta $d016


; Point the screen at $5C00 and the


font at $6000


lda #$78


sta $d018


; Copy from $5800-$5BE7 to $D800


$dBE7 
ldx #$00 
copycol lda $5800,xsta $d800,xlda $5900,x 


sta $d900,
x
lda $5a00,
x
sta $da00,
x
lda $5ae8,
x
sta $dae8,
x
inx
bne copycol


; Stop but don't exit to BASIC
loop jmp loop


Start it up and, if it's all typed up
correctly, a nice picture of a girl
and some stone columns should appear!
There's also a file in the archive
called pic_demo.asm and, as the
filename might suggest, this is 
a
demo based on the previous code we've
looked at and the picture viewer.
This source isn't documented, but the
majority of it is code we've already
covered quite extensively so you
should feel pretty comfortable with
it - but there have been a few
alterations made so they need 
a
little explanation; one change makes
the scroller faster and therefore
more readable, the other extends the
length of the message itself so it's
no longer limited to 256 bytes.


Lets look at how the scroll is sped
up first; open the pic_show.asm
source and look for the label
scrlloop (it should be line 127) and
there is an LDY #$00 just before it;
since the Y register isn't used
during the scroll movement routine,
it's being put to service as 
a
counter to call that code more than
once per frame. If you page onwards 
a
little to the label dontmove, there's
this;


iny
cpy #$03
bne scrlloop


And that's what speeds the scroller
up; the routine is called, Y gets
incremented and we go back to
scrlloop until Y reaches 3. Changing
the value can speed up or slow down
the scroller accordingly, so it's
worth having a little play to see how
it looks, on average moving two to
three pixels a frame tends to be
readable when the text is the size
we're using here.


The other modification is a little
more involved and before I start



explaining how it works a little
disclaimer is probably in order; the
technique below is called "self
modifying code" and is, generally
speaking, considered bad practise by
just about every programming course,
teacher and book. However, it's very
effective and faster to use most of
the time and, since I use it
personally in preference to the more
fiddly "proper" methods, it's covered
here.


Previously, we've been using a label
called messcount to indicate where we
are in the text, that has been
totally removed for this code.
Instead we have this routine after
the loop to shift all the characters
to the left:


messread lda messagebne textok 
jsr resetjmp messread 
textok sta $5c27 
inc messread+$01 
bne nohibyteinc messread+$02 

So, looking at this new routine it
reads from the label message (which
is where the scroll text is stored,
at $2800 in memory for this code)
,
checks it's not a value of $00 and
puts the new character onto the
screen. If the accumulator does
contain $00, a subroutine called
reset is called and the code jumps
back to the LDA again to get another
byte. Now, some of you are thinking 
"
hang on, that just reads the same
byte over and over again" and on it's
own you'd be right, the two INC
commands after textok are what nudges
the LDA on so it reads the text.


How does that work, then? Well, if we
look into the memory where the LDA
message is stored, it will look like
this; $AD, $00, $28. The first byte
$AD is the actual LDA command, whilst
the second and third bytes are the
address, in this case pointing to
$2800 since the C64 insists on
storing the lower byte of the address
first. The two INCs change the
address, the first one changes the
lower byte (the one that starts as
$00 in this case) upwards so the LDA
itself steps through memory a byte at
a time, whilst the second INC only



takes effect at the point when that
byte reaches $00 again; it bumps the
higher byte of the address up so the
scroller can go from $28ff to $2900.
Finally, we need a little look at
reset (near the end of the code) as


well: 
reset lda #messagesta messread+$02 
rts 

This subroutine simply resets
messread so that it points to the
first byte of the text, the first
LDA/STA pair sets the lower byte of
the address, the second LDA/STA sets
the higher, so the code at messread
gets changed to $AD, $00, $28
regardless of what it was previously.
This subroutine is also called 
a
little before the CLI in the setup
code to make sure that the program
behaves itself if someone stops and
restarts it and without that call in
the setup the text would continue
where it left off!


Have fun playing with the code,
changing the speed of the scroller
and so forth and generally seeing how
things work. For the next installment
we're going to be starting a whole
new project. As usual, if you have
any questions to ask then contact me
and I'll see what I can do but, for
now, goodbye!


The source code for the routines
above can be downloaded here
www.oldschool-gaming.com
/files/c64/hex_files/part_8_files.zip
>downloaded here for easier
reference.


Commodore Free would like to thank
Jason for permitting the reprinting
of the article


Could Sid chart? 


We have, all heard the current charts
and whatever you geographical
location, in my opinion most of the
music is dire. If this is due to my
age or just that music has become
stale I am unsure. Apart from the
usual remixes of old classics, and
the usual drum n base remixes, I find
little that excites me or begs me to
buy it now
.



In my frustration I went back to an
MP3 player filled with Sid tunes, 
I
know I am not alone; I know many
Commodore users have Mp3 players with
SID tunes. I then decided to put the
tunes through a little reverb to fill
them out, and then split the signal
to a pseudo stereo image using
external processing devices the
results were great, fat stereo SID
tunes booming down my headphones. 


I listened to something recently on
the radio I forget the name now, but
it was little more than bleeps with
some guy reciting a poem over the top
I think the tune was thou shall
kill something along those lines. 


I then went back to my recording and
decided to take a coupe of SID tunes
add a real drum section and a little
reverb and filtering and compression
to add punch, I then utilised a home
made kludge to make the whole sound
stereo and save the file back to my
MP3 player. Now I finally have
something to listen to, fat base 
a
heavy drums, Sid purists will now be
gasping in horror but I am on 
a
project so please excuse me. 


I don’t want to take 1 SID tune on
its own and say this is the best
because I reworked a couple of tunes
and hey they all sound great to begin
with. Someone is going to get upset
here and say the originals were far
better, I agree the SID sound is good
but wanted to appeal to a more open
market. Maybe the Commodore 64 and
sid profile would be improved if 
a
real tune actually made its way
into the charts 


I am not in the process of ripping
someone off for a copyrighted sid
tune I just wanted to make the point
that with a little work many of these
older and indeed new sounding tunes
can be radio prefect certainly the
ones I have been playing with would
easily be welcomed in the local club.
Sadly this is why I am not offering
the files I worked on for download,
because they were a personal test and
I don’t want to be at the end of 
a
copyright war with some demo coder.


Of course the Sid tune would need to
be original so no one would get upset
maybe even donate the money made to
charity as a gesture of good faith
from the community.



I have in the past listened to many
SID tunes on my Hi fi as I am sure
most of us have done, and I thought
this would sound great in a club, 


So maybe a challenge here then for
someone to take a SID tune (you own
the copyright for or even better 
a
brand new tune) and with the minimal
amount of External processing have
the tune enter the charts. There are
various hardware items to use 2 sids
so stereo is possible from a basic
machine.


Hasn’t it all been done before? well
I remember a group had so it was
claimed just 2 Commodore Amiga 500`
s
chained together over the serial port
to keep the timing of the machines,
and they made 
a 


Tune using just these machines as
instruments, that managed to get into
the UK top 40 but I cant ever
remember a SID tune entering the
Charts of any country.


Now with things like the Prophet 64
and Stereo SIDS we could have a worth
contestant to the Charts.


So there is a challenge for anyone
with the right contacts, have a SID
tune with the minimal amount of
external processing enter the charts,
any takers or would you like to
correct me and name a tune that
charted that was entirely created on
the Commodore 64 


Yes we had Zombi nation or whatever
they called themselves taking a riff
from lazy Jones and other people have
samples SID sounds and indeed most
of a SID demo to create a tune but
not a whole; Commodore 64 produced
tune without any external
instruments. 


If enough of a Buzz was created and
the tune downloaded enough then it
would be possible without the expense
of creating a CD, a few bands have
recently via the web created enough
of a download frenzy that the music
entered the chart before they even
created a CD or even the cover
artwork. 


THE END 



Commodore Free is a Free to download
magazine dedicated to Commodore
machines available to download as
Text, Html, PDF and Commodore 64 Disk
image 



