   *****************************
   ** COMMODORE FREE MAGAZINE **
   *****************************
      Issue 26 January 2009
      www.commodorefree.com
      Free to download magazine
  Dedicated to Commodore Computers

Available as Text, Html, PDF, SEQ and
   Commodore 64 D64 disk image

Editor
---------
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk/
http:
//translate.google.com/translate_t#

Happy new year!

Translation 
Right a few readers have asked about 
Commodore Free as a German,French and
Spanish publication. I am one person 
editing the magazine,I speak only one
language (and am still trying to 
master that correctly) I can't 
possibly translate the magazine to 
other languages on my own. I have 
found this website though, run by 
Google: 
http:
//translate.google.com/translate_t# w
here you can convert to and from many
languages. I have tried the site with
the TEXT version of Commodore Free 
and it did seemed to work ok, well 
for my schoolboy French. Something, 
however is lost in the translation, 
especially if you transfer back to 
English again, but this is better 
than nothing,and I am hoping you will
be able to pick your way through the
translations to your native language.

Now back to Commodore Free magazine 
For anyone who knows me, and wonders 
why the heck I still load games from 
tape (and most think I am absolutely 
mad for continuing to do so), heck 
people tell me with uiec and mmc and 
all manner of sd card readers what's 
the point of using flaky tape devices
We have an interview with Tom Roger 
from the Tapes 64 website (a tape 
preservation website) 
http://tapes.c64.no/index.php 

So why do people load from tape, well
for me personally tape was the first 
storage format I ever had, loading 
from tape is slow and this builds up 
anticipation, loading screens and 
music displayed during the waiting 
process really added to the game. I 
also personally feel that the time it
took to load a game made the user get
more involved with the game and play
it for longer, if you have almost 
instant access to any game like from 
an SD card reader you will play a 
game for a few seconds, then think 
heck I could be playing xyz load xyz 
for a few seconds then think I havent
played abc for ages then load abc and
play for a few seconds. Of course 
loading from tape using a none turbo 
loading system and having to wait 20 
minutes for something like Arcadia to
load,well even I'm not that dedicated
a user. 

Also for this issue I have also had 
permission to reprint "On the Road 
the Commodore Scene meeting 2008 and 
a visit to AmigaKit by Robert 
Bernardo" Part of Robert's tour of 
the Commodore community. You may 
remember Robert visited "commodore 
Scene" well ok what was left of 
Commodore Scene it was myself, Shaun
Bebbington and Allan Bairstow. At the
time of the meeting Allan commented
that meeting every 2 years was too 
much, we all agreed we needed a local
club and have meetings more regularly
hence the emergence of the "Commodore
Computer Club U.K." in the article I 
have included a picture Robert took 
showing myself in the centre and 
Shaun Bebbington and Alan Bairstow. 
Some of you may have already seen the
article, but I know you wont have 
seen the picture. 

Lord Ronin continues his beginners 
guide to using the Commodore 64 with 
a look at the final chapters of the 
User guide that was included with the
machine,I know some readers have said
"what is the point" but if you have 
been reading the article Lord Ronin 
does give some easier to understand 
information, he has also corrected 
some of the listing errors in the 
manual,I guess it was rushed with the
launch of the machine. Some more 
information I have converted the 
manual to a 40 column document with 
ASCII art, this is being checked on 
Commodore 64 to ensure readability 
and then I intend to create a disk 
menu with the manual. 

The news section sees some more 
innovations from Individual Computers
with a flicker fixer for the 
Commodore 64, I would love to see 
this device working. 

Also on the news of the Commodore 
Computer Club, we should have a 
working bank account (although I am 
writing this in the past tense) after
various problems it seems the bank 
has excepted us as users, I can only 
put the problems down to the credit 
crunch as we gave them everything 
they wanted then they would say there
was information missing and ask us to
refill in the forms, with a bank 
account we sort of now look semi-
professional. 

I have received various hate mails 
about Commodore Free,and at one point
I thought about just stopping 
production and doing other things. 
But I did receive some emails from 
users expressing an interest in the 
magazine and wishing me good luck. I 
am paying rather a lot for web 
hosting, but I feel it does give me
flexibility, and although its 
expensive the support is excellent.
I don't really know what to do for 
the best at this moment. All I can 
say is that Commodore Free may go 
more infrequent, mainly because of 
the time to research and create the 
magazine, and the lack of time I have
to myself and my Commodore.

I welcome comments
Regards
Nigel 
www.commodorefree.com
 
====================================
====================================

NEWS
The 8Bit Philosophy
a Commodore 64 Symphony Released 
-------------------------------------
A documentary about c64 musicians and 
Commodore remixes is available for
download now, there are two versions 
available:

Long Cut (40 mins, MPEG 2, 1.7 GB):
http://8bit.scenesat.com
/The.8Bit.Philosophy.
long.cut.version.1.0.16.9.MPEG2.
progressive.mpg

Short Cut (Bit Live 2008, 20 min, 
MPEG 2, 1GB):
http://8bit.scenesat.com/The.8Bit.
Philosophy.Short.Cut.1.0.16.9.PAL.
MPEG2.progressive.mpg


UN- NEW 
------------
This email arrived into the Homestead
mailing list, the sender wanted to UN
NEW a basic listing, I thought with 
the Lord Ronin series for anyone 
following the Commodore manual this 
may be of use. The NEW command, as 
you are aware from the tutorials in 
earlier issues of Commodore Free, 
clears a basic listing from memory, 
so what happens if you want the 
listing back, or typed new in error? 
How does it work though?
 
-----Original Message-----
From:] On Behalf Of Cameron Kaiser
To: dunric

Subject: Re: [Homestead] UNNEW 
command in ML in BASIC 2.0?
> Is there an UNNEW command in ML via
BASIC 2.0? Perhaps via a BASIC Loader

This is my usual incantation:
poke2050,1:sys42291:poke45,peek(34)
:poke46,peek(35):clr

personal: 
http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems 
* www.floodgap.com


Individual Computer news
------------------------
COMMODORE FREE
I know its late but ran out of room 
in the other issues5.10.2008: new 
products in fall 2008, Amiwest, 
holidays 


Indivision AGA introduced
-------------------------
After delivery of Indivision AGA has 
started about one week late this 
September, all units of the first 
production are already shipped to our
resellers. We were prepared for a 
good demand, but are still surprised 
about the extremely high demand for 
a 24-bit flicker fixer. A second 
production run has already been 
started and it will be available in 
November of this year. Since our 
trade partners all have stock at this
point, we don't expect a shortage in 
the coming weeks. One feature that 
many customers are pleased about is 
the HighGFX support of Indivision AGA
With the new flash update V1.2 alpha,
we're extending screen modes to true 
HD720 wide-screen-resolutions with up
to 1280x720 pixels, displayed with
more than 60Hz refresh rate. Special 
thanks goes to André "Ratte" Pfeiffer
who adapted his HighGFX package 
especially for Indivision AGA.

Flicker fixer for the C64
-------------------------
On September 13th, we have announced 
our new product for the C64 at Back 
In Time Live in Stockholm, Sweden. We
have worked on this product for the 
past two years together with 
developer Peter Wendrich. The result 
is an extremely user-friendly 
cartridge that can be used without 
opening the computer. It is just 
plugged to the expansion port of the
C64. Technical data in short: 

- VGA-output 60Hz refresh rate + more
- Turbo-function with full 6510-
  processor compatibility 
- cycle-exact REU (memory expansion) 
  with 16MByte ram 
- MMC/SD card slot with MMC64 
  compatibility and 1541-emulation 
- connector for PC-keyboard 
- built-in help function "the book" 
  with 16MByte flash 
- freezer (compat with Retro Replay) 
- bright yellow case + blue buttons 

Chameleon will presumably be 
available in the first quarter of 
2009. The price will be about 220,- 
EUR including German sales tax of 19%

Micromys V3 available in November
---------------------------------
The mouse-adapter Micromys V3 that we
have already announced in December 
2007 will finally be available in 
November 2008. We're proud to say 
that star-programmer Chris Hodges of 
Poseidon fame will be writing the 
Amiga-wheel drivers. His publications
for the Amiga made him an excellent 
reputation in the Amiga market. He is
filling a gap that Michael Schöttner 
has left after he could not start 
working for us because of family 
reasons. Another reason for the delay
was the case: We could not find a 
vendor for a long time, but finally 
found someone who is willing to do 
the small quantities that we require.
The picture below shows a first 
prototype that will be revised for 
mass-production. We decided to make a
model with a cable in order to deal 
with space constraints on every desk.
This design will allow installation 
on every narrow desk, even when a 
bulky USB-PS2 adapter is used.

Catweasel MK4plus available
---------------------------
The Catweasel MK4plus is available 
starting today. It replaces the 
Catweasel MK4, which has been sold 
out earlier this year. The main 
changes are cosmetic, and we have 
followed customer feedback in some 
places. The one easily visible change
is that the new card is no longer low
-profile PCI compliant. This feature 
of the old Catweasel MK4 was rarely 
used by our customers, so we decided 
to use the increased space for a 
better arrangement of the two SID 
sockets. These are more easily 
accessible now. Additional filters in
the audio part are geared towards 
filtering noise from high-performance
graphics cards and low-quality power
supplies. Another novelty is the 
external audio jack and an angled 
internal audio connector for better 
accessibility. The Catweasel MK4plus 
is delivered only with an English 
manual at first, a German translation
will be made available in November of
this year. picture shows extras. Unit
is delivered without SID-Chips. 

Lyra 2: 
Keyboard adapter with new functions
-----------------------------------
We've been delivering the keyboard 
adapter Lyra for eight years now. It 
allows connecting PC-keyboards to 
Amiga computers. We're now delivering
a new version called Lyra 2 that 
implements a few new features 
requested by our customers. Lyra 2 
supports small-size keyboards without
a numeric keypad, and multimedia-
keyboards can be used with Guido 
Mersmann's tool MMKeyboard. The Amiga
1200 version now supports Amiga 
keyboards as well. The online manual
gives an overview over the new 
functions. Just like the Catweasel 
manual, this manual is also available
in English at this point. A German 
translation will be made available in
November of this year. Lyra 2 is 
available from our trade partners 
starting today. 

C-One goes Amiga
----------------
The FPGA-based computer C-One is 
ageing. Despite that, it marks a 
milestone in computer history,because
it's the world's first computer that 
is purely based on programmable logic
chips that can re-program each other
while the machine is running. In 
November of this year, we'll be 
providing an extension card that 
quadruples the FPGA space of the 
C-One. The board then has enough 
resources to run the "Minimig" core.
C-One pioneer and FPGA-developer 
Tobias Gubener has invented a very 
special solution for his version of 
Minimig for the C-One: Not one, but 
two 68000-compatible processors are 
working in the FPGA extender. One of 
them does the job of the PIC 
controller on Dennis van Weeren's 
Minimig board, and the other replaces
the physical 68000 CPU of the Minimig
board. If you already own a C-One 
board, the extender can be bought for
99,- EUR from us. New boards are only
delivered with the extender for a 
bundle-price of 333,- EUR. If you are
interested in purchasing the extender
only, please contact us in the coming
weeks, so we can get an estimate of 
the required quantities.

Individual Computers sponsors Amiwest
-------------------------------------
On October 17th and 18th 2008, the 
yearly Amiga-show"Amiwest"took place
in Sacramento, California. We don't 
only exhibit there, but also co-
sponsor the show. Together with our 
retail partner AmigaKit from England,
we provide enough money to grant free
admission to the show.Tickets for the
banquet on Saturday evening are 29,- 
US Dollars each. Up-to-date 
information about the show can be 
found in the show blog. 

Holidays until October 27th
---------------------------
We're on holidays starting from 
October 6th until October 27th 2008. 
Please understand that only limited 
email support can be provided during 
that time. Unfortunately, Vesalia is 
also closed for fall holidays at the 
moment, so the newly available 
products are not yet listed in their 
web shop. However, orders can be 
placed and processed. 

All prices are recommended retail 
prices and include the German sales 
tax of 19%. Prices at our retail 
partners may vary. For mail ordering,
shipping may be added. individual 
computers Jens Schonfeld GmbH


Crazy Light Construction Kit 3.0
--------------------------------
There is a new Construction Kit to 
make Boulderdash caves. 
With the following features:

- No One's Enemy Designer v3.0. 
- Better scroll detection. 
- Grafik optimization.
- Drive independent so you can use a 
  1581 or a hard disk.
- All editors are enhanced or 
  completely rewritten.
- The ghosts and surprise explosions 
  are replaced by falling walls, 
  acid and boxes. 
- Title screen with more colours, 
  more text characters. 

There is a instruction video 
available to see how the Construction
Kit works. http://
www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/plans.html


XRoar (Amiga)
-------------
XRoar is an emulator for the Dragon 
and Tandy range of computers. The 
Dragon and Tandy are eight bit home 
computers based on the 6809 CPU. 
Initially produced in Wales in early
1980s, later it spawned some variants
in other countries as well. Even if 
using a very powerful processor - the
eight bit smaller brother of the 
Motorola highly successful 16/32 bit
68000 and 68008 family, the lack of 
good peripherals,non quality software
and weak user base, made the computer
unpopular despite being with 
reasonable specifications for the 
period it was introduced.Nevertheless
with XRoar you can experience the 
Dragon computer and tinker with the 
software available for it. 

The Amiga version uses ASL file 
requester for the selection of the 
virtual diskettes, cassettes or 
cartridges. There are 3 video modes 
available for selection. The YUV 
overlay video output mode displays on
resizable window, which can be used 
directly on Workbench. The emulator 
supports Joystick via Amiga Input, 
have sound output and recognises 
several formats for diskette images,
snapshots and tapes. XRoar is a new
development, under constant updates 
but is available already for GP32, 
Nintendo Dual Screen, Linux and PSP.
The Amiga version contributes to its 
wide availability. Because of legal 
reasons the original firmware ROM 
images are not included in the 
archive, but only a freeware 
replacement with very limited 
functionality. The replacement gives
the possibility to load software, 
without the need of original firmware
ROM image files.If you don't have any
firmware images,you might like to try
this one. It doesn't do anything 
beyond trying to boot OS9 (Dragon 
version), and only a few cartridge 
images work with it (mostly CoCo 
software-Dragon carts seem to always 
contain many more direct jumps into 
ROM). If you do have images, but want
to try this one anyway, save it out 
and use "-extbas FILENAME" to load it
instead of the normal Dragon 64 image
Popular software titles for the 
Dragon computers include games 

- Manic Miner, 
- Frogger, 
- Chuckie Egg,
- Jet Set Willy,
- Donkey Kong, 
- Cassette 50, 

operating systems 

- OS9, 
-Dragon DOS, 

productivity software 
- Dragon Graphic Studio, 
- File Master, Rainbow Writer, 
- 6809 editor assembler.

There is software for Dragon in the 
Others section. Not being that 
popular, nevertheless, the XRoar 
emulator providing Dragon emulation 
with enhanced functionality compared 
to the other Dragon emulators for 
Amiga, gives great entertainment for 
the people enjoying the retro 
computers and the software written 
for them. 
http://hirudov.com/amiga/XRoar.html


Plus/4 World 
Closed re-housed and re-opened
------------------------------
The Official (Re)Opening Of Plus/4 
World! - 2008-09-26 
Our previous host, emucamp.com is 
unfortunately gone forever. Let us 
take this opportunity to thank the 
good folks at ztnet.com for their 
generosity, we appreciated having a 
good home. However, it's now time to 
move on. In a truly incredible move,
Mike has come to the rescue and 
offered to give us a new home! It's 
very cool to finally have our own 
domain name :-) And (obviously) here
it is: you are on Plus4World.com! 
Also big thanks to everyone who 
offered their help with finding a 
permanent hosting solution for us. 
Obviously things are still not 100%
(there's tons of stuff to upload), 
and we might have minor glitches here
and there. If you find problems, 
report them, or better yet, volunteer
and try to help out. If you like this
place (and from the incoming emails 
it appears there are many of you who
do), be sure to thank Mike. Cheers! 
http://plus4world.powweb.com/


C- ONE Website News
--------------------
From: cone_cores
Subject: [cone_cores] C-One.net

Just to let everyone on the group 
know,www.c-one.net has these features
to offer the C-One community:

- Wiki
- FAQs
- Downloads
- Picture Gallery
- Forums
- Newsletter
- Blogs

The forums are the only dedicated 
forums for the C-One. I've created 
several categories and posted a few 
"seeder threads". Go check it out!


Commodore Documentaries
------------------------
Okay, for those who liked the VIC-20 
documentary, there is a 2/3rds 
finished C64 documentary.Here are the
videos so far: 

Chapter 1 - Hardware 
high res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=qJNXGW80U0s&fmt=18 
low res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=qJNXGW80U0s 

Chapter 2A - Games 
high res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=BKFGpuzhcbM&fmt=18 
low res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=BKFGpuzhcbM 

Chapter 2B - Games 
high res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=RyZFHZdEZaY&fmt=18 
low res - http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=RyZFHZdEZaY 

Chapter 3 will cover operation of 
BASIC, GEOS, and touch on terminal 
programs. 

The Vic 20 documentaries 
-------------------------
The Vic 20 documentaries are 
available still from YouTube

Vic 20 Documentaries

Chapter 1 hardware
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=tV7A_PwXEX0

chapter 2 games
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=YJoQYgoPgVQ&feature=related

Chapter 3 basic operation
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=hjlI_NmYVpQ&feature=related


Trans Logic 2
-------------
Skoro from the group Assassins has 
released a new game entitled Trans 
Logic 2. This is a sequel to Trans 
Logic. You have to slide the stones 
so that the left screen equals the 
right screen. The game is made for 
the PAL C16 or Plus/4. The game can 
also be played with the VICE emulator
Music was composed by Simon (SLD) and
the code work was created by Varga 
(Skoro). 
http://plus4world.powweb.com/software
/Trans_Logic_2


VICtoria Gold Edition 
----------------------------
by Orion70 and Mike for 16K expanded 
VIC 20 

VICtoria Gold Edition is the latest 
update of the turn based strategy 
game which tasks the player with 
being the Emperor of Rome. This 
latest version requires a 16K 
expanded VIC and uses some of that 
space for some very nice graphics. It
can be downloaded here 
http://it.geocities.com/orion010870
/VICtoria_gold.zip 
along with a cover image and manual 
(please note that it's hosted by 
Geocities so the file may not always 
be available due to their bandwidth 
restrictions). "VIC=toria GOLD 
Edition is a turn-based strategy 
game for the VIC-20 expanded with 
16K RAM. As the ruler at the dawn of 
Roman power, your task in centuries 
to come is to conquer all the known 
world, region by region. It won`t be 
easy progressively stronger empires,
barbarian invasions, and civil war 
will keep you occupied in the 
struggle for your own survival."


Edge of Disgrace by Booze Design
--------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=yFdjWSaDlIo
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=0b4uGv-9xpw&feature=related

Ok remember I kept harping on about a
plain vanilla Commodore 64 entering 
the charts with minimal sound 
processing, well I am sure if the 
excellent music track from this demo 
was released, it would sail to number
1. The music is superb, I was tapping
along, the actual demo itself is 
equally impressive. However not being
a demo techy I can only say you need 
to watch it for yourself. 


 ====================================
 ====================================

MossyCon5
---------
By Lord Ronin from Q-Link

April the 5th 2009 is the date slated
for MossyCon5. A small get together 
of C= users from three or more states
The first three years were held at 
Mohr Realties Games, a small little 
game {RPG} shop that also promotes 
the Commodore line. OK in truth it is
the headquarters of the Anything 
Commodore Users Group CBM Reg Number
447. This is a small shop and a small
amount of people arrived; but after 
the amount of demos that have grown s
o have the attendees. There wasn't 
enough room for the pipe smoke,so for
MossyCon4 in 2008, we moved to a 
Pizza place, and they gave us the 
space for free! OK some promo adverts
in the press releases helped sweeten 
the deal.

So we decided to hold MossyCon 5 at 
the same place. This year we are 
expecting: more music work from Steve
Jones, a Display of C= items from 
Robert Bernardo of the Fresno 
California Users Group, along with an
Amiga One with the new OS 4.1 
installed. Perhaps a demo of the 
Amiga 4000 Power Tower. Well that's 
on the assumption we can get it set 
up right with the monitor.

The first idea came from Steve Jones 
of Prophet 64 fame, He suggested that
we do a game challenge:this idea grew
from using the Adventure Construction
Set and a 30 minute adventure, Into a
gigantic hell storm. First the ACS is
still being used, But the time limit 
has been removed,then the idea of one
theme for a game was deleted. As ACS 
will create Sword & Sorcery, Spy/
Mystery (great for horror too) Along 
with Sci-Fi.

That idea expanded; some people like 
text adventures, so adventure writer 
was added to the mix. Then some don't
like ACS and prefer Dungeon Creator 
found in Load Star by David Caruso II
then some other game makers that I do
and others that I don't have in my 
personal collection where tossed into
the works. The end result is that we 
hope that there will be many games 
produced for the micro con. The Idea 
is that we want to have some 1541 
disks of the games, but we also we 
want to have them in a playable 
format from a CD This is a task that 
I hope to have completed at the time 
of MossyCon 5. One other part has 
also introduced, I admit it was by 
myself the dice gamer. Making 
adventures for dice and paper games, 
using Geos as the tool for writing 
and for maps.

Don't get too scared, I have found a 
way using post print 3.8 and GeoDos 
to put the files onto disks readable 
from a Linux system,then on the Linux
system convert the files to a .pdf 
format. This PDF file works well on 
the reader that myself and several 
others users have for testing.In fact
it is how I made the 20 page Cyber 
Space edition of our newsletter.

Right now there are three known games
in ACS,half of one in Dungeon Creator
and assorted bits in other game 
makers, along with a nearly finished 
adventure for the out of print High 
Colonies Sci-Fi game. Taking up about
an entire 1541 disk side, in uncomp-
ressed form. Now then, as we have 
readers throughout the world, and 
most won't be attending MossyCon5, it
would be nice to have this available 
as well, but I don't think there is 
space, I don't need the competition 
at the bar gang [VBG].

Anyone in the C= world can contact me
about submitting their work, I'll go 
over in detail the simplistic rules 
for the game making, then when 
completed the work is sent to me and 
through the prayers to the great C= 
Headed goddess. Your work will be on 
the CD at MossyCon5. All credit is 
yours and the CD isnt for sale either
a complete labour of love. So if this
is of interest to you. Feel Free to 
contact me .... lordronin@vcsweb.com.
I'll get back to you, though a bit 
slow at times in the email these days

 ====================================
 ====================================

Creating TAP Files
-------------------
http://tapes.c64.no/index.php

For now, this article won't go into 
deep details about the transfer 
process, since this is documented in 
other places. However The recommended
way to transfer tapes is using a real
C64 datasette. For PC-users, this is 
best done with mtap by Markus Brenner
You can download the application at 
his web site at 
http://markus.brenner.de. Another 
pretty common way to transfer tapes,
is through sampling it with a sound 
card using a HiFi-tapedeck. DON'T DO
IT!!!! It's a TERRIBLE way of dumping
tapes,and the error-rate is VERY high
It's quite high even using a real 
datasette.

Okay,you have everything you need now
(I assume that you've read the 
instructions found in the mtap-
archive found at Markus Brenner's 
site), and if you follow these simple
but time-consuming steps, you will 
soon be making the best TAP-files 
that can be made. 

1. Dump the same title several times.

Yes, it IS time-consuming, but it is 
the only way to make sure you get all
data is pulled out from the tape. 
Often when reading these old 
treasures, a few pulses may be 
misread for different reasons. 
Especially on lower quality tapes.
This is critical, because you may not
always get any clues that the tape 
infant WAS misread. Even if some 
pulses are wrong, it may load and 
appear to be working. Some loaders 
have implemented checksums. A 
checksum is a value that is created 
by adding the read bytes into a sum. 
At the end of the file, the final sum
is compared to the sum that is 
expected by the loader. These loaders
aren't as demanding, but they're not 
100% foolproof either.

The positive thing is that noisy, 
worn out tapes, USUALLY produces 
random errors. Using a TAP-scanner 
and cleaner (in this text, I'll be 
referring to my good friend Stewart 
Wilson's FinalTAP,since it's probably
the best TAP-tool released at the 
time being), we can detect a lot of 
things. We can detect loadertype, if 
a checksum is present,and if it's OK.
FinalTAP also creates crc32 values of
the data. Both single files and the 
entire data.This is very useful since
we then can compare different dumps 
of the same tape. 

As a rule of thumb, you should have 
at least two identical dumps before 
you can assume the TAP is OK. I 
recommend at least three dumps for 
loaders not containing their own 
checksum since they are more 
vulnerable. It's not likely that you 
have two identical TAPs which are 
faulty, but you can never be 100% 
sure.It's better to do one extra dump
just to make sure the data is OK. If 
you can get the same title from 
several sources (assuming the other 
sources has the same version as you),
that's even better. If two dumps from
two different sources, even different
sides of a tape turns out identical,
you're 99,9% sure that your dump is 
completely error free.

Sometimes, the content from two 
different sources may vary slightly.
This could be very confusing for the
inexperienced, and also sometimes for
the more experienced TAP-maker. That
doesn't HAVE to mean it is an error 
(unless it fails to load, or an 
internal checksum indicates so). It's
actually common with very small 
differences in "unused memory" in 
certain loaders (Novaload being an 
example of this). The software 
companies had written the game 
including random garbage bytes 
present in RAM at the time and those 
bytes may differ two different 
recordings,even on the same tape.This
is unfortunately something we cannot 
do anything about, but I would advise
you to try locating the differences 
to see if it can be any harm. An 
article on this subject will come 
later.

2. Time to clean up!

Well, you now have a functional tape?
Congratulations. Now we want to clean
it up. As we've mentioned, old tapes 
are noisy and the need to be 
freshened up a little. FinalTAP also 
has functions for that. Actually,that
is FinalTAP's main purpose. By 
pressing the "optimize"-button, 
FinalTAP flattens out the signals of
recognised files and removes any 
noise that it may detect. This has at
least two advantages. You get files 
that are excellent as master tapes 
for writing back to real tapes again
(these tapes will actually turn out 
cleaner and nicer than the originals
you have),and the files will compress
much better,which is nice if you want
to share your tapes on the net.

Due to the way FinalTAP works, it may
happen that not all noise is being 
removed entirely. This is because it
does NOT touch anything it doesn't 
recognise.This is your guarantee that
FinalTAP won't damage your TAP-image.
In these cases, manual hex-editing is
necessary if you want a perfect TAP.
This is not recommended for inexpe-
rienced TAP-makers, because you could
end up damaging the TAP if you don't
know exactly what you are doing. The
leftovers from FinalTAP will not harm
the tape in any way, and the tape 
should still load fine on a real C64.

You should be aware of the fact that 
FinalTAP does not support all the 
different loaders out there, and 
probably never will, but it supports
all of the most common loaders. You 
should also make sure that 100% of 
the TAP is detected. In some cases 
where some noise hasn't been removed,
it will say it detected 99% after 
optimizing/cleaning. An unprocessed
TAP may have down to 97% detected 
(This is the lowest value I've found
myself so far).

3. ALWAYS save ALL your raw dumps

This is very important, because you 
can always clean a TAP, but never go 
back IF the process went wrong. The 
raw files can also be useful for 
research and developing utilities for
those into that.

I hope by writing this article I've 
managed to give you a clue on how to 
succeed in making the best possible 
TAP-files for the community. If 
there's something you feel is not 
answered here, or you need some other
help, feel free to contact me 

 ====================================
 ====================================

Interview with Tom Roger (Tapes 64)
-----------------------------------
http://tapes.c64.no/index.php

Commodore Free 
Please introduce yourself to our 
readers

Tom Roger Skauen
Hello. My name is Tom Roger Skauen 
and I was born in 1979, which makes 
me 29 at the time of this interview.
The Commodore 64 have always had a 
special place in my heart, ever I 
received my first unit, sometime in 
either 1984 or 1985, I don't remember
exactly.I should see if I can find 
the invoice at my father's place 
sometime as it would be nice to know 
when this madness really started. 
Apart from Commodore 64-stuff, I do 
some hobby based programming on PC, 
compose some music every now and then
and.. nothing really in particular. 
If anyone really wants to know 
anything about me, just contact me.
I shouldn't be hard to find, and 
friendly letters are always answered,
even if I may be very late sometimes

CF. How did you first become involved
with Commodore machines

TRS. My mother took part in some sort
of computer school back in the early/
mid 80s, so we bought a Commodore 64,
mainly for her to write programs in 
BASIC at home,which was the preferred
language at that particular school. 
Being a kid that loved any electronic
equipment, I of course fell in love 
with the Commodore 64 immediately.

CF. What was the first machine you 
owned

TRS. That was the Commodore 64.

CF. Can you explain why games were 
distributed on Tapes

TRS. This seems to be a mainly 
European phenomenon. Probably because
it was a cheap way of distributing 
games, and cassette players for 
Commodore 64 were way cheaper than a
disk drive so virtually every C64 
user owned one. In USA, there were 
almost no tape games at all. I'm 
afraid I cannot provide any real 
explanation for why this trend never 
hit Europe, but probably because disk
drives were more expensive in Europe?
Hard to say.

CF. Do people still uses tapes on 
Commodore machines

TRS. Yes. For different reasons. Some
people (like me) do it because they 
still find an odd pleasure in 
watching the loading screens and 
listening to the music a while before
the game play can begin. Some because
they prefer to play originals (also 
like me), and tapes are far easier to
duplicate than disks. There are also 
people who own a C64 that they play 
some games on every now and then they
still don't even own a disk drive. So
yes, we can safely say that tapes are
still being used on CBM machines, at 
least the C64.

CF. What was the websites motivation

TRS. Not sure, really. It started out
like a small project that myself and 
a guy from Australia did. Our goal 
was to just dump our collections and 
share them with everyone, but at some
point, more people got involved and 
the archive kinda exploded. At one 
point it became too much for me to 
handle alone, so I let Peepo do the 
work for a while, and never really 
returned to it myself, sadly. Even if
the site is rather idle, I've not 
stopped working with tapes, so stay 
tuned...

CF. Is the site still active and 
currently maintained

TRS. It is not currently maintained, 
but all the content is still there 
and there's still lots of downloads. 
At some point, something might happen
but I don't want to say anything 
about what and when, because I do not
want to give out promises I don't 
know I will be able to keep. But 
there are plans, if it's of any 
comfort.

CF. I still prefer to load games via 
the tape format, as the suspense and 
loading music and title screen for me
add to the game, sometimes playing 
the game is actually an anticlimax 
would you like to comment

TRS. I totally agree. There are quite
a few games with rather cool loading 
tunes and/or loading gfx, but games 
themselves being utter crap. In some
cases, like Rambo, it's working out 
very well. The only annoying part 
with Rambo is that the game itself is
so short. But the loading tune and 
loading picture really builds up 
expectations nicely, and the game 
itself is very well made and looks 
good. Platoon is another game where 
it really adds to the game, not to 
mention some of the classics like 
Last Ninja 1 and 2. Last time I 
played Last Ninja 2 was from tape, 
and I really enjoyed it all.

CF. So some countries they just had 
disk drives and didn't bother with 
tapes, do you think they lost out or 
gained:-)

TRS. Being the tape lunatic I am, of 
course I think they lost out :) But 
I'm quite sure that these people 
think that WE were the real losers, 
people who had to wait for ages to 
load a game, and at the time while 
C64 was still hot, they were probably
right. Even if I fancied loading the 
few original games I owned myself 
back in the days, I'm quite sure I'd
happily trade that away for much 
faster loading. I got a disk drive in
1989, and I have to admit that I did 
not care much for tapes after that, 
until the nostalgia caught up with me
in the end of the 90s.

CF. How can people look after taped 
games

TRS. Store them in a room with no 
direct exposure to sun,and preferably
in a room where temperature doesn't 
vary too much. Sudden changes in 
temperature is very bad for tapes. A
cool and dry room is preferred, but 
not everyone has such a room 
available. In general, keep them away
from as much excessive heat,differing
temperatures and moisture as possible
and they will probably last for quite
some time still. I'm amazed to see 
that I have tapes from early 80s that
don't show any signs of wear or 
ageing at all.

CF. What is the best method to align
tape heads for perfect copies, and to
ensure the games still load correctly

TRS. By using a tool that displays 
the signals, such as Recorder Justage
Align by using a selection of 
different games from different 
publishers. When you have an 
alignment that reads them all good, 
there shouldn't be much problems. In 
some cases it may be very difficult 
to align the tape head to read both 
sides of a tape perfectly. This is 
probably not a defect, but something 
distributors did to improve the 
chances of loading side 2 if your 
cassette player was too misaligned to
read side 1. In case of aligning a 
deck for dumping, you should probably
check every tape for optimal results 
and do small adjustments if you can 
gain anything from it.

CF. I presume that motors wear out on
and the bands connecting the motors 
to the drive mechanism will wear out,
does this affect performance of the 
tapes

TRS. I'm not really sure. The only 
problems I've had myself is that 
heads are worn out and tapes that 
gets "stuck" because they're too 
moist, and motor isn't able to pull 
it. (A so called sticky tape will be 
slowed down by anything that touches 
it, and the heads will slow it down 
the most, sometimes even stop it 
completely).

CF. Also with the wear and tear does 
this make archiving difficult

TRS. What makes archiving difficult 
is mostly a tape that hasn't been 
cared for. Apart from that we haven't
run into many problems on wear and 
tear issues.Some tapes are more prone
to sucking up moisture though. I've 
seen this on many Gremlin Graphics 
tapes and some Ocean tapes. In many 
cases there are tricks to get the 
content dumped anyway, but sometimes
I've sadly had to give up.

CF. how long do you think tapes will
last before they degrade beyond use
 
TRS. To be honest I have Absolutely
 no idea. But if stored properly,
there is a fair chance that tapes may
actually outlive the hardware from 
what I've seen today.

CF. I guess archiving is important, 
is this the reason for the website

TRS. The reason for the website was 
basically because I wanted something 
to do and to organize my stuff, and 
because I also wanted to share my 
work with others.

CF. Is archiving the covers a goal of
the website

TRS. Maybe not so much for the site
in its current form, but scanning 
covers is an important part of 
archiving and will also be done, yes.

CF. Are all the TAP files on the 
website given from users or have you
compiled these yourself

TRS. All .tap-files on the site were
made by a small group of people. They
are all verified and cleaned by 
either me or Peepo. Nothing is 
collected from other websites.

CF. If our reader has a selection of 
Tape files how can he send them

TRS. He should make sure he has 
preferably two dumps of each tape 
side, then contact me at slc@c64.no.

CF. Do you know about the DC2N 
project and do you plan to archive 
tapes in this format as well as TAP 
files

TRS. I am very well aware of the 
DC2N-project, having one of the 
prototypes in action with excellent 
results so far. I have dumped about 
90% of my own tape collection with 
the DC2N, but even if I keep the 
DC2N-files, they will probably not be
spread. There's really no need for 
that, they are kept only as a raw 
source of the tape in case it should
be necessary one day, and uploaded to
c64tapes.org which is another tape 
project, but so far more focused on
archiving than downloads. A site 
absolutely worth taking a look at.

CF. What is the best maintenance to
perform on a Datasette

TRS. No idea. Fix it when it breaks 
down, and leave it alone when it's 
actually working =)

CF. How would you align the heads? 
can you explain this, and why you 
would need to do such a process

TRS. This is already answered to some
extent. The only real way to do this 
is by using an alignment tool, and 
it's needed whenever your cassette 
player starts choking on about any 
original you feed it with. Over time,
the head MIGHT drift a little, but if
it has never been tampered with 
chances are you won't need to now 
either. In case you do, use a proper
alignment tool that displays the 
signals graphically. There are really
no other good ways to do this.

CF. Because tapes were slow people
invented "fast loading systems" do 
you know how many of these systems 
exist and can you explain briefly how
they worked?

TRS. There must be hundreds of 
different systems out there, but many
are based on Paul Hughes' Freeload.
When Paul Hughes examined some of 
these Freeload-clones, he found that
they were line-by-line-identical with
his own work. For how they work... 
There are two reasons why the turbo 
loaders are so much faster than the 
standard ROM loader. The ROM loader 
isn't really as slow as it seems, but
all data is stored twice. In addition
to this, one byte is represented by 
20 pulses. One pair for each bit,then
one pair for a parity bit and one 
pair to decide if it's done loading,
or if there's more. So technically, 
all data is stored 4 times + some 
extra overhead. There's no wonder why
this loader is so slow. In addition,
turbo loaders usually has shorter 
pulses than the ROM loader (some have
longer, but still load faster). Turbo
loaders mostly also use two pulse 
lengths (one length for a 0-bit and 
the other length for a 1-bit). The 
standard ROM loader uses three 
different lengths. Some turbo loaders
also uses more than 3 pulse lengths,
but this is very very rare. This is a
HUGE topic, so I'm not going to go
into more details here.

CF. Utilities and information are 
listed on the website, about creating
tapes, do you think archiving is 
important

TRS. Absolutely. This is an important
piece of computer history, and 
everyone involved in this in one way 
or another is doing a really 
important job. We are at least trying
to do our best to create a archive 
for enthusiasts who DO appreciate 
this, and there are quite a few of 
them out there judging from the 
download statistics from tapes.c64.no

CF. Do you have any question you 
wished I had asked but didn`t

TRS. Not really, but I'd like an 
opportunity to thank all enthusiasts 
and people out there who has an 
interest in this. In fear of 
forgetting someone, I just want to 
also thank everyone I'm working with 
on various tape projects. I really 
appreciate the existence of this 
community and I'm very happy to be a 
part of it. 


 ====================================
 ====================================


THE BRAIN INNOVATIONS "MICRO IEC"
---------------------------------
(AKA: uIEC)
review by Larry Anderson
http://www.portcommodore.com/
Updated 09/16/2008 

SUMMARY
WOW! If you've been kicking yourself 
for not getting a CMD HD - you will 
be kicking yourself if you don't get 
a uIEC (even if you have a CMD HD), 
its compact, energy efficient, stores
a ton of stuff, silent, and cards/
drives can be plugged into a PC to 
transfer files without special 
programs, and it is very affordable -
just can't get much better than that.

MY PAST & LEADING UP TO THE UIEC
I have followed and/or bought the 
latest in C= storage, partly because 
I had ran a BBS for 15 of those years
Each time a 'better' drive came out 
that I could afford, I had to get it.
I remember the 1541 (big expense back
in 1984 for me) later I had a pair of
1541s replaced by the MSD-SD2 (a dual
drive, even had a PET IEEE-488 
interface!) then I jumped to a 1571 
with the extra storage capacity on 
one disk. One of the biggest jumps 
was to the 1581, a whole 800k on a 
disk! add into those RAM units such 
as the Commodore REU and RAMLink.Then
finally I though I had reached the 
pinnacle with a CMD-HardDdrive (My 
CMD 20 megabyte drive cost a whopping
$419 new back in '94) Problem with 
all those drives; was as I started 
using other systems for getting files
it was really hard to move data to 
and from those other systems to the 
64 BBS. Usually this involved 
'calling' the BBS or 64 w/terminal 
over modems or a null-modem 
connection from the Amiga, Mac or 
Linux computer and uploading the 
files, while it worked it was really 
darned slow and cumbersome and meant 
stringing extra wires here and there.

A few years ago non-volatile solid 
state storage started to come out, 
notably the Micro MMC, which had 
promise in that you could put files 
on the card directly from a PC, but 
unlike all the other drives did not 
offer a 'DOS' for the Commodore-64 to
easily access the files (just a 
specialized boot loader menu to 
launch game images 'ROMs') Not too 
useful if you have a BBS, or do other
work requiring storage on the 64. A 
little after that Jim Brain had 
announced his work on the uIEC, a 
device to use solid state Compact 
Flash cards on the 64 like you did 
with a hard drive on the CMD HD - 
meaning no need for special programs
in to the 64, plug-in to the IEC port
and go. The big news was the poss-
ibility to seamlessly access files on
the card on a PC as well, using the 
popular FAT file systems so popular 
with these cards. Thanks to our 
patience, support and Jim Brain's 
diligence a new contender, the uIEC 
is now a reality. Though there are 
now other similar storage devices: 
1541-III, Ultimate 1541, etc. Unlike 
those, this one is readily available 
in the US and the price is very 
reasonable, 

WHAT IS THE UIEC?
Generally speaking, it is a very 
compact disk drive for the C64, C128,
VIC-20, C16, Plus/4 with no moving 
parts and lots of storage capacity...
but it is way more versatile. 

There are two versions of the uIEC, 
one with just a compact flash card 
slot, and a larger one that also 
includes an IDE drive connector, The 
uIEC CF/IDE is the one I am using. 
The smaller uIEC CF does not have 
traditional IEC connector as it is 
intended for mounting/wiring inside a
commodore. 

HARDWARE FEATURES
- Compact size - the large CF/IDE 
  model is only a modest 3" x 2.5" - 
  About 4" long w/CF card inserted, 
  slightly larger than a C64 game 
 cartridge! 
- Uses 5v DC power - which can be 
  tapped from the C64 (this one was 
  provided with a cassette port 
  connector to get power) 
- Supports IDE Drives and Compact 
  Flash cards (uIEC supports IDE/IDE,
  IDE/CF, or CF/CF if you have an IDE
  ->CF adapter for the second card. 
  uIEC/CF supports single CF card) 
- One IEC serial port (Commodore 64 
  style disk interface) interfacing 
  for a 2nd port is provided, but not
  wired in. 
- 2 LEDs (power & activity) 
- 20 pin header for special switches 
  or other interfacing 
- Supports FAT12/16/32 partitions of 
  any legal size though support for 
  >137GB drives needs more testing.

SOFTWARE FEATURES
- Uses SD2IEC DOS which is a popular 
  DOS for a number of solid state 
  drives for the Commodore (MMC2IEC, 
  SD2IEC, and uIEC). 
- Stores data on the card using the 
  popular FAT file system (no special
  format all CF cards are already 
  formatted for this),this also means
  data on the CF is readily 
  accessible on a PC without any 
  special access software. 
- The uIEC DOS can access files on 
  the card directly or through many 
  popular disk/image formats (i.e. it
  can use a .d64 image as if it were 
  converted to a disk) others include
  P00. 
- Support for some popular fast 
  loaders Turbo Disk, Final Cartridge
  III, JiffyDOS) and at least plays 
  well with many others like Action 
  Replay and doesn't seem to crash 
  when using Super Snapshot, but it 
  doesn't speedload either) 
- Files/disk images can be stored 
  into sub directories so you can 
  organize your content if you have 
  lots of stuff. 
- Pretty easy use and navigation when
 using a DOS wedge (like JiffyDOS' @ 
  commands) 
- Supports FAT Long filenames 
- Transparent support for PRG/SEQ/USR
  file extensions, with REL support 
  planned. 
- Supports partition-less cards/ 
  drives, or up to 4 primary 
  partitions or 3 primary and 12 
  extended partitions. 
  (Email Jim if you have more than 
  12 extended partitions on a drive.)
- Supports read / write of D64 images
- Block level disk access supported 
  on D64 images 
- Most CBM DOS commands (Scratch, 
  Initialize, Rename, etc.) supported
- CBM general config commands (U0, U+
  , U-, UI, U9, U:, UJ) supported. 
- CBM block level commands (B-R, B-W,
  UA, U1, U2, UB) supported when in 
  D64 image. 
- CMD-style partition ($=P) support 
- CMD-style subdirectory (MD,CD,RD) 
  support. 
- CMD DOS Commands (G-P, G-[shift-P])
  support. 
- Long form CMD directories ($=T:*, 
  $=T:*=L) supported 
- 1581-style/CMD-FD/HD-style wildcard
  matching supported ($:JIM*RAIN) 
- JiffyDOS fast loader equipped (PAL 
  and NTSC support). Can be enabled 
  or disabled via DOS command. 

Transparent support for P00/S00/U00 
files, with R00 support planned. 

Pricing for the unit are (shipping 
additional):
uIEC : $75.00 - the CF/IDE model 
(unit reviewed here) plus shipping
uIEC/CF: $50.00 - the CF only model 
(intended for internal C64 mounting) 
http://www.jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/
uIEC?page=1 
see # 1882, 1880, & 1875 Production 
just starting so there may be a 
waiting list. From: Brain Innovations
in Iowa Email for availability/order 
details: brain [at] jbrain.com 

APPEARANCE & HOOKING UP
The unit is a tidy little package, a 
PCB with just a few tiny circuits on 
it - very easy to handle (you can 
readily grasp the long edges of the 
board wile plugging and unplugging 
the card and cables. There are four 
screw mounting holes on the edges 
With the IEC connector it may be a 
tight fit in the 64, the standard 
(v1) model will not have the IDE 
connector which makes it quite 
smaller and is better suited for 
internal mounting in a 64. Being 
fresh connectors the fit is tight, so
one must be careful plugging and 
unplugging the serial cable. Also the
guides on the CF slot can lead you 
off when inserting the card (this is 
where making a case with a good CF 
guide could help. 

For starters I use my PC to put a few
files on the CF card, some D64's, a 
couple zipped d64s, and some .prg 
files (straight to the file system - 
not inside an image), and a few 
folders as well. Plugging in the 
cassette connector was a tad tough it
was just a cassette connector without
housing (using a couple 6/32" machine
screws made it easier to grip without
bothering the wire.) My unit had a 
connector different then the final 
version Jim is going to produce so 
those should be easier to handle. If 
you have an SX64 or want to mount the
uIEC inside a c64 case you could tap 
power from other points (like the 
joystick port) 

POWER ON
At first I though something was wrong
after I turned on the machine, the 
LEDs lit and it did nothing, commands
didn't work - after a couple checks I
discovered the boot process is a bit 
longer then I imagined, about 30 
seconds, this is an issue with using
a CF card, which Jim is working to 
resolve. Though during this time it 
is so eerily silent, and so small 
something you have to get used to no
squeak of the 1541 or whine of the HD
spinning. 

Software Updates
Another part of the bootup is 
checking for a EEPROM update file, 
unlike many devices uIEC is flash-
upgradable so if there are some bug 
fixes or improvements, the device can
be updated without a trip back to the
factory or buying a replacement. 

OPERATION
Initially I discovered the unit was 
using device 10,so I at first was 
only able to play with single file 
programs or ones that were load 
device aware... After reading the 
documentation 
http://snowcat.de/cgi-bin
/gitweb.cgip=sd2iec.git;a=blob;
f=README;hb=HEAD 

I found how to set the device number 
and save the settings in the uIEC so 
I could use it as device 8. (more on 
that later) Listing directories went 
as expected LOAD"$",8 (or @$ for DOS 
wedge users.) displayed the contents 
of the card at the root level loading
up one of the PRG files was quick, 
and JiffyDOS just works so far.Refer-
ring to the documentation enter sub 
directories or mounting .D64 files 
uses the CD command, i.e. (without 
a wedge) 

OPEN 15,8,15,
"CD:GAMEDISK.D64":close15

or for people using a wedge: 
@CD:GAMEDISK.D64

gets you into the GAMEDISK.64 image, 
there it then looks like you are in 
the 1541. To get back out of an image
or back a directory (without 
resetting the 64 & the unit) is done 
by doing CD with a left-arrow symbol 
(<- Above the CONTROL key on the 
64/128). 

@CD:<- (left arrow symbol) 

Resetting the computer returns the 
uIEC to power-on state which is 
normally the root directory of the 
card. You can also set up partitions
on your CF or hard disk and use the 
CMD style partition commands (CP) to
jump between partitions. Running 
single files works without a hitch, 
game disks without software fast-
loaders also work fine. programs with
fastloaders (stereo sidplayer 10 for 
example) need to have the fastloader 
disabled or bypassed (this may be 
near impossible for some programs 
without acquiring a cracked version).
note: this result is pretty much the 
norm on non-Commodore 1541 drives. 
Using some cracked single disk games 
was also rewarding. One program I 
usually have fits with loading,Editor
Assembler, also worked fine with uiec

One note: 
when you are not in a d64 image, in 
the FAT file system, upper and lower 
case letters are treated as the same 
thing unlike Commodore DOS (My game, 
MYGAME, and my game, would all be 
thought of as the same file) which 
can be a convenience (to load files 
without having to deal with case 
issues) or an unexpected annoyance 
(if there is a need for similar file 
names with difference cases - though 
I don't think I've run into any mys-
elf) In d64 mode the file case sens-
itivity operates as expected. 

But What About Multiple Disk Games?
Yes! you can work with multiple disk 
images without having to go back to
BASIC. You will need to have a disk
change button or two connected to 
the uiec (there are pins assigned for
that on the board: 15 and 16 of 
connector 1, for forward and back, 
connect the other lead of each 
momentary-on switch to pin 1) First,
after copying the disk images into 
the card or drive, you make a file 
called a "swap list" which is a text 
file containing just a list of the 
image file names (and paths) you need
in the "set" (example a swaplist file
called PACGUYLIST or whatever you 
wish to name it) the file includes 
these lines representing the names of
the disk files in the disk set: 

PACGUYDISK1.D64
PACGUYDISK2.D64
PACGUYDISK3.D64

Then instead of CDing to the first 
d64, you issue the command: 

@XS;PACGUYLIST

This command opens the file and 
automatically selects the first disk
image on the list. Once you have the
game going and it asks for the next
disk you push your diskchange switch
and uiec queues up the next on the 
list (or previous if you have a 
'back' switch) If you go to the end 
of the disk list it starts again at
the beginning and visa versa. 

TRYING OUT UIEC WITH IDE DISK DRIVE
On the CF/IDE version, besides the CF
slot there is a header to plug in a 
PC drive. CMD HD the drives used SCSI
interfaced hard disks which can be
troublesome to locate a replacement.
On the uIEC the hard drive interface
is IDE (aka ATA, not serial ATA). If
you do use a hard drive you will need
to use a separate power supply to 
power the drive. You can get a simple
USB to IDE kit which includes a comp-
atible power pack pretty reasonably 
on eBay, this is what I used for my 
testing, or if you get a big external
USB drive enclosure you could put the
uIEC in it along with the drive. (and
not use the USB part of the unit) I 
quickly formatted and set up an old 
drive with some d64s on the PC and 
then went to the 64. Hooking up the 
drive you need to make sure the red 
line on the cable is at pin 1 of the 
pins on the uIEC (there is no plastic
guide on the circuit board like PC 
motherboards have, but it does 
indicate pin 1 on the PCB text.)After
that plug in the drive power and turn
on the 64, and very quickly the uIEC 
is ready! Only a second or two of 
wait at most instead of 30 with CF, 
sure seems a bit zippier, but also a 
lot more bulk with that big drive 
(relatively) and cables to deal with.
Attempting to use the IDE and the CF 
at the same time only resulted in 
drive errors (should work, will have 
to check, maybe it's a master/slave 
select issue?) From Jim Brain's 
Posting you should be able to use two
hard drives (master slave, like on 
the PC) Some of the planned expansion
for the IDE part is uIEC support for 
reading CD-ROMs which will be very 
nice. 

A LITTLE BIT ON CONFIGURATION
As mentioned you may at times need to
set uIEC as device 8 so you can load 
some d64 images of games OK.To get to
device 8 you use the command (in 
BASIC): 
OPEN 15,8,15,"u0>"+CHR$(8):CLOSE 15 
- To set to 8; this is similar to how
you do a soft device change on the 
1571 or later drive. to save the 
device settings it so it remembers 
when reset (and other settings you 
may wish), just enter: @XW now every 
time it powers up it will start with 
the settings you want. Pretty darn 
easy and no programs needed. Though I
found it took a couple tries to get 
the settings to catch. But once they 
were set everything works as expected

MORE TECHNICAL EXPLORATION
Some of this is more a sysop view of 
the uIEC, so bear with me if you get 
lost, this is for the other techies 
and Sysops out there. 

DRIVE IDENTIFICATION
When trying CMD's Fcopy, the uIEC is 
identified as a 1541, thus keeping 
Fcopy from accessing partitions or 
subdirectories. Jim is working on the
best way to provide compatibility 
with such tools. 

PARTITIONS AND SUB DIRECTORIES
Partition navigation works like a CMD
in that if you partition the drive 
the partitions are 'drives' to the 
device, partition 0 is the current 
partition, etc. Currently there is no
partitioning software for the uIEC on
the C64, you can use PC utilities to 
do the job presently. A C64 partit-
ioner/formatter is in development. 
One thing I never got into was subd-
irectories on my CMD Drive, and from
what Jim reported they work similar 
on the uIEC. To move things in and 
out of disk image file you need to be
'in' the image but you then you can 
access outside files; but only if 
they are from a separate partition. 
There is work on making access of 
image contents more flexible but it 
is a whole lot better then just 
access only within an image. This 
could make development of a C64 based
.d64 image utility much easier! 15 
channels can be opened at the same 
time. So no problem opening multiple 
files.

NATIVE MODE
The "Native mode" of the drive is the
FAT file system which technically is 
different than what many are used to 
with 1541s and CMD drives. Part of 
which is in native mode you don't 
have that 16MB content size limit. 
But then again, you don't have tracks
and sectors not in an image, so disk 
editors, directory editors, and util-
ities that may rely on direct access 
to disk blocks will fail in native 
spaces (Lynx is an example) For util-
ities that rely on such access you 
can use disk images. Also being FAT 
it goes by FAT file naming convention
which means letters are not case 
sensitive and the characters / \ ? : 
, are in the list of no-no characters
in native mode file names, of all 
those I think / would be the most 
common. Someone informed me that 
there is a file extension mode called
x00 mode which should allow for using
all the characters in Commodore file 
names, to initiate you would use the 
command @XE2, I haven't tried out 
this mode yet. Relative file support
in native mode is operational but in
alpha as it has not been tested in 
length as of yet. As more BBS guys 
get their hands on these I'm sure 
they will put them through the paces.

GEOS SUPPORT
I don't use GEOS/Wheels/Wings so I 
can't really comment on those. From 
what Jim said he needs help from a 
GEOS guru to figure out the GEOS fast
loader to make it compatible. 

REALLY TECHNICAL
For more information or to help with 
the open source sd2iec DOS refer to 
the sd2iec project home page. 
http://snowcat.de/cgi-bin
/gitweb.cgi?p=sd2iec.git;a=summary

CONCLUSIONS
Overall WOW! This is the best thing 
I've seen since the CMD HD,plug it in
and it works - no special software, 
minimal conflicts.But even way better
as it works "cross-platform" its 
conveniently small, and very affor-
dable. For sysops, I think it is 
generally OK and getting better (
unless you don't already have mass-
storage, then it's really good), at 
present it would make a great U/D, 
text file and/or programs drive(s), 
Though the lack of some of those 
characters (which may not be an issue
see "NATIVE MODE" above) in the file 
name will be an issue to resolve on 
some BBSs (i.e. Image BBS uses / in 
some of its system and program files)
so you may have to do some BASIC 
updates to the system and implement 
a message/group/UD name filter to 
reach compatibility. Lastly REL file 
usability will be a factor if it is 
to become a total BBS drive (at least 
for the BBSs that rely on REL files.).

Detractions
- The 30 second start up when using 
  CF cards - this should be fixed 
  soon to just a second or two. 
- The cassette/power wire is a 
  necessary thing, though I wish it 
  weren't 

Always Room for Improvement
None of these would keep me from 
recommending anyone to get the uIEC, 
but these could make it better (at 
least to me): 

- A utilities disk it would be great 
to have a 64 program to formant and/
or partition CF cards and hard drives
- A menu/navigation program - so you
  can quickly navigate all the 
  directories you will have on this 
  thing, it's is something that 
  someone who got a UIEC is probably 
  is working on right now. 
- A "swap 8 button" to quickly 
  (temporarily) swap a device 8 drive
  with whatever device # the uIEC is 
  at the push of a button (I use that
  feature a lot on the CMD HD) 
- A two IEC port version ( with the 
  5V lead I need to keep it close to 
  the 64 or route an IEC cable back 
  from the other drives and end the 
  chain with the uIEC, a ready made 
  IEC pass-through port would be nice
  in the next version. 
- An LCD readout (not really 
  necessary, but it would boost up 
  the cool factor, or better yet if 
  you could navigate directories 
  using it... that's probably asking 
  for too much at that price point 
  though...) 

ADDENDUM: 
Jim Brain has announced there is 
going to be an even smaller version 
(!) of the uIEC CF, using an SD card 
instead of a compact flash. This will
be replacing the UIEC CF version. 
Thanks to these people for 
corrections: Ingo Korb Greg King

COMMODORE FREE 
I would like to thank Larry for 
Permission to reprint his review; 
an updated version can be found 
here http://
www.portcommodore.com/uiecreview.php


 ====================================
 ====================================

In the Beginning 11
--------------------
By Lord Ronin from Q-Link

 Having gone through how we make more
than a one sprite active, there is a
bit more to it than we have covered 
last session. We will move ahead to 
some vague things for me, then back 
to multiple sprites. As well as 
fixing the problem of our sprite not 
going all the way across the screen.

 Down to line #12 from our programme.
The line Says poke 2042,13. Right we 
know poke is put something into the 
computer. 2042 is a location. Looking
back at that chart, the one that goes
from 2040 to 2047, for the 8 sprite 
memory locations. We can see that 
2042 is the number for sprite #2.That
part is pretty easy, I lose it at the
next part. That ,13 part. The manual
says "13th area of memory." and 
continues with the information that a
sprite takes up 63 sections of memory
Said just about that way. Yeah I get 
lost here. OK it helps a little bit 
with the following.As they talk about
doing all of that three series adding
up stuff to make the data for the 
sprite. 21 rows, three series each 
row is 63. Got that part figured out.
What's next is that each one of those
series. I mean the 128 64 32 16 8 4 2
1 series on each row is 1 byte of
computer memory. therefore each row 
is 3 bytes of computer memory. So an 
entire sprite is 63 bytes of computer
memory. Impressive that we can do so 
much with so little space. Even at 
this lamer beginner wanna-be level of
a novice. Thought that the,13 part 
was the section under the registers 
in the last instalment. Where the 
book says 2-15 are the pairs for 
sprites 1-7. But 13 doesn't fit any 
pairing for sprite #2. Can't help 
you, my members or myself on this 
part.

 line 20, we have a for and next loop
In that we have 0-62, remember 0 
starts so there is really 63 units.
hmmm that is the same number of 
things you put in those data 
statements. 63 for the amount of 
numbers inserted in the data 
statement, 63 for the bytes of memory
used for a sprite. Here too we have 
the read q part. Read is the command 
to go look at the data. Going out on 
a limb here in my understanding. Q 
then would be a variable for that 
information, as the next part of the 
like poke 832+n,Q. Fits as a 63 time 
around variable that is read and 
poked into the memory of the machine.
Again the book says this loop is 
poked into the 13th block of memory. 
Starting at location 832. Again I 
have no idea of this 13th block and 
why or how they picked location 832. 
Only that it works in the lessons 
here.

 line 40 we are pokeing v+4,x and at 
line 50 we are poking v+5,x. That 4 
is the controller for sprite 2 in the
X co-ordinate. While the 5 is the 
same for the same sprite save that it
is the Y coordinate. Doesn't make too
much sense by itself. Remember though
we have line 30 which is the for X = 
0 to 200. Add that value of X to both
the +4 and the +5. Then there will be
a replacement across and down the 
screen. Making the diagonal movement.
Trick here is that it is moving so 
fast, since the data is being read 
fast and the computer runs fast. You 
see the balloon float diagonally 
across the screen, this is the same 
sort of trick used for years to make
animation. Show, move, show again, 
Just do it so fast the eye doesn't 
see the changes.

 Well there is a note to look at the 
back of the book for the list of the 
registers.All 46 are listed with some
very minor explanations to them, that
isn't a part of this series but
personally maybe that is where some 
of the raster stuff is done and where
the controls for a light pen can be 
accessed. As they are listed in that 
area as are several sprite things,and
yes that 23 and 29 part from last 
instalment is right for what they do 
with a sprite.

 We may have the greatest PC ever 
 created. But we can't do multiple 
 objects in one memory section, So 
 each sprite has its own 2 sets of 
 memory sections to make it and to 
 move it on the screen. Now they want
 you to try the following. Add this 
 line to the programme...

25 pOv+23,4:pOv+29,4: rem expand

 Run the program and your balloon 
just got taller and wider by around
twice as much. Right that 23 makes 
it taller and the 29 makes it wider,
ok and the 4 is still playing around
with the 2nd sprite. Play a bit with
just pokeing one or the other. But 
leave one of them out. See what your
balloon looks like now. <groans are 
accepted at the sight> Note too that
it still starts from the same section
of the screen. Next they want you to 
modify some lines...

11 pOv+21,12
12 pO2042,13:pO2043,13
30 forx=1to190
45 pOv+6,x
55 pOv+7,190-x

..... Oh sorry I jacked out for a 
little bit and did a few of the type 
in things for this part....

 The extra lines above did some 
changes, like line 45 and line 55,you
note that line 11 changed the ,4 to a
,12. As we talked about earlier this 
will mean that sprite 2 and sprite 3 
are now activated. Line 12 adds a new
poke command, and that is 2043,13. 
Looking back on the charts, the one
for the sprite locations. 2043 is the
number for sprite #3. I'm still at a
loss on the,13 and where and why they
use find and use it.

 Off of that rant for a moment and 
back to line 30 there is a change in
the writing of the for part. Instead 
of 0 to 200 it is now 1 to 190. Not 
sure why this is done. But it works 
on the screen.

 At line 45 we poke in v+6,x. Line 55
we poke in v+7,190-x. That 6 & 7 must
be or the new sprite. But we have a 
reverse of something here. 190-x is 
gonna make it do what?

 Run the newly modified program and
lets see what happens, what I had was
a cyan big balloon going as it had 
before. now a little purple one is 
going in sort of the opposite direc-
tion,bottom left corner of the screen
to the top right. OK we have two 
sprites moving on the screen at two 
sizes in two directions. Time to 
complicate things even more.

11 pO v+21,28
12 pO2042,13:pO2043,13:pO2044,13
25 pOv+23,12:pOv+29,12
48 pOv+8,x
58 pOv+9,100

Before you run this one, I'll lay 
odds that you can see we have added 
another sprite to the mix. You should
see that in line 11 with the higher 
number,you will also see that in line
12 there is a third poke for another 
sprite location. This is going to be 
a balloon because of that ,13.This is
obtaining the information from the 
same location as the other two 
sprites. At line 25 we do something a
little different, we poke the 
expansion codes into two of the 
balloon sprites.Seeing that it is the
same number of 12,that means it is 
the 4 and the 8 values, or sprites 2 
& 3. 48 is a similar line, to what we
have seen before, this line controls 
the horizontal direction. Line 58 is 
close to what we have seen before, 
understanding that the 9 will deal 
with this sprites vertical movement,
hmm no variable or negative number 
here, What happens in this program?

 Give it a run, you should see the 
balloon as before on the screen,
except that both of those two 
balloons are now bigger. The third 
sprite, is also another balloon and 
is coloured green, this sprite went 
directly across the screen as far as 
it could. That may be what that line 
58 is supposed to make it do?

 "Additional Notes on Sprites" is the
next part of the book, there are 
questions, not all of them raised 
are covered above.

 Starting off is changing the colour
of the sprite, repeating the command 
of v=53248 as the way to set the 
video. We are told that to change the
colour of our first sprite, or 
"sprite 1" to type in pokev+40,13 to 
make the sprite a light green, That 
40 is the register code,for sprite #1
The only problem is, that we haven't 
turned on sprite #1 in our program. 
Next part of the ,13 is the light 
green colour,so for your experiments,
a refresher. 39-46 is for sprite 
colour 0-7. Pokeing v+40 is the 
register number for the sprite #1. If
that was a poke v+39 it would be for 
sprite #0. 41 for sprite #2. 42 = 
sprite #3, 43 = sprite # 4, 44 = 
sprite #5, 45 = sprite #6 and finally
46 = sprite #7.

 There are charts that will tell you 
the number between 0 and 15 for the 
colours, the easiest way to remember 
that in this part of programming. We 
start at the colours listed on the 
keys, though not all models have the 
second set of colours listed. Black 
is 1 on the keys so remember control 
and 1 to change to black for text and
the cursor, as well as in print 
statements? Well here we start with 1
on the keys, but in programming we 
start at 0. So Black = 0. Light Grey
is the 16th colour. Since we started
at Black as 0 then Light Grey, the 
last colour number would be 15, 
simply stated; just subtract one from
the key readings, so the white key is
number 2, this would be 1 in the code
list, Cyan is 4 on the key and ther-
efore 3 in the code. Yellow is 8 on 
the key, so it is 7 in the code.Takes
a little bit of time to be comfort-
able with this trick,I still at times
have to do a count and subtract one, 
When I deal with the second set of 
colours; The ones that we get with 
the C= key.

 Next they tell us that we may have 
noticed that the sprite didn't go 
all the way to the way to the right 
hand side of the screen. Yeah we did
see that one, the reason for this is
that our value for that specific 
register is the maximum that it can 
be, 255. While the screen is 320, 
they say dots for their illustration 
of a 320 dot wide screen and 255 dots
for the direction.

 We know it can move across the 
screen, as we have seen it in 
programmes. How is it done then? Back
to that registers and description 
chart; register 16 is the Most 
Significant Bit <MSB> and it appears 
that it is for the X or horizontal 
coordinate. What we do is poke the 
value of the sprite into the memory 
at this position of 16, doing that 
for sprite #2, it would read pokev+
16,4. That will take it past the 255
location on the screen and move it 
from 256 to the 320 location.

 We will have the programme in just a
moment, What I want to present at 
this point is the fact that there are
only 64 spaces on the horizontal that
the sprite needs to move all the way 
across the screen. Keeping that in 
mind, lets do the programme. First 
off this program is only for one 
balloon. Pretty much keep just the 
DATA statements from your previous 
balloon work, Kill off the other 
lines and then type in the following.

10 v=53248:pOv+21,4:pO2042,13
20 forn=0to62:readq:poke832+n,q:next
25 pOv+5,100
30 forx=0to255
40 pOv+4,x
50 next
60 pOv+16,4
70 forx=0to63
80 pOv+4,x
90 next
100 pOv+16,0
110 goto30

 Right then, we have new and old 
stuff in here, so let's take a look 
at the lines.

 Line 10 is a tad bit different,sure 
we have the turn on the chip with the
variable v, then followed by the 
turning on the sprite and the sprite 
being the 2nd one <value of 4 
remember>. Next we poke into the 
sprite our data values. What is new 
then? Well you have used all those 
commands on one line. Using that : 
symbol to separate different commands
on one line, rather than write a mess
of separate code lines.

line or 20. Has that part that reads 
all 63 parts of the sprite,doing that
0 to 62 bit for Q with the READ 
command. Line 25 has the "Y" co-
ordinate for the sprite, here we see 
a 100 rather than the previous "X". 
Line 30 has the "X" But see that it 
is 0-255, line 40 we have the semi 
familiar poke for the second sprite 
and the horizontal coordinate. Note 
that it is "X" and that is generated 
in line 30 for 0 to 255.

 Pretty much what we have done 
already, line 50 is a next and must 
be for that for in line 30. line 60 
we have something new, pokev+16,4. 
That one is for making the MSB or 
Most Significant Bit trip. Poked that
into the v variable and that, 4 is 
the value for the second sprite, the 
one that has been working for us 
through out the prg. 

Line 70 is the rest of what we read 
about just a little bit ago, Here we 
have for x = 0 to 63. That is the 
next 64 spaces on the screen to make 
it go all the way to the right hand 
side of the screen.

OK but we have to tell the sprite to 
do that, and that is done in line 80.
Where we have pokev+4,x. Same as line
40. But here the x variable is the 0 
to 63. See how that works? First the 
x variable is the 0 to 255, and then 
it becomes the 0 to 63. This takes us
the rest of the way across the screen

Final part of that piece is line 90. 
Where we have the next for the for-
next loop. Since there isn't any 
variable in use past the x one, there
isn't a need to tell the for next 
loop to do a next x.Computer has that
as implied, we didn't give it any 
other variable to work with at that 
time.

 New at line 100, looks kind of fami-
liar, here we poke v+16,0. Well we 
got the poke part and the v variable 
part, just started to understand the 
+16 part. You remember turning on the
MSB. What the frell does that 0 mean?
A big nothing? Sort of, remember back
a bit when we were doing the chart 
stuff.Like the sprite drawings? There
it was a 1 meant something was there 
or turned on, while a 0 meant that 
there was nothing there or turned off
on this line that 0 means that we are
turning off that MSB part of the 
sprite. That allows the whole thing 
to start over again, with line 110 in
the goto command.

 I have a bit of a problem unders-
tanding the next part, perhaps I
missed something or I am just too 
literal. But here is what they say in
regards to defining multiple sprites,
we may need additional blocks for the
sprite data, OK I can follow that 
part. As I suspect that this is the 
beginning of how to have more than 8 
sprites. Remember that 8 are all that
can be active at one time; you can 
have others in the "wings" waiting to
be used though. They then tell us 
that we can use some of the "Basic's 
RAM by moving Basic, before typing or
loading your programme type:" Get to 
that in a moment. I have heard about 
moving Basic for things like new 
fonts and the like, I don't know how 
it is done and have not done this 
myself, I needed to clarify that 
before the code line of...

POKE44,16:POKE16*256,0:NEW

 This sets up to use blocks 32 
through 41, these are memory 
locations 2048 through 4095, "To 
store sprite data." Right 64 bytes 
for each sprite, I am not sure of the
block part or the 1044 memory 
locations that exist in the above. 
Suffice that it works and gives you 
more areas for your sprites. You may 
remember that 2040 is the memory for 
sprite 0, making sprite 8 at 2047, 
this starts one off at the spot right
after sprite #8. Anyway feel free to 
play with some of the numbers in the 
program above and see what happens.

 In a recent lesson, we played with 
the colour of the balloon, placement 
on the screen and the speed of its 
movement; we also made some inter-
esting effects. 

 I Must tell you that I tried to gain
the information on the vague parts I 
mentioned above, I found the infor-
mation on that 832 part and the 13th 
block of memory, all in the Progr-
ammers Reference Guide. Editorial 
comment time: Great book, but not for
the rank beginner, there is tonnes of
information, and it's Not written at 
the level of the users manual. Good 
book to have a copy of in some form 
though, But the book assumes a bit 
more comprehension than we have at 
the moment. I Barely grasp the 
concepts presented on the 832. Just 
to say that is the place to put the 
first sprite you use, they then go up
by 64 for the different parts. Don't 
try it now though. Sprite #4 causes a
problem in screen location, now that
13 for the 13th block of memory. Not 
real up on it, but can say that if 
you have a second sprite, and here I 
mean a different one than the other`s
You would use the 14th block of 
memory and so forth. Not the scope to
do that in the users manual or in 
this series, in attempting to explain
the higher level of sprites, Besides 
I have to learn more as well.

 Add at this point sprites are more 
than we have seen here in the series 
and the user's book; I haven't talked
about controlling them with the 
joystick or keyboard, nor anything 
about multicolour sprites. I haven't 
even talked about multicolour custom 
fonts either, none of that is in the 
users manual. I point it out now to 
show you there is a vast amount more 
to learn and to play with on the C= 
than presented here.

 Now back to the book and their 
beginnings on binary math.We actually
have been doing some of this without 
knowing it with those charts for the 
balloon and sprite locations, that on
and off part. Well we aren't going to
spend a lot of time on this part; I 
had it and failed it in college.First
we have some terms to explain; well 
the book starts out that way in this 
area. BIT is the smallest part of 
information that the computer can 
store, basically something is there 
or not, the on/off thing. If there is
something there, the value is 1. If 
it is empty then the value is 0.Right
like those chart things earlier for 
the sprite creation and location 
stuff. The book goes into a BYTE next
this is a series of BITS, since we 
are an 8 bit machine; A BYTE for us 
is composed of 8 bits. Hmm wasn't the
number of slots in that sprite row, 
and say isn't that the same amount of
sprites that can be on the screen 
active?

 OK now I have to add some i
nformation that isn't in the book, 
because you may have heard the terms 
in regards to the C= in the past. 
NIBBLE, isn't in the book, the term 
comes from crackers and hackers, so I
was told by some of them. NIBBLE is 4
BITS, yeah half a BYTE. This is one 
of the early copy systems, called a 
nibbler. Sorry we had it before the 
Futurama show, but then again Matt 
tosses in a lot of C=64 things in 
that show. Back on topic; You may 
find in your disk collection that you
have a tool called a "nibble copy" or
a "nibbler", That will copy a disk at
4 bits at a time, this Broke early 
copy protection.

 Another word that you have heard in 
here in the early part, and will see 
on your disks, is a BLOCK. Commodore 
measures things in BLOCKS, as I said 
before. We have been doing things 
with bits most recently; I wanted to 
let you know that these measurements 
of block and bits/bytes will be 
tossed around a lot, and Used by 
users, programmers, coders, manufact-
urers and more. Gets real confusing 
at times, when they start tossing out
KiloBytes, Bytes and blocks; For the 
record a C= block is a 256 bit unit. 
Roughly 4 of them will make 1 kilobyt

 Saying all of that trivia, here is 
your next thing to play upon; On the 
regular screen, save the balloon 
stuff if you wish, I want you to do 
some simple math problems. We are 
going to raise a number, What I want 
you to do is type in ...

? 2^0 <and then press return>

 Now then just cursor up and over the
0 and change it to a 1, then a 2 a 3 
a 4 a 5 a 6 and finally a 7. You will
see that it goes the same 1 through 
128 values we have dealt with before.
I just think that this is easier than
making the chart in the book to show 
you the same smegging thing. Now 
there is a program to type in and I 
strongly suggest that you save this 
one.

5 rem binary to decimal converter
10 input"enter 8-bit binary number;
";a$
12 iflen(a$)<>8then?"8 bits please...
":goto10
15 tl=0:c=0
20 forx=8to1step-1:c=c+1
30 tl=tl+val(mid$(a$,c,1))*2^(x-1)
40 nextx
50 ?a$;"binary ";" = ";tl;"decimal"
60 goto10

 Line 30 is the one that most of the 
group here, self included, frell up. 
Forgetting to do )) after the 1 and 
before the *. The programme will take
an 8 character binary number, like 
11111111 and tell you what the 
decimal value of it is, and for here 
it is 255. There are a couple new 
commands in this one that are lightly
discussed in the book, VAL is for 
VALue, Gives us the actual value of 
the character as a numeric form. MID$
also called "mid-string", and takes a
look at each character in the string,
from left to right. C variable in 
that string in line 30 tells the 
program what character to work upon 
as the program goes through the loop
There is a lot more to the usage of 
these two new commands. Not all that 
needed for this level of underst-
anding. Last part of that line raises
the number to a power of 2. That x-1 
just keeps it in track, Starting off 
at 2^7 and each time through the loop
dropping by one, till it reaches 2^0.
Locale group lesson is to count on 
this thing from 0 to 255, in decimal,
by typing the binary values, sounds 
tough I know; and it took me two 
hours the first time, however there 
is a pattern. If you have that chart 
at hand, the one that starts at the 
left with 128 and ends with 1 on the 
right, You can see the pattern a lot 
faster.

 Page 79 starts on sound creating, 
the book ends at 103, starting all 
the appendices. Lot to cover and we 
aren't going to make it at all; No 
reason too either. If you have fol-
lowed through to this to this point, 
you understand that there is a lot 
more to programming than we can cover
in these instalments'.Just for Basic,
let's not mention other forms of 
programming languages. You may have 
also thought that you are not inter-
ested in programming; in either case 
there are other sources than just my 
lame drivel. I'll try to remember to 
talk on that in the last part.

 Sound is not a something that I am 
not comfortable with at this time. 
Not because I can't read music to 
some degree, no because there is a 
lot of complicated things here for 
the beginner; and the fact that not 
all of the 64 user manual examples 
work on the later SID chip, Like this
128Dcr I am using.
 
What I am going to do is lay out some
type in things that did work on this 
C=PC. Leaving off a lot of explan-
ations and just having you see that 
you can make sounds on the system. 
Big books cover this topic better 
than I or this manual can/did.

 Like I said earlier on, and for 
sprites as well; there are progra-
mming tools that will do this work 
for you. One I did was just put the 
note on the staff and select the 
musical instrument, sound effects 
may be a bit harder for games, or not
The book tells us about the ADSR; The
Attack Delay Sustain and Release of 
the sound, the waveform control and 
hi/lo frequency. First three settings
are generally done just once for the 
programme, Hi/Lo is done for each 
note and waveform is the start and 
stop for each note. That said, the 
first type in thing in the book 
failed on the 64c and on the 128Dcr 
in 64 mode: But the next one worked, 
and they did some additives for diff-
erent sounds in the instructions, OK 
type in the following... without my 
comments

5 rem musical scale
7 forl=54272to54296:pOl,0:next
10 pO54296,15 
<that sets the volume to the 
highest level of 15>
20 pO54277,9 
<sets the attack & decay>
30 pO54276,17 
<determines the waveform, or 
type of sound>
40 fort=1to300:next 
<duration of the sound>
50 reada 
<reads first number in data 
statement on line 110>
60 readb 
<reads 2nd number in data statement 
on line 110>
70 ifb=-1thenend 
<turns off at value in line 900>
80 pO54273,a:pO54272,b 
<pokes first data number as the hi 
frequency and 2nd number as lo 
frequency>
85 pO54276,17 <starts the note>
90 fort=1to250:next:pO54276,16 
<play and stop the note>
95 fort=1to50:next <release time>
100 goto20 <loops back for new note>
110 data17,37,19,63,21,154,22,227 
<musical note vales, listed in book>
120 data25,177,28,214,32,94,34,175 
<Each of these pairs is one note>
900 data-1,-1 
<turns off hi/lo and ends the prg>

 Not a great explanation. They take a
few pages to explain things, run the 
program and you should hear an 8 note
musical scale. Once tired of that, 
change line 85 to read pO54276,33 and
90 to fort=1to250:next:pO54276,32. 
Youll get a sort of harpsichord sound

 This is just one of the three voices
and a couple of the different 
waveforms that can be used. Scare 
you now with the added information 
that there are those that have added 
a second SID chip, or a cart and do 
this in Stereo. Most popular music 
player for the c= 64 is the Stereo 
SID player, OK one last one that 
worked, A sound effect to try out. 
For a gun shot

10v=54296:w=54276:a=54277:h=54273
:l=54272
20 forx=15to0step-1:pOv,x:pOw,129
:pOa,15:pOh,40:pOl,200:next
30 pOw,0:pOa,0

Continued Next Month

     
 ===================================
 ===================================


interviews Sean McManus 
-----------------------
creator of a new novel 
involving the Commodore 64
http://www.sean.co.uk/index.shtm

Commodore 64 co-stars in music 
industry novel

The Commodore 64 co-stars in a 
thrilling new novel that satirises 
the music industry. ‘University of 
Death` by Sean McManus reveals what 
happens when a major record label 
builds a program that creates and 
markets perfect pop songs, tailored 
for each listener`s taste. At the 
heart of the system is a Commodore 
64 churning out random melodies.

Commodore Free
Free Please introduce yourself

Sean McManus
I'm a writer and keen retrogamer, 
based in London. I've just published 
my first novel, University of Death, 
which is all about the plight of the 
music industry and is named after the
band at the centre of the story. The 
book explores how fans relate to 
their favourite bands, how businesses
use technology to manipulate 
consumers, and what would happen if 
the music industry disappeared 
overnight.

The story has a cast of famous people
in cameo roles, and a special guest 
role for the humble Commodore 64!

CF. How does the Commodore fit in?

SMM. In the story, there's a computer
program that's inventing random bands
including their music. A major record
label is using spyware hidden on fans
computers to sell them this fake 
music. When I started writing the 
book, that idea seemed far-fetched, 
but then Sony BMG was caught putting 
anti-piracy software onto Celine Dion
CDs that was classified as malware. 
All of a sudden,that bit of the story
didn't seem quite so unlikely.

Anyway, in the middle of this 
fictional-bands system is a Commodore
64 that has been churning out random 
melodies for twenty years. There were
a couple of reasons for choosing to 
put a Commodore there, and not 
something more modern. One was that 
using a Commodore 64 meant that one 
man with no particular IT expertise 
could keep it running without any 
hassle. Today, you'd need a team of 
consultants and a big pot of money to
create even the simplest original 
software, which would make it hard to
keep the whole scam secret. 

The other reason was that I just 
liked the aesthetics of the Commodore
I know I have an emotional response 
to classic machines from the 80s, 
which it's difficult to have with 
anything post-Windows. I'm guessing 
others feel the same the Commodore 
is a style icon.

The Commodore is also widely 
respected for its music capabilities.
As it turns out, that didn't matter 
for my story the machine in my book 
doesn't make a sound itself but it 
was easier to believe that someone 
from a record company had been amazed
at the synth-like sounds of a 
Commodore, than it was of a Spectrum 
or Amstrad. And that this had sparked
the whole dastardly plan.

CF. What was your first machine?

SMM. Well, speaking of Commodores,the 
first machine I owned was an emulator
I grew up with Amstrads, and came 
across Commodores mainly through 
friends. We'd play Commodore classics
like Yie Ar Kung Fu, Wizball (which 
was only good on the Commodore, 
really) and Beach Head (which 
features in my story). I remember 
friends showing me the latest demos 
as well the Commodore had a really 
lively demo scene, with the music 
being particularly impressive.There's
still a great Commodore music scene 
today I went to a Back in Time event 
last year and it was the maddest and 
greatest thing I'd seen all those 
people dancing to the music from I-
Ball.

CF. What machines do you have today?

SMM. Today, I've got a couple of 
Amstrads, a couple of Spectrums and 
the C64 TV game joystick. That is a 
superb invention it's a shame it's 
been discontinued. It would have been
nice to see more games get a new 
lease of life that way. I also come 
across new games through online 
emulators from time to time, 
including Lazy Jones which I played 
online after reading a story in Retro
Gamer about it.

CF. Tell us about your contribution 
to Commodore Format magazine?

SMM. As the 8-bit scene was winding 
down, I did have an opportunity for a
fleeting moment of Commodore glory 
when I wrote a review of a new 
emulator for Commodore Format 
magazine. At the time, I was writing 
type-ins and tutorials for Amstrad 
Action and Amstrad Computer User 
magazine and I came across a 
Commodore emulator. It was at a time 
before emulators were popular. Most 
people who cared were probably still 
playing the real thing, and it was 
too early for nostalgia to kick in.

The internet wasn't widely available,
but you used to have shareware cafes 
in Germany where I was living at the 
time.You'd pay to copy a floppy worth
of software from their vast shareware
archive.That's where I found this C64
emulator, which ran in DOS on my 386 
laptop. I pitched a review to the 
editor of Commodore Format and it 
became one of my earliest published 
freelance articles. 

CF. Will there be a follow-up to this
book?

SMM. Highly unlikely. The story as it
stands is well-rounded and has a 
beginning, middle and an end. It 
doesn't really need a sequel. I've 
been thinking about another aspect of
popular culture I'd like to explore 
in a book though, so there might be a
completely different novel at some 
stage in the future.It took two years
to write this one, though, so I need 
to muster the energy and gather all 
the ideas I need first.

CF. Where can people find out more?

SMM. You can download the first two 
chapters of 'University of Death' at 
my website at www.sean.co.uk. The 
Commodore doesn't enter the story 
until a bit later, but it gives a 
good flavour of the tone and intr-
oduces the main characters. There's 
also more information on what 
inspired the book, and reviews from 
magazines like Record Collector and 
Metal Hammer on the site. The book's 
only available at www.lulu.com, and 
you can find the direct ordering 
links easily through my site. Thank 
you for your interest!


 ==================================
 ==================================


On the Road 
-----------
the Commodore Scene meeting 2008 
and a visit to AmigaKit

by Robert Bernardo, 
Fresno Commodore User Group, 
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Another long-distance trip through 
England in June this time from 
Haywards Heath in southern England to
Birmingham in the middle England and
from there to Preston in northern 
England in order to attend the 
Commodore Scene meeting. Fortunately,
there was a direct train from 
Haywards Heath to Birmingham, and so,
I did not have to go through London,
thus saving me time and trouble. It 
was on a high-speed,modern train with
electrical ports at every pair of 
seats and food service in the centre 
car. The 3+ hour trip was not so bad,
since it brought me past countryside 
I had not seen since 1995. There was 
the green, rolling countryside of 
Oxfordshire zooming past the windows,
the canal boats plying their way in 
the canals, the quaint farmhouses and
villages laying in the distance, the
sky glowing blue and intermittently 
cloudy.

I arrived into Birmingham at about 
1 p.m., too early for MicroMart 
newspaper writer Shaun Bebbington to 
come and pick me up; he was still at 
work in the town of Crewe. When I got
to the well-policed train station, I 
made my way up and out into the 
shopping centre, the Pavilion. I 
picked up a sandwich from the Marks &
Spencer Simply Food store and walked 
around the quite enormous mall. Going
outside, I found myself on New Street
a pedestrian street which ran through
the city centre directly to the 
photogenic Victoria Square and its 
regal buildings and imposing statues.

Photos of the square, stamps from the
nearby post office, 35mm film from 
the Tesco store, and I still had many
hours to kill before Shaun would see
me at 7 p.m.. Hey, how about a movie?
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
in the Odeon Theatre. I telephoned
Shaun and told him my plans. Hauling 
my luggage up and down the steps of 
the theatre, I planted myself in a 
great position to see the movie.After
my enduring half an hour of commer-
cials and previews, the movie started
Movie review 3 out of 4 stars!

Because of the half hour of commer-
cials and previews, the movie ended 
later than what I expected, and Shaun
was already waiting outside the 
theatre for me. We took the bus and 
then walked the rest of the way to 
his girlfriend's house, the place 
where I would spend the night. Lisa, 
who was ill with stomach problems, 
did not at first meet me when we 
arrived. Shaun and I went to the 
nearby convenience market to buy 
medicine for Lisa and frozen pizzas 
for all of us. Later that night, Lisa
joined us in conversation about 
travel which invariably wandered off
and on to Commodore computer talk.

The next day Shaun and I took an 
early morning train out of Birmingham
and toward Preston. The one-hour ride
brought us to the larger- than-
expected Preston train station and to
Commodore Free editor Nigel Parker 
who was waiting for us. After a few 
minutes, Commodore Scene's Allan 
Bairstow drove up in his Chrysler 
minivan, and all of us piled in for 
the drive to Nigel's house, which was
quite some way from town.

At Nigel's house, we met his wife, 
Suzanne, and his young son, Robert. 
After a quick tour of the modern 
premises (what a kitchen! Hey, an 
exercise room!), we men then trundled
up the steep stairs to the loft 
office. It barely fit all four of us 
sitting down, so crowded was it with 
hardware and software plus goods 
ready for eBay sales.

I passed out Ghiradelli chocolates 
from San Francisco. The meeting ran 
for many hours, four to five hours as
I recall. Though Allan had to leave 
after the first hour, we merrily 
carried on. The talk was wide and 
varied. We covered such things as 
Allan redoing his garage and thus his
C= goods, the Maurice Randall 
situation, my video of California 
Commodore and Amiga clubs, my video 
of 1541 Ultimate creator Gideon 
Zweijtzer, the Behr-Bonz VIC-20 Mult-
icart (a PAL one which I gifted to 
Shaun), various solid state card 
solutions such as the MMC2IEC, MMC64,
MMC64-Retro Replay; clones of the FD-
2000 and SuperCPU, the U.K's Dave 
Elliott and his former C= hardware, 
Commodore Gaming and Commodore Int'l.
the U.K. scene including a new U.K. 
C= club,(EDITOR now officially named
Commodore Computer Club U.K.) and C64
noters such as Noterwriter (because 
Nigel wanted to run a presentation at
work and did not want to use 
Powerpoint on a PC). (EDITOR I am 
still on the look out for a "power-
point" style application for the C64 
not to bothered about graphics or 
sound but text in different sizes and
fades from one page to the next with
the press of the space bar or similar
to advance to the next slide) 

To keep up our energy, Suzanne was 
kind enough to bring us sandwiches 
and tea.

The last hour or so was spent in the 
back garden, out of the hot and 
stuffy loft. We watched as Nigel's 
young son played, and talk continued 
over such subjects as the C64 DTV and
Jeri Ellsworth. Early evening and it 
was time for the drive back to the 
train station.

Another night at Lisa's house. She 
had made a fine salmon dinner, and 
afterwards, I talked to her curious 
teenage son, Kristien, about life in 
California. Hans Dussel of the HCC 
Commodore in the Netherlands had 
given me many DVDs filled with .pdf's
of European Commodore magazines; I 
spent much of that night trying to 
make copies of those for Shaun.

In the morning, Shaun gave me a 
carrier bag in which to carry my 
goods, including an early PAL VIC-20 
which he had gotten out of storage. 
Then he brought me back to the ever-
busy Birmingham train station. Travel
hint we discovered that it was 
cheaper to buy multi- legged tickets
(from town to town to town) from 
Birmingham to Cardiff instead of one 
single ticket. It was a long but 
scenic ride to Cardiff for what was 
to be a brief 4-5 hour meeting with 
Matthew Leaman of Amigakit.com

I had never visited Cardiff, my last 
time in Wales being in 1995. As the 
train travelled nearer to that desti-
nation city, we passengers gazed out 
over the wide Severn estuary that led
there. The weather was cloudy with 
areas of drizzle.I counted the cities
in great anticipation of my arrival 
in Cardiff. Finally, the train pulled
into Cardiff Central, a small station
in comparison to that of Birmingham.

The signs greeted me in English and 
in Welsh. I pulled out my travel 
mobile phone and called Matthew. He 
would be over right away and told me 
to meet him at a parking lot to the 
side of the station. When I got out, 
I was thrown for a loop. Which side 
parking lot? There were several. I 
waited in one for about 25 minutes. 
No Matthew. I called again. He rep-
eated that it was a side parking lot.
I went to another side parking lot. 
After waiting some more, I called him
again and described the nearby landm-
arks to him. He didn't recognize 
those landmarks. I went back to the 
original side lot and waited. Another
call and more description of the lan-
dmarks. Finally, to my relief he appe
ared and mentioned that this was not 
the side lot that he was thinking of.

Nevertheless, it was good to see him,
our last meeting being at the AmiWest
Show 2007. He drove to Cardiff Bay 
area. He was going to treat me to 
lunch, and we walked through a shop-
ping mall in search of a good resta-
urant. Finding nothing there, we 
walked out onto the plaza itself. The
weather had cleared up a bit, and the
sun was shining through broken clouds
a wind blowing from the Irish Sea.

As we walked, he proudly pointed to 
several signs which had familiar-
looking television actors and 
remarked, Cardiff, the home of Doctor
Who. He pointed out the Cardiff opera
house, used as background for a 
Doctor Who episode of a few years ago
Surprised, I told him I remembered 
that episode and the surrounding 
plaza that was used in the episode. 
After looking at a few restaurants 
that faced the sea, we decided on an 
upscale pizza restaurant. Waiters in 
uniform welcomed us into the bright, 
cheery, modern restaurant a sign that
this place was going to charge the 
big bucks (or should I say the big 
pounds).

Matthew and I talked of many things 
the Commodore and Amiga clubs in the 
U.S., my travels around Europe, his 
AmigaKit business, and future Amiga 
products. The pizza came a large 
combination for me (or at least the 
closest the restaurant could come to 
a combination and it still wasn't 
gigantic American-style). Between 
bites of pizza and downing drinks, we
happily conversed.

We could have stayed longer, but time
was running out;I had to make my late
afternoon train. It was off to 
AmigaKit, and I discovered it was in 
an industrial park. Matthew led me 
through the hallowed doors of his 
establishment and into the main 
reception area of the office. There I
found his jolly assistant,Dave Markey
who I had previously met at AmiWest. 
He was very glad to see me, and it 
was good seeing my instant friend. 
The reception area was bare, save for
a desk for Matthew to do his 
accounting and several Amigas that 
had been sent in for repair or 
upgrade. The more interesting area 
was the back room; here Dave had a 
couple of workbenches on which the 
computers would be repaired /upgraded
He was working on an A4000 desktop 
with PPC board, its innards flowing 
out. Spare parts used in repairs were
stacked on the floor to the side of 
the workbenches.

However, those two rooms were not all
In the grand tour of the offices, 
Matthew led me to the warehouse, a 
giant room across the hall. Behind 
its dark-colored door was treasure!

Amiga hardware and software... more 
and more... some piled in neat stacks
others on shelves. Boxes of unopened
 new AmigaTech A1200s stacked to the 
 ceiling. Boxed games. All kinds of 
 adapters and cables. Used hardware 
 and software. CDTV controllers 
 (over 3,000!). Even Commodore 64 
 software that Matthew obtained from 
 the defunct High Street Micro in 
 Crewe. Matthew offered it all, and 
 it was so tempting. I had to steel 
 myself. My mission was to get a new,
 formatted hard drive for one of my 
 A1200s, a package of AmigaOS 2.1, 
 and for friends, one or two NTSC 
 CD-32s. No, not the solid state hard
 drive. No, not a new tower to 
 replace a ramshackle A1200 tower I
had. I had to consider that the 
things I bought must fit in my 
suitcases for the airline journey 
home.

O.K., an 80-gig two-and-half inch 
IDE hard drive for the A1200 first. 
Matthew got cracking to it. He was 
going to format and install OS 3.9 
on it. Meanwhile, I wandered around, 
looking at the hardware on the work-
benches, talking to Dave, and taking 
photos and video of the areas I was 
permitted to record.

Prepping the 80-gig drive took some 
time, and my train deadline was 
coming up. I asked Matthew about the 
NTSC CD-32. He showed me a big box 
with unwrapped CD-32s jumbled inside 
haphazardly. There were 4 big boxes 
with a total of over 300 CD-32s. They
had come from the CBM warehouse in 
the Philippines.

Oh, so this is where those last 
CD-32s ended up, I said.

Matthew cautioned me, Only one out 
of thirty is NTSC.

Uh-oh. With so little time left, 
Matthew couldn't test a whole slew 
of CD-32s. I reached into the box 
and drew out what I hoped would be 
the lucky NTSC one. He took it over 
to a workbench and hooked it up. 
After a few minutes, he gave me the 
bad news; it was PAL. asked him about
AmigaOS 2.1;he didn't have it readily
available. No time to look for it. I 
grabbed the drive, an empty box for 
the AmigaOne board I obtained a few 
days earlier, and an unusual, new-in-
box Sega SG Fighter joystick unusual 
in that it seemed very similar to a 
flight joystick. I paid for the 
goodies with the good, old Visa 
credit card. Then Matthew and I 
rushed out of his establishment in 
our dash for the train station.

Traffic seemed slower on the way back
I had missed the train which would 
take me through Reading and to my 
destination of Haywards Heath. I had 
to take the next train which took the
longer route through London. I would 
have to change trains, and then I 
would catch a southbound one to 
Haywards Heath.

There was a traffic jam at the train 
station. Finally, Matthew edged his 
car in, he helped me unload my cases 
and bought goodies,and we shook hands

I'll see you at AmiWest, Matthew, I 
said. He promised to bring the Amiga
OS 2.1 with him. Then waving good-bye
I walked into the station to await my
train.

......END....
www.commodorefree.com

