    ***************************
    * Commodore Free magazine *
    ***************************
       www.commodorefree.com
     Issue 27 Volume 3 Issue 2
         Released FEB 2008

EDITORIAL
--------
Commodore Computer Club U.K. held its
2nd official meeting & my goodness was
it a meeting,for the readers who didnt
attend this momentous event you were
sadly missed; more importantly you
missed a meeting & a part of history.
Attendance was better than the first
meeting (with only 3 attendees) a
total of 7 Commodore Computer Club
Members turned up for the event.

To find out more about the meeting &
what went on you need to read the
CCCUK articles in this issue: 3 views
of the meeting.

Please remember Commodore Free is just
that FREE, I have been approached to
sponsor events, in fact 2 but I don't
have any money as this is a Free
magazine, moreover as there haven't
been any donations lately the website
has been running "out of pocket". The
Good news though is Commodore Computer
Club U.K. (CCCUK) has an official bank
account, yes really we do have an
account & can take  cheques. The club
is officially open & once again
welcoming members

The CCCUK PayPal account has proved a
little difficult to setup but is in
process of being completed, however as
I am treasurer you can send member-
ship funds to me at C=Free & I will
transfer them to the clubs official
bank account. Of course CCCUK is a
'not for profit' organisation with the
funds used to hold events & fund
further hardware & software projects.

I also hope to add to Commodore Free
magazine a list of items for sale,
these will be sold with the profits
going to the CCCUKC. If you have an
item of hardware or software you would
like to donate to the club feel free
to contact me & we can see if it is
possible to collect the item for sale
or reuse in the club. At further
meetings we will have spare machines
setup for demos so users don't have to
drag their machines with them if they
feel or indeed don't have transport-
ation to do this.

I wish I could tell you about some of
the great projects we have lined up 
in the CCCUK but as no members read
this magazine I can't, so you will
need to join up, I can tell you we
will be having some Official Commodore
Computer Club polo-shirts made. These
will be priced at 13 GBP for non-
members. Of course it makes sense to
be a member to wear one & if you're a
member then you will get a discount.

The CCCUK website forum is however
open to all & you are free to join us
for the chats, normally held on Sunday
at 8:30 GMT of course we chat about
Commodore as well as the weather & how
X or Y did on strictly come dancing. I
think its mostly about Commodore
related items though, remember please
these are friendly chats no "pistols
at dawn" & no hitting below the belt.

I wish I could say the Official
Commodore Computer shop is online
however we are still working with a
solution to this as members receive
discounts, we don't want anyone to
pose as a member, enter a "borrowed"
membership & take the discount, I know
we are all honest and wouldn't do that
but it makes sense to put the
provision in place.

For myself it looks as though there
may be an end to my suffering of back
problems, I am now seeing an osteopath
& so far the problems are subsiding
the pain has eased, & I have more
freedom of movement. I am still look-
king forward to a day when the pain
finally goes & I can concentrate on
working, keeping fit & Commodore
computer activities.

I am still trying to put together an
issue about CP/M and have been cont-
acted by a member of the CP/M members
in Germany & other CP/M users with
some history, I have one particular
user who has written a couple of pages
about CP/M but I still would like more
about how Commodore ties in with this
history. If you are a CBM CP/M user
reading this I would love to hear from
you, the forums seem alive at the
moment with CP/M questions but no one
seems to want to write anything about
Commodore & CP/M.

Comments from readers have been a
little thin lately so all are welcome

Regards,

Nigelp2k
www.commodorefree.com
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.

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

NEWS 
===== 

FMV (Full Motion Video) 
------------------------
Written by Mathias "AmiDog" 
Roslund 
http://www.amidog.com/c64/fmv/ 

Converter: 
8bit greyscale input frames are 
cropped and or scaled to 80x48 pixels
These frames are split into tiles of 
4x4 pixels and a simple histogram 
approach is used to select the 256 of
the most frequently used ones while 
trying to avoid picking two very 
similar ones. During the second pass,
mean square error is used to pick one
of the 256 tiles for each and every 
tile in the frames. This results in 
frames of 20x12 tiles (240 bytes). 

Packer: 
The packer will try to compress each 
frame using a set of possible 
compression methods and will select 
one that gives the best compression. 
All methods are currently lossless, 
but that may change. 

Currently supported methods: 
-No compression (1 type) 
-RLE (1 type) 
-Delta (3 types) 

Player: 
The player uses the dream load loader
system. The player currently only 
works on 1541 drives though, sorry 
about that. The player will start by 
loading the charset (tiles) and will 
then start pre-buffering The buffer 
used is 16KB (64 sectors).The displ-
aying and decoding is handled by an 
interrupt and a new image is displ-
ayed and decoded every second frame, 
giving an output of 25fps.In case the
buffer runs empty, the player will 
wait for it to be filled to 1/4 (4KB)
before playback continues. 

Full screen playback: 
If the fire button (port 2) is being 
pressed when playback starts (i.e. 
when the pre-buffering is done), the 
animation will be scaled to full 
screen while playing. 

The player was developed using 
dreamass and VICE, but has also been 
tested on a real C64 with 1541C disk 
drive. 

Example animation: 

The famous lion_seul.mpg animation 
(1600 frames, 320x240 pixels) has 
been converted (cropped to 320x192 
pixels and scaled to 80x48 pixels) to
1601 tile based frames of 20x12 tiles
each (a black frame has been added to
the end of the animation). The raw 
data (1601*240 = 384240 bytes) has 
been compressed to 81642 bytes using 
RLE(9 frames) and Delta (1592 frames)
compression. This gives an average of
about 51 bytes/frame, which seems to 
be about the limit of 1541 streaming 
using the current loader and 
compression methods, especially when 
using the full screen mode. 

Future: 
-Lossy delta compression 
-Faster loader allowing higher byte 
rates 
-Some kind of dithering 
-Lower frame rate but higher 
resolution 
-Lower frame rate but more colours 

// Mathias "AmiDog" Roslund, 2008 


High Voltage SID Collection:Update#49
------------------------------------
Date: November 09, 2008 

Resulting Version: 49 
Previous Version: 48 

Hello fellow lover of SID music! 
Nice you found some time to read 
through this script, to see what has 
been changed in the HVSC and for 

what reason. After this update, the 
collection should contain 36,081 SID 
files! 

This update features (all 
approximates): 
-1059 new SIDs 
-54 fixed/better rips 
-2 fixes of PlaySID/Sidplay1 specific
SIDs 
-10 repeats/bad rips eliminated 
-431 SID credit fixes 
-232 SID model/clock infos 
-9 tunes from /DEMOS/UNKNOWN/ 
identified 
-40 tunes moved out of /DEMOS/ to 
their composers' directories 
-14 tunes moved out of /GAMES/ to 
their composers' directories 

Download HVSC Update #49 from the 
usual address: 
http://www.hvsc.c64.org/ 


HardSID 4U has been released 
-----------------------------
The HardSID 4U is the most powerful 
SID synthesizer since the legendary 
C64! 

Features: 
-Two CPUs and main memory 
-USB connection (compatible with 
both 2.0 & 1.1) 
-Isochronous USB endpoint for low-
latency audio 
-VSTi interface with 8000Hz update 
rate on all SID registers (free) 
-Wave-in VSTi pin for routing 
8000Hz signals to any registers 
(example: playing other VSTi's sound 
on the volume register) 
-Full automation of all VSTi 
parameters 
-Superior sound quality (..it is a 
HardSID!) 
-Support for up to four SID chips 
(6581/8580/6582 in any combination) 
-Updateable firmware over USB 
-Microsoft Vista compatible (drivers 
for Win2000/XP/Vista) 

..and if you're a C64 fan: 
-Cycle-accurate playback of your 
favourite SID tunes 
-Digitized sound + high-speed 
playback with low CPU utilization 
-Seamless playback of.sid tunes while
you work on your PC by providing a 
huge playback buffer for non-VSTi 
applications 

The HardSID 4U Studio Edition: 
-Full physical separation of the SIDs
from the USB driven circuits 
-100% elimination of EMI 
(Electromagnetic interference) noise 
that may come from your PC via USB 

http://www.hardsid.com/ 

Hi! 

We're celebrating the 10 Year 
Anniversary of the HardSID project 
this year. We couldn't be happier, so 
we decided to give everyone our best 
special offer ever: 

HardSID 4U for only 199 EUR instead 
of 299 EUR! 
http://www.hardsid.com/order.php 

Regards, 
The HardSID Team 
http://www.hardsid.com 


SIDPLAY 4.0 has been released 
-----------------------------
SIDPLAY 4.0 is a Commodore 64 
music player for Mac OS. It emulates
the sound chip and other internals of
the Commodore 64 home computer to 
play back Sid. This is the biggest 
version of SIDPLAY yet, and has been 
completely rewritten from scratch, 

designed as the ultimate SID music 
player for the best operating system.


SIDPLAY 4 boldly goes where no 
other SID music player has gone 
before. 
-Requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, 
runs on PowerPC and Intel-based 
Macs. 
-Support for HardSID and Catweasel 
cards is not included in this version


Check for the list of new features at
http://www.sidmusic.org/sidplay/mac/ 


ACID 64 Player 2.4.0 released
----------------------------- 
ACID 64 player is a cycle based 
Commodore 64 music player designed 
for playing SID tunes on sound cards 
and devices that have a real SID chip
on board. A new version of ACID 64 
Player has been released with the 
following improvements: 

-Emulation improvements 
-STIL info can now be retrieved for a
SID file if it is not played from the
default HVSC location 
-When HardSID 4U device is turned 
off while ACID 64 Player is running 
and turned on again, playback can 
continue after song restart 
-Opening SID files via Internet 
Explorer is now possible. This makes 
it possible to play SID tunes via the
online SID search of 
www.hardsid.com. 

http://www.acid64.com/ 


Digital Talk #84 released 
--------------------------
The new issue of Digital Talk #84 has
been released, for German readers. 
You can find the issue here 

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/
?id =72913 


Remember is back with a new disk 
--------------------------------
After a long break, Remember are back
with more disk releases. The disk 
features 5 new releases (one is an 
unofficial release) and 2 re-releases.

New releases are (374-377): 
-Archipelago 
-Gaplus 
-Blueprint 
-Amazon Warrior. 

Re-releases are: 
-The Master Of Magic (15) -some 
bugs removed. 
-California Games (125) -sound bug 
removed and one-sided. 
-Unofficial release is Micro Painter. 

http://www.allgamebase.info/rem/_Re 
m_Nov08/REM_Nov08.zip 


Psytronik Software ON DISK 
--------------------------
At long last the Psytronik Software 
releases are now available on disk. 
Each Psytronik deluxe disk edition is
packaged in a box that features full 
colour artwork -specially designed to
look great in your retro collection! 
The floppy disk is presented in a 
full-colour glossy disk-sleeve 
complete with colour label. Instruct-
ions for each game are also included 
on a separate instruction sheet. 

Psytronik Software in association 
with www.infinitelives.tv is 
extremely proud to present MAYHEM IN 
MONSTERLAND -the incredible cartoon 
platform classic from Apex Computer 
Productions!! To celebrate 

the 15th anniversary since Mayhem 
was unleashed into Monsterland we've 
teamed up with Apex in order to 
present you with this special 
anniversary edition of Mayhem In 
Monsterland (Deluxe Edition) PREORDER
[C64 Disk]oe12.99 
anniversary release of the stunning 
C64 game. 


Commodore Plus4 JAVA emulator 
-----------------------------
The Commodore Plus4 JAVA 
emulator has been updated. You can 
get it from here 
http://minus4.plus4.net 

"what's new.." 
-Updated rendering engine ported from
Minus4w, should handle more cases. 
-Updated CPU processing ported from 
Minus4w. More games should run. 
-Fix a crash in the CPU processing. 
-Changed the colours to what Yape 
uses (much nicer) 
-Added FLASH attribute, so things 
now...flash. (Manic Miner keys, Monty
pick-ups etc.) 
-Fixed the rendering frame skip -it 
was always skipping at least 1 frame
Fixed the overflow flag (V) on the 
ADC instruction. -Mercenary now 
works! 
-Added the new "joy" parameter 
-Fixed commando -added several 
undocumented NOP codes. 
-SOME vertical scrolling games work. 
-FPS locking Timer works properly 
-Frame skip is now much better and 
helps when screen is scaled. 

Plus/4 (c64) Ultimate 264 Map 

Ultimate 264 Map -This is the 
Ultimate Map from SVS. This Excel 
file contains the complete OS ROM of 
the Plus/4 (and C16), a large TED 
Registers list, graphic plans of all 
allowed text and graphic modes, and a
table of Plus/4 bugs. This Microsoft 
Excel file can be also be opened with
Open Office without problems and is 
available from here 
http://plus4world.powweb.com/tools/U 
ltimate_Map 


64Copy v4.4 released 
--------------------
(Peter Schepers) has released 64Copy 
v4.4. The update has been worked on 
for over a year,Peter thought that he
had fixed enough small bugs and 
added enough enhancements to 
warrant a final, non-beta, release. 

The basic goodness is thus: 
-6502 Disassembler fixes 
-HTML HELP file 
-CRT module extraction 
-Many other small enhancements 

Download it from here 
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/DOW
NLOAD/64COPY44.ZIP 


Commodore 64 Wikipedia 
----------------------
http://commodore64.wikispaces.com/ 
Welcome to the Commodore 
Programming Wikispace. 

Here you will find titbits of 
programming info on the Commodore 
64 and 128 computers. 

Purpose 
The goal is to provide an easy to use
reference for various programming 
topics. 

Much attention lately has been given 
to new hardware devices, with actual 
software development fading away. 

The goal of this wiki is to reignite 
interest in actually writing programs
for these machines. 


Enforcer 2 preview released 
---------------------------
Enforcer 2 Level 2 Preview 
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/get
internal file.php/68893/Enforcer 2 
Level 2 Preview.zip 

Enforcer 2 Level 2 Preview 
It still contains 1-2 bugs and might 
judder sometimes, but otherwise the 
level is like 98% finished. Only the 
final boss can not be killed yet.This
preview is looking amazing and is 
totally playable, Personally I feel 
the game is less confusing than Metal
Dust as the foreground and back 
ground are easier to pick out, I am 
sure the hate mail will flood into my
inbox now 


VICE 2.1 released. 
-----------------
VICE is the Versatile Commodore 
Emulator, it emulates the Commodore 
C64, C128, VIC20, PET, PLUS4 and 
the CBM-II, as well as the C64 DTV, 
and it runs on Win32, Mac OS X, 
Unix, DOS, RiscOS, OS/2, BeOS, 
QNX, SkyOS, AmigaOS and GP2X 
systems. VICE is *free* software 
released under the GNU General 
Public License, and as such it comes 
with full source code. 

Most important changes since the last
version include: 

* Changes in VICE 2.1 
** General 

-The VICEplus project has been 
joined with VICE. Thus, x64dtv is now
part of VICE. 
-We can be contacted via IRC:#vicedev
on freenode 
-Added a more accurate ReSID engine 
using floating point math (ReSID-FP).
-Added support for the USB HardSID. 
-PAL emulation has been rewritten 
and optimized. 
-Fixed the ACIA 6551 emulation. 
(x64/x128/xcbm2/xpet/xplus4) 
-Monitor commands help text is now 
translated too (in ports where 
translation is available at all) 
-Monitor IO command now displays 
IO area even if its currently banked 
out. 
-GCR file handling (.G64) issues an 
error message if the .G64 does not 
have the expected structure. Before, 
VICE just silently ignored such files
-IRQ handling fix 

** C64/C128 changes 

-Fixed the digimax sound generation. 
-Added the RR clock port disable 
functionality at $DF00.0. Allows to 
disable the RRnet. 
-Improved REU compatibility and 
timing. 

** C64 changes 

-Added isepic cartridge emulation. 
-Added Double Quick Brown Box 
cartridge emulation. 

** VIC20 changes 

-Improved the sound emulation. 
-Fixed the lowest note bug. 
-Improved VIC emulation (exact in-
line colour/reverse mode changes). 

** C64DTV changes 

-New emulator. 

** Unix changes 

-XRandR full screen implemented 
-Command line option `-full screen'is
supposed to do something useful. 
-Vsync code imported from win32 
(based on openGL extension). see 
also doc/openGLsync-howto.txt. 
-Vidmode (full screen support) is 
broken and therefore marked as 
deprecated. It will be removed in the
next release if no-one takes 
responsibility to fix the broken code
and is willing to maintain the code. 
-PAL Emulation (new 
implementation, improved speed) 
should be usable again (it was broken
on certain display depths). 
-Log messages are always English. 
-Only x11 keymaps will be installed 
when doing a 'make install'. 
-MIDI cartridge emulation for x128, 
x64 and xvic. 

** MS-Windows changes 

-Watcom generated executables are 
more optimized. 
-MIDI cartridge emulation for x128, 
x64 and xvic. 
-When specifying the target for the 
RS232 communication (Menu 
Settings/RS232 Settings), the target 
can be specified by name now. Before,
you had to use the IP address. 
-Fixed some minor errors with the 
RS232 communication via TCP 
connections. 
-RS232 can use real devices now, too.
To use this feature, you have to 
specify the COM port used in Settings
/RS232 Settings like: \\.\com1: 
baud=57600 parity=N data=8 stop=1 

The characters after the colon can be
used to specify additional settings 
for the COM port.The string must have
the same form as the mode command's 
command-line arguments: 
[baud=b][parity=p][data=d][stop=s][to
={on|off}][xon={on|off}][odsr={on|off
}][octs={on|off}][dtr={on|off|hs}][
rts= {on|off|hs|tg}] [idsr={on|off}] 

The above example specifies COM1 
with a baud rate of 57600, no parity,
8 data bits and 1 stop bit. 

Note that the leading \\.\ is used to
distinguish between TCP/IP targets 
and real devices, thus, you have to 
use it. 
(Sorry, no fancy UI yet.) 

-vsid GUI reworked: 

* infoline appears only by pressing 
"I" 
* raises process priority. Otherwise,
when in background, 
looses CPU power and music is not 
played at correct speed 

* drag & drop support; window also 
gets focus back on drop 
* correct display of emulated sid 
model (when using -keepenv) 
* changed colours 
-fixed copy function from the VICE 
monitor window. 

** AmigaOS changes 

** OS/2 changes 

-Fixed 24/32bit display depth 
problem. 

** GP2X changes 

-Fixed black screen problem. 
-Pause emulation while the menu is 
open. 
-Added experimental support for USB 
keyboard and joystick. 
-Removed vsid. 

** Mac OS X changes 

-x64a.app and x64dtv.app (Cocoa) are 
now feature complete 

* added flip lists 
* added netplay dialog 
* added ROM resources 
* added video settings dialog 
* added record snapshot dialog 
-Introduced new control window that 
replaces old peripherals drawer 

* with tape control buttons 
* attach/eject buttons for each drive
* drag & drop of disk/tape images 
-Introduced Cocoa compile for Mac 
OS X 10.5 and greater with more 
features (see extended Resource 
Inspector) 
-Completely rewritten joystick driver
that supports user-definable buttons 
for fire and all directions. 
-Copy & Paste support for emulator 
and monitor/log window 
-Added x2, x3,x4 view scaling like in
QuickTime Player 
-Store visibility and size of all 
windows in user's preferences 
-Added Keyset Joystick toggle to 
quickly disable keyboard joysticks 
-Added MIDI support 

For more information check out the 
VICE home page at: 
http://www.viceteam.org/ 

At the time this was written the VICE
home page was not updated yet, rest 
assured that it will be updated soon.
In the meantime, please use 

http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ 

The VICE team. 


Commodore 128 Basic 7.0 One Liner 
Competition 
---------------------------------
http://landover.noip.
com/forums/index.php'topic=2553.0 
We are pleased to announce the 
Commodore 128 Basic 7.0 One Liner 
Competition 2008! 

Commodore 128 Basic 7.0 One Liner 
Competition is a friendly competition
designed to see what ingenuity exists
in the C128 community. 

RULES 
-Entries must be original 
-The result must be displayable on a 
real C128 (or VICE) 
-The competition starts Thursday 
December 18th 2008 
-Entries must be submitted on or 
before March 18th, 2009 
-there will be a competition page at 
this site with the submissions&you'll
have the opportunity to vote for your
favourite submission 

SUBMISSIONS 
-Submissions must be made by email 
to landover (at) tpg.com.au 

PRIZES 
-Prizes will be awarded on total 
votes & will be paid by PayPal 
1st prize $AU50, 2nd prize $AU30, 
3rd prize $AU20 

DISCUSSION 
Competition discussion only in this 
forum: http://landover.noip.
com/forums/index.php?board=21.0 

QUESTIONS 

Q. You state Basic 7..does that mean 
that SYS calls to ML are out? 
A. If you mean creating a separate ML
program & then calling it via SYS, 
then yes, it's out. SYS to a system 
function is ok. Lance 


SEUCK website updated 
---------------------
Merman 
To celebrate Christmas, over at the 
SEUCK Vault you can now: 

-download the first game from our 
new Amiga Archive 
-pretend to be Ash in Evil Dead II 
Return of Ash 
-play new C64 game Cipher Patrol, 
and Mark Chenery's Street Slaughter 
-read about an amazing SEUCK 
remake 
-and find out more about the SEUCK 
Redux game engine 

All this and more at 
http://www.seuckvault.co.uk 


Aztec C Museum 
--------------
http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/ 

A long overdue rework of the website,
files added, etc with much help from 
Mike T. and others. Please see the 
acknowledgements for more about 
who helped. 

Please report any broken links. 
Bill 


Cronosoft in financial trouble 
------------------------------
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/foru 
ms/showthread.php't=23239 

It's a bit of bad news, but I'm sorry
to say that I'm probably closing up 
the Cronosoft label. 

I'm struggling financially at the 
moment, and Cronosoft has too, for a 
while without much interest, and I`m 
beginning to lose money keeping it 
going, plus I can't afford to buy in 
more tape stocks etc. Also, 
unfortunately,I've had a hefty PayPal
chargeback against someone I sent a 
large order to that is claiming that 
it's undeceived. 

Of course,all payments to authors etc
are all put aside and will be sent 
out as soon as possible.Maybe I'll be
able to restart it in the future when
times are a bit better. 

I'd like to thanks everyone that's 
supported the label, either by buying
games, writing them, designing covers
giving us invites to shows etc.. 

I'm really sorry -thanks again. 

---WWW.CRONOSOFT.CO.UK ----

===SNIP===== 

thanks for your kind support.I will 
be able to continue to offer emulator
versions of course,but the tapes idea
was the main reason for continuing. 

Maybe I could do a 'download the 
inlay and print yourself' kind of 
thing. I do have some stocks left, so
I will carry on for a little while 
yet until they've gone.The website is
still there, and It'll be tweaked a 
bit. Cronosoft will still be there as
a name if not as a supplier of tapes.

Sales have dropped a large amount 
over this last year, with some being 
in just single figures, so maybe it 
would be best to 'come back' in the 
future when things are a bit better. 
The charge backs thing is a new 
problem to overcome.Sending things by
recorded delivery adds a lot to the 
cost which people don't want to pay 
(especially for international which 
sticks oe3.50 onto the cost, coupled 
with the fact that lost items don't 
have a proof of value 

which satisfies the post office, 
unless it's the games that are sold 
on Ebay). The last chargeback was for
over 30gbp which was a bit of a 
stinger. It wouldn't have been so bad
if the person concerned had even 
emailed to say they hadn't received 
the games. 

I'll keep posting though..don't worry
I've posted so much nonsense on here,
there's no reason to stop now hahah! 

WWW.CRONOSOFT.CO.UK 

EDITOR COMMENTS 
I suppose its all down to if you buy 
the games the label will remain 
viable if you don't purchase goods 
then the label will fold the 
Commodore Computer Club U.K. are
working with Simon to try and provide
some assistance 


PRESS PLAY ON TAPE 
-------------------
updates of what is happening in 
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE 

First of all don't miss out our 
upcoming concert in Copenhagen at 
the usual place: The Rock! It happens
on March 21st. It was previously 
announced to be late February,but the
venue got a chance to book Napalm 
Death so the concert was moved. Don't
miss this one. We are preparing for a
blast of a concert:Keep an eye on our
website for updates. Buy your tickets
now before it's too late at 
www.billetlugen.dk: 
http://www.billetlugen.dk/redirector.
ph p?id=12737&i=1 

We have just released our latest show
starter video on YouTube. We have 
started a few gigs with this one and 
wanted to share it with the rest of 
the world. Yeah,the one with the girl
in the bikini and with all the 
Commodore stuff. You can mail it to 
all your 

friends to show how cool and hip you 
are that you know where to find such 
videos: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao 
Qa1OiHlrM 

Also, we have now added a 
DISCUSSION FORUM to our 
website!Come join the discussions and
let your voice be heard: 
http://www.pressplayontape.com/?pid= 
forums 

Last but not least we are now 
FINALLY recording a new album! 
Right now we are rehearsing to make 
the arrangements for the tunes and we
will record them during the coming 
months. We won't set a launch date, 
but rumour has it that PRESS PLAY 
ON TAPE has a 10 year anniversary at 
the end of the year so who knows what
will happen then! 

Thanks for your consistent support! 
Hope to see you at The Rock! (Come 
talk to us after the show and buy us 
beer --we usually stick around after 
the concert ;-) 

Regards, 
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE 


H & D C16/Plus 4 Handbook 
-------------------------
Volume Issues 1 to 10 
Volume 2 issue 1 
Available to view online, apparently 
these are quite a rare find for 
Commodore 16 owners, and were 
uncovered in a box of items donated 
to the Commodore Computer Club 
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk 

http://www.commodore16.com/index.p 
hp?option=com_content&view=article 
&id=237:-h-a-d-c16plus-4handbook&
catid=57:magazinesfanzines 

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

Kickstart C16 & Invasive Action 
      Cartridges [C64] 
------------------------------
http://www.cosine.org.uk/ 
Reviewed By J. Monkman 
http://www.rgcd.co.uk 
http://www.rgcd.co.uk/shop/reviews/ki
kstart-invasive-cart-project/ 

Sometime back in the end of 2007 I 
emailed T.M.R about the possibility 
of creating 8KB cartridge versions of
some of the smaller games in his 
highly acclaimed Commodore 64 
back-catalogue. Naively, I was under 
the impression that it would be a 
simple job of saving each game 
executable with a special header,then
burning the resulting files onto 
EPROM chips, fiddling about a bit 
with PCB kits and cartridge cases and
presto! A new C64 cartridge release 
would be born. In hindsight, how 
wrong I was... 

Initially poo-pooing the idea, T.M.R 
explained that it would be a little 
more complicated than I'd optimist-
ically hoped and essentially involve 
revisiting a lot of old code and 
relearning how cartridge loading 
works. However, I continued to 
express interest in the concept and 
persistently pestered him on and off 
for a month or so until one happy day
I opened my email inbox to find two 
emulator-friendly cartridge images 
waiting for me. This is where the fun
really began. 

The next step was to find someone to 
help manufacture the carts, a process
that TMR still believed would be too 
expensive to make the project viable 
even on a costprice basis.After a lot
of fruitless searching (and money 
wasted on foolishly trying to 
assemble carts myself) I eventually 
stumbled upon C64 enthusiast Tim 
Harris via his eBay Commodore Store; 
finally it looked as though the 
project would yield results. 

The first game we collectively worked
on was Kikstart C16, which itself was
a source of many confused emails due 
to the fact that Kikstart C16 is a 
Commodore 64 port of the 
Commodore 16 version of Kikstart, 
and "not" a Commodore 16 cartridge. 
Using a standard black cartridge case
and box artwork designed by T.M.R 
and myself, early prototypes were 
sold via a forum post at 
www.retrogamer.net and proved to be 
surprisingly popular -even with 
RGCD's own SirClive, who 
immediately voiced his regret at 
giving the game a 'soso' review score
back in RGCD#03 and gushingly praised

T.M.R for his superb work. 
At this point, we began work on 
Invasive Action, a quirky little 
arcade shoot-em-up developed by T.M.R
under his Backward Engineering 
moniker and based on 'Ivasive Action'
a game featured on the infamous 
Cassette 50 C64 compilation back in 
1984. Now, before you write this one 
off ("Cassette 50? WTF! ROFL!", 
etc.), it has to be said that T.M.R's
unofficial sequel is a pretty good 
laugh. It received a warm write-up in
the now sadly-defunct C64 discmag 
Game Over(View) and is certainly a 
more than worthy addition to your C64
collection. In fact -and the same 
applies for both IA and Kikstart 
considering the 8KB limitation, both 
releases compare more than favourably
against the official Commodore 
library of 8KB cartridges released 
back in the format's popular years. 
However, to make things a little more
interesting (and indeed saleable) Tim
Harris suggested using transparent 
cases with the addition of an 
internally mounted blue LED -and if 
you look at the photos you'll see 
that the result is pretty eye-
catching when the cart is plugged in!

Hype aside, I suppose that the real 
question is "are they actually worth 
buying"? The items are available 
priced at a very reasonable oe13 each
exclusively from the RGCD shop. So 
in my opinion I would have to say 
"yes", but then I'm biased because 
this was my project to start with! 
However; it should be noted that both
games are readily available for free 
in their original format (and are 
included with RGCD #05), meaning that
buyers are not really getting any 
exclusive content, but the fact that 
these are strictly limited, real 
hardware releases mean that they'll 
appeal to most C64 
hardware enthusiasts and collectors. 
Both Kikstart C16 and Invasive Action
come presented in stylish hand-made 
cardboard boxes with either printed 
or ingame instructions,and the latter
game's luminous attributes make it 
something quite special. 

In conclusion; the really exciting 
news (for me at least) is that there 
are likely to be more RGCD C64 
cartridge releases to come in the 
near future I've already opened 
discussions with several interested 
developers and there's even the 
possibility of a C64 16KB cartridge 
development competition financed by 
RGCD in 2009,which (if it goes ahead)
will hopefully result in a slew of 
releases and breathe new life into 
the much underrated commodore 
cartridge format. 

(Please note that both Kikstart C16 
and Invasive Action are PAL/NTSC 
compatible and work on the C128 as 
well as the C64. If you are a 
developer interested in working with 
RGCD to have your own game published 
in cartridge form then please feel 
free to drop us a line via our 
contact 
page).
http://www.rgcd.co.uk/contact/ 

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

Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club
----------------------------------
www.geocities.com/c64-128-amiga

COMMODORE FREE
Please introduce yourself to our
readers

DAVID WITMER
My name is David Witmer, I am the
President of the Cincinnati Commodore
Computer Club. My day job is a
computer desktop repair technician
for a national computer chain store.
Repair certifications I hold include
Apple Desktop, Dell Desktop & Laptop,
Toshiba Satellite, Lenovo/IBM Desktop
& Laptop. I graduated from Ohio
University with a Bachelor of
Business Administration, with
emphasis in Organizational
Communications. Scuba Diving is
another of my hobbies, & I hold a
certification in Advanced Open Water,
& a variety specialties including
Rescue Diver which is my most recent
training. I also like photography &
78rpm record collecting.

CF. Can you tell our readers about
your first Computing Experiences

DW. The college mainframe computer
the IBM 370 was to give me my first
exposure to computers & programming.
The programming I did learn
officially was SPSS, COBOL, &
unofficially BASIC (and hacking the
mainframe via a dialup terminal my
roommate brought home from work-study
at the Engineering Department at the
university).

My girlfriend at the time was a
Computer Science Major. I failed to
understand what the big deal of
computers was going to be farther
down the road. Often we would study
together when we had the same
classes, but she did get one class
that I decided to learn on my own:
BASIC. I went to the computer lab to
watch her do her homework on the
monstrous sized equipment that was
really more than a stand alone
terminal to the mainframe. What brand
of computer this was escapes me, but
I remember her bringing the huge 8
inch floppy disks. On these she
stored her homework, not on punch
cards as I was doing. That was what
intrigued me, that information could
be saved on something other than a
mainframe computer's hard drive, or a
stack of cards. This was something I
had to look into, but didn't really
want to spend the time going through
a class. In retrospect, I probably
should have taken that class for the
credit of learning basic, & to learn
better programming skills to boot.

I bought one floppy from the College
bookstore to hold my programming
examples, figuring I'd never need
more than that, I didn't. I learned
the basics from my girlfriend like
how to format the disk, how to erase
the current program in memory without
turning off the machine, probably her
instructions to me were simple, but
also helping her to learn to make
sure she understood what she was
being graded for! I followed along
some of the programming examples she
had from her class, then decided I
wanted to do something fun. So I
found a type in program for a game
called WUMPUS. Yes, I typed it all in
from BASIC, on a computer that wasn't
mine, just to learn the fundamentals
of BASIC. When I finally got it all
typed in & tried to run it, of course
it had some errors from mistyped
commands, but troubleshooting didn't
seem any harder than the other
computing classes I had taken. I
finally had the program debugged &
played several games of WUMPUS
without any errors. I felt so
accomplished.

My first home computer purchase
didn't happen until after I graduated
from college, on September 27, 1982.
I had a friend from my high school
days that owned a Vic20 for several
months, & he allowed me access to it
to play around on & see how much fun
owning a personal computer could be.
So, the two of us decided to take a
trip to Columbus Ohio & buy my own
computer setup. I knew I wanted a
Vic20, & a tape drive, so the dealer
at Tech HiFi didn't have a hard sale
trying to get me to buy anything. He
did try to get me to buy some
programs, which I did pass on, since
I wanted to first learn how to
program & use my new found
acquisition. Anyway, I could always
borrow programs from my friend. I
followed the Vic20 User's Guide
through the learning process of the
computer, & I typed in programs from
Compute magazine. These activities
kept me busy for hours.

It wasn't until several years later,
that I bought a Commodore 64. Vic20
software was shrinking from the
marketplace, being replaced by the
more powerful C64 software. When I
tried to type in a program that took
up all of the Vic20 memory, I knew at
that point I needed to upgrade to the
C64.

CF. Now your handle Snogpitch? Can
you tell our readers where this name
came from?

DW. This is a question I get asked a
lot. It was happening whenever anyone
saw my handle on the online services
such as GEnie, Compuserve, Q-Link, &
Prodigy. I finally decided when I
knew enough to put up a personal
website, I would tell the story
there, & let everyone read it for
themselves.

Once I logged on to GEnie for the
first time in 1992, I realized I
would need an "Online Personna" in
order to participate on the live chat
channels. What would I choose?
Various ideas came to mind, ranging
from a Super-hero, to a fictions Star
Trek character being the most likely
candidate. I remembered a word that
was coined, back in my high school
days, when Alice & her Adventures
through the Looking Glass was
discussed. A poem in that story
called Jabberwocky held some strange
words & names as part of its prose.
We were inventing similar words. One
word that I "created" was SNOGPITCH. 

CF. So a Handle is a "nickname" but
Why still use a handle,

DW. About the same time I joined
GEnie, I was also getting introduced
to the local BBS scene. Of course
handles were used there as well, & my
Snogpitch handle came with me to that
community. On the BBS, folks did not
want your real name for all to see,
especially if the BBS was doing
illegal stuff. 

Back in the 70's in the United States
of America, there was a big thing
called the Citizen's Band Radio.
Everyone had a handle to identify
themselves to other radio
enthusiasts, without giving their
real names. Folks would chat about
various things, but if you were on
the trucker's channel, you would get
things like where the local law
enforcement officers were hiding for
catching unsuspecting motorists in
"speed traps". Knowing this, you
could slow down before getting into
the range of the local Constapole's
RADAR gun, & not get caught. My Dad
loved this technology, but I didn't
participate in it.

Snogpitch is a rather unique
nickname, one that I have not seen
elsewhere. So far, I have not been
confronted by someone claiming I used
their nickname. If you open the
dictionary, you will find the
definition as:

nickname n
1.  an invented name for somebody or
something, used humorously or
affectionately instead of the real
name & usually based on a conspicuous
characteristic of the person or thing
involved Encarta

CF. You are the president of
"Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club"
can you give a brief history of the
club. How long has the club been
running?

DW. I wasn't around when the club was
formed. Our club has been in
existence since 1983 & grew to a
membership of about eighty in 1985. I
joined the club in the early 90s, so
I can say I've been around for the
majority of it's existence. Just this
past September, I noticed we had a
quiet anniversary of our web-presence
(September 1998 was when I created
the club's official website on the
Geocities community, now 10 years
old).

CF. What Commodore Machines do you
cater for?

DW. We cater to all systems that
Commodore made, up to it's
bankruptcy. The newer offerings such
as the C64-DTV & Hummer have been
added to the list, as they are
recreations of the original hardware.
The club is however primarily a C64
club.

CF. How many members does the club
have

DW. The club currently has 24 in it's
membership list.

CF. What would membership entail Is
there a joining fee, & what would our
user get for joining?

DW. Membership entitles you to:

1. Full use of our public domain
library of Commodore 8 bit & Amiga
software. Our Librarian has
maintained a complete catalogue
summary of all disks in our library
by disk content & category. You may
obtain a copy of any library disk by
providing the Librarian a blank
diskette & the number of the disk you
desire copied. Fees for copies are
$0.50 per side for 8 bit disks &
$1.50 for Amiga disks. Fees for
non-members are twice this price.

Providing a disk of PUBLIC DOMAIN
software or SHAREWARE for the library
entitles you to a disk of your choice
from the library. NOTE: copyrighted
software WILL NOT be accepted in the
library unless the company that
produced the software is out of
business & the software is no longer
available from any other source.

2. A Library Catalogue
Disks containing files listing the
contents of each 8 bit library disk
are provided to new members along
with a program that will print the
files to the monitor or a printer.
Disks containing files of disks added
after you become a member may be
obtained by providing the librarian
with a blank disk(s). Our Librarian
is currently putting the disks in
.d64 format on a PC hard drive with
the idea of being able to put the
library on one or two CD-ROMS. A
listing of the project so far can be
found at:
http://members.iglou.com/thunderbird
/CCCC.txt

3. A Monthly Newsletter
Newsletters contain lots of helpful
information & usually an article on a
specific topic. The FOR SALE items
are a good way to expand your
hardware or software inventory. Help
line numbers are also available. We
all went through the experience of
having problems. If you are
encountering difficulties in all
likelihood someone in the club has
had the same problem. Please make
your request for help at a reasonable
hour. If you did not receive your
newsletter by the next meeting,
Please contact the newsletter editor
or membership person as soon as
possible.

Providing an article to the
newsletter on any computer related
subject entitles you to a disk of
your choice from the library free of
charge (this includes ads of "For
Sale" items).

4. A starter disk. 
The starter disk contains a variety
of public domain programs for the C64
on Side One & the C128 on Side Two.
Or if you have an Amiga, you will
receive an Amiga Starter Disk.

5. The club has 1000's of used
commercial items for sale at very
reasonable prices. The list includes
software, hardware, accessories,
books, manuals & magazines. The items
are in separate files by category
available free on a double-sided 5
1/4" disk or on our web site at
http://www.geocities.com/c64-128-
amiga/sale/. Members receive a 50%
discount on all items listed.

6. Tractor feed items are also
available to members:
address labels 3.5" x 15/16" in
pastel shades of blue, green, pink &
yellow, plus white $1.00/100. 2.75" x
1 15/16" white labels for 3.5" disks
$1.50/100. And 3.5" x 6" postcards -
$1.50/100

7. Yearly dues are $24.00. New
members receive a $48.00 credit
towards the purchase of any item in
our used items inventory at the 50%
member discount.

All of that is a bargain! Get with
our membership officer Roger Hoyer if
you are interested in joining our
club. thunderbird@iglou.com

CF. Does the club still meet
regularly,

DW. We meet on every 3rd Sunday of
the month, with the exception of June
which is the 4th Sunday.

CF. what do users do at meetings?

DW. A typical meeting itinerary
includes a brief business meeting,
followed by a demo, or previewing the
latest LoadStar diskmag. New
inventory acquisitions are also
brought to the meeting for members to
get first choice before allowing
"non-members" the opportunity of
purchase. Programming assistance or
program support is offered to those
who have a need for additional
instruction.

CF. I notice you are listed as
"official Commodore Club #292." What
does this mean 

DW. When Commodore was still in
business, it gave computer clubs
official recognition of its status.
We continue to acknowledge this
alliance long after the bankruptcy of
the company in the 90s.

CF. You arrange Commodore expos or
conventions like "C=4Expo" what is
"C=4Expo" where are they held?

DW. Expos today are not the expos you
might have read or attended in years
past. Instead of large corporations
showing their latest program, or
gadget for the computer, we now have
individuals or small businesses
showing their "wares" to the
hobbyist. Instead of attendance in
the hundreds or thousands, attendance
at expos today are lucky to get an
attendance ranging between 25-100
people. They tend to focus on the
social part of the community more
than the commercial activities. Our
club started it's first expo in 2006,
when we found out there was not going
to be a spring expo that year, unless
someone stepped up to the plate &
held one.

Back in the 90's a user group in
Okemos Michigan held a spring expo
for many years. I attended a few of
them up to the last one. The next
year, the Louisville Kentucky group
(LUCKI) grabbed the torch & held
expos for the next several years.
When they decided to discontinue, we
started it back up. It's been like a
relay race, one club runs it for a
while, & another one picks it up
after a while. One of these days, our
club will probably pass it on to
another club. We will be doing a show
in 2009, contract details are not yet
set, but we are planning the Memorial
Day weekend for our expo. It will be
held at the Drawbridge Inn, in Fort
Mitchell Kentucky, same locations as
our previous 3 expos. Official dates
will probably be announced when your
readers have this interview in their
hands.

CF. We have started C.C.C.(U.K.)
Commodore Computer Club U.K. note the
U.K. to distinguish ourselves from
your club, does this naming cause
your club any problems?

DW. Not any more than CCCCC or 5C's
from Nevada, or another club,
Colorado Commodore Computer Club.

Q. Do you think there is still a lot
of interest in Computer clubs, or has
the internet removed the needs for
local meetings?

DW. I view computer clubs in general
as a dying breed, much like the
telephone booth, & the milkman
bringing bottles of milk to your
doorstep in the morning. There will
be those few that will still be
around, but it will be more of a
curiosity, & public demand. The clubs
today are more social clubs,
especially for the "old timers" that
seem to know everything. When is the
last time you tried to find a PC user
group for the modern personal
computers? Did they have anything to
offer their membership? Allowing
people to tap the knowledge of a
fellow member, beats reading an
impersonal FAQ any day.

CF. Has the CCCC received a renewal
of interest in younger users?

DW. That is a rather difficult
question to answer as it seems youth
is relative to the age of that
person's observations. Our membership
is family oriented, thus the children
of the primary member are also a part
of our club. If you looked at some of
the photos taken at our expos, you
might see kids playing with the
various machines around the expo
room. We are not selling expensive
items, we expect people to use the
machines, & encourage everyone to
have fun with their Commodores.

CF. What do you think is or was the
most exciting piece of Commodore
hardware to be released?

DW. For me the most exciting piece of
Commodore hardware was the C128 &
128D. It was 3 computers in one. It
had its native mode, with Basic 7. 64
mode for those who started with the
64, but wanted to keep using the
software they had started with on
that machine. CP/M mode for the users
that were migrating from other
platforms. If only the Amiga could
have had that flexibility, I might
have been more excited when that line
of computers made its debut.

CF. Do you have any comments you
would like to add?

DW. If you would like to discuss
Commodore in real time, visit me, my
fellow CCCC members, & Commodore
friends on #c64friends on irc using
the server on irc.eskimo.com on
newnet network. Use your irc client
of choice, or Q-Link, & join us on
Saturday nights at 9PM EST for the
next 3 hours. I am usually there
during that time. Others might be
available at various times during the
week. Visit the webpage at:
http://www.c64friends.com for a link
to the java chat client if you do not
wish to install a program on your
computer. Transcripts of previous
chats are available at the website
mentioned above.

Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to introduce your readers
to our Commodore club. Perhaps, after
reading this, more of your readers
will feel encouraged to start their
own local user group. If our group
wasn't around, I know it would be
missed in my life.

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

Interview with Simon Quernhorst:
--------------------------------

Commodore Free:
Please introduce yourself to our
readers.

Simon Quernhorst:
I am 33 years old and live in Germany
In my spare time I collect old video
& computer games & develop new demos&
games for my favourite 8-bit systems:
Atari VCS and C64

CF: Was the C64 your first computer?

SQ: I got my first own computer in
1987 - it was a C128D, but of course
it was mostly used in C64 mode Before
this I had a Pong console & an Atari
VCS console in about 1984.

CF: What other machines are you
interested in?

SQ: Considering programming I am
focussing on Atari VCS & C64 now & I
have a lot of different C64 models
like C64GS & SX64. When it comes to
collecting I also have a lot of other
systems to collect for. My favourite
systems game play wise are PC-Engine,
NeoGeo AES & Xbox.

CF: What was your first C64 project?

SQ: I started assembly/machine
language code programming in 1989 &
entered the C64 scene a few years
later. I used to be active in
different groups & released various
stuff like demos, pictures and games.
I left the scene in 2001 & focused on
collecting & programming the Atari
VCS. After seven years I decided that
releasing a new little C64 game on
cartridge, may be something new &
challenging again... that's how it
came to SHOTGATE. I limited myself to
the 4k size (4096 bytes) of the game,
because I wanted it to enter a 4k game
competition on the Internet.

CF: It's noted that you have worked
closely with Lasse of CovertBitOps,
how did this come about?

SQ: Iv'e known Lasse since the release
of his first Metal Warrior & as the
series evolved & my own VCS game
MENTAL KOMBAT was released with box &
manual, I asked him if we should make
a limited release with numbered disks,
box, manual & bonus items of METAL
WARRIOR 4 & the first three episodes,
too. He agreed & we really enjoyed the
final results. Now in 2008 when I
decided to write a little new C64
game, I asked him about music & sound
effects & as he liked the game play he
helped me out on the audio part.

CF: Are you working on anything new at
the moment? Or do you have any future
plans for the C64?

SQ: I just finished my 5th Atari VCS
game & plan to release a total of 7
games for that system. On the C64 I am
currently developing several mini
games. Some of these are entered in
mini game competitions on the Internet
& I am happy to announce that I won
the 1st & 3rd place of the 1k comp-
etition at:
http://www.minigamecomp.org.uk

My plans are to compile 8 mini games
in an 8k cartridge for the C64. You
can see pictures of them at
http://www.quernhorst.de/atari

CF: Forget about the future for the
moment, what about the past? Which
programmers, SID musicians & other C64
magicians do you admire? And what are
your 6 favourite games?

SQ: I cannot say that I prefer a
single programmer or musician. I like
a lot of work on the C64 from
different people - being demos, intros
& games. When choosing technically
preferred games on the C64 I might
answer: Power Drift (code), Commando
(music) & Mayhem in Monsterland
(graphics). From a collector's point
of view my favourite games for the C64
are the cartridges released between
1990 and 1992 by Ocean, System 3,
Domark, Dinamic, Silverrock & Disc Co.

CF: What do you think about C=
Hardware additions like the SuperCPU
&, to a lesser extent, other CMD
hardware?

SQ: I am only interested in collecting
& developing for unmodified & un-
expanded systems. The only extensions
that I really admire are the Action
Replay cartridge series for the C64 &
the 1MB extension to my Amiga 500. :)
Nevertheless it is great to see that
people are also developing new
hardware & software for it.

CF: What sort of response have you had
from the C64 community about your C=
projects?

SQ: I got a lot of positive response
for programming new games on the C64.
Some people were complaining about
the high price of the 20 release
cartridges of SHOTGATE/KONFL1KT, but
producing the cartridges was very
expensive. Consider this limited
edition as a collector's item & as an
addition to their huge collections.
Everyone else is able to download &
play the games for free of course.

CF. Have you read C= Free, & if so how
would you rate the magazine (I can
take criticism no matter how harsh)?

SQ: I checked out issue #23 & really
enjoy the efforts editors spend on
releasing free magazines like C= Free,
CeVi aktuell & Lotek64. These mags
compile retro news & give a good
overview of the latest releases &
facts. As the C64 is very popular, the
machine has got a lot of dedicated
websites & even modern demo parties
still feature C64 competitions, I
think there will be enough news
available to keep those mags running.
Keep up the good work!

CF: Any final words of wisdom that
you'd like to share with our readers?

SQ: Keep on hanging in front of the
blue screen of one of the greatest
computers & try programming the
machine yourself. It is quite easy to
start developing on the C64 as a lot
of documentation can be found on the
internet. Ready. Run.

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

Interview with Simon Owen
Sinclair Spectrum Vic 20
emulator creator
------------------------

http://simonowen.com/
 spectrum/vic20emu/

COMMODORE FREE
Please introduce yourself to our
readers

SIMON OWEN
I'm Simon Owen from Nottingham in the
UK. I'm 36 & work as a software
developer, writing mainly Windows
software for multi-function
(fax/print/scan) devices. In my spare
time I work on a variety of retro-
themed coding projects. Most of them
involve the Spectrum, SAM Coupe or
floppy disks, but I'll dabble in a
bit of anything I find interesting.

CF. Can you tell our readers a little
about your first computing moments?

SO. I wrote my very first (BASIC)
program on a computer my Dad borrowed
from work, which was a large beige
machine with green screen display &
twin 8" floppy drives. My first
proper home computer was a Jupiter
Ace, back at the time when many
people had VIC-20s or ZX81s. The Ace
used Forth rather than BASIC as its
built-in language, which was a bit
mind-bending for me as a 10 year old!

I finally joined the mainstream a
couple of years later, with a 48K
Spectrum+. It was largely used for
playing games, but after getting
Hisoft DevPac for a birthday present
I spent more & more time programming.
From there I moved to the Spectrum
128+ in 1986, & the SAM Coupe when it
was released in 1989.

CF. Are you a C= user?

SO. Only on the 16-bit side, really
I've got A500 & A1200 machines. The
A500 was originally so I could work
on Uni projects at home, but I soon
got sucked into demos & gaming. The
A1200 is still very much alive today,
thanks to an accelerator board &
bootable Compact Flash card.

I'd still very much like a C64,
though I'm not sure I could go back
to loading from tapes. I'll
definitely get one if I can find a
ready-made CF or Ethernet solution
for loading software. I'm aware of
the IDE64 project, but like most
retro hardware projects it expects
everyone to assemble their own, &
unfortunately I'm a fire hazard with
a soldering iron!

I also have a SID interface board for
my SAM Coupe, as I'm a fan of C64
music. The 6502 core used by the VIC
emulator was actually written for my
SAM HardSID player, which can play
most SID tunes through the SID board.

CF. Why design a VIC-20 emulator for
the ZX Spectrum?  Are you stuck for
things to do?

SO. Mainly because I like a technical
challenge! I never really pay too
much attention to how useful the
final program will be, & if just one
other person appreciates what's been
achieved then I'm happy. The VIC-20
emulator is my third 6502-based
emulator, after Orao & Apple 1. It
was definitely a step up in
difficulty, but the hardware
requirements didn't seem too extreme
to be worth a go.

CF. The speed of the emulation must
have been a problem.  Were there any
specific tricks you had to use to
obtain better performance?

SO. I try not to worry too much about
the final running speed, as I know a
standard Spectrum will never reach
100%. Even so, the 6502 core has been
highly optimised over the years, & I
feel there's little room for further
gains.

The emulator does use a few tricks to
maximise performance. The version of
the 6502 core used by the VIC
emulator traps only memory writes, so
reads are fast & direct. To support
I/O reads from devices such as the
keyboard, the write handlers prepare
the memory state for the reads. For
the keyboard that means writes to the
row selection at $9120 will prepare
the keyboard state result at
$9121/$912f.

Another optimisation is to use a
large look-up table to map from VIC
to Spectrum display addresses, to
minimise the calculations during
display writes. This table must be
rebuilt if the number of VIC
rows/columns changes, but that
doesn't happen very often so it's
still well worthwhile.

Perhaps the biggest outstanding
performance issue is the VIC ROM
keyboard scanning performed by the
interrupt handler. If a quick test
shows that no key is pressed the
scanner exits early. Otherwise it
continues to perform a full keyboard
matrix scan, which eats a significant
portion of the CPU time each frame as
long as a key remains pressed. That's
a problem for games that use keys
instead of joystick for control.

CF. I know the Spectrum had a faster
processor than the VIC but the
graphics & sound must have caused
problems when writing the emulator?

SO. The VIC high-resolution mode
actually maps through fairly well,
with the Spectrum using a similar
attribute system for each character.
The Spectrum 128 sound chip
(AY-3-8912) supports 3 tone channels
plus a noise channel, which also
matched the VIC capabilities.
Unfortunately, the output from the AY
noise generator is very limited, so
the roaring firing noise in
GridRunner becomes an irritating
background hiss on the Spectrum
version.

On the issue of processor speed, the
Z80 typically requires more CPU
cycles to do the same work, so the
speed is much closer than you'd
imagine. A simple example is LDA #0
(2 cycles @1MHz) & LD A,0 (7 cycles
@3.5MHz), which both take around the
same amount of real time to execute.

You can see bigger differences if you
look at the strengths of each
processor. The fastest Z80
instruction (4 cycles) is twice as
fast on the Spectrum (3.5Hz) as the
fastest 6502 instruction (2 cycles)
on the VIC (1MHz). There are more
general purpose Z80 registers, which
provide faster working space than
main memory. The 16-bit register
pairs also give easy access to any
location in the 64K address space, as
well as 16-bit arithmetic.

On the other hand, a typical 6502
program averages around 2.5 cycles
per instruction, which is only just
above the minimum instruction time of
2 cycles. I also found that many
tasks typically require fewer 6502
instructions compared to the Z80.
Zero page addressing also more than
makes up for the lack of working
registers too, & you're less likely
to run out of them even with the most
complex tasks.

CF. Colour clashing on the Spectrum
was a problem.  Has this caused
issues with emulation?

SO. The VIC's high-resolution mode is
very similar to the Spectrum display,
so it wasn't really a problem. In
both cases each 8x8 pixel block has a
foreground & a background colour. The
VIC background colour is system-wide,
with 4 bits selecting from the
complete palette of 16 colours. 3
bits from the colour RAM select one
of 8 foreground colours for the 8x8
block. On the Spectrum each block has
a separate foreground & background
colour (3 bits for each), as well as
bright & flash bits. The bright bit
increase the intensity of both
foreground & background colours.

The emulator uses a table to map from
VIC to Spectrum colours; since not
all colours are available (orange is
crudely mapped to yellow). Since the
upper half of the VIC colours are
roughly bright versions of the lower
ones, bit 3 of the VIC background
colour is mapped to the Spectrum
bright bit. That does mean the
foreground becomes bright too, but
that doesn't make much difference
overall.

CF. Writing an emulator where do you
start?  I presume there must have
been a lot of reading & internet
trawling for specifications about the
Vic's hardware?

SO. I'd done a little research before
I started, just to make sure it was
vaguely possible. I generally check
that there is enough room for my
emulator code in the same address
space, which requires around 4K for
the base 6502 emulator or 8K with a
faster instruction decode table. Next
is to make sure the display can be
suitably represented, even if some
features are missing. I also check
for any custom hardware that might be
needed to run typical programs.

I'd already written the 6502
emulator, so it didn't take long to
make some real progress. It only took
about an hour to place the VIC ROM
code at the appropriate memory
locations & have it boot to the
start-up screen. The only special
code I needed was to stop the VIC
memory test overwriting the CHARGEN
ROM at $8000. Once I made that
location appear as ROM, it finished
the RAM test & set RAMTOP, & then
continued to boot. At that point
there was nothing to see on the
screen, but peeking the VIC display
memory locations I could see it was
showing the number of free bytes. A
small addition to trap writes to
$900F also gave the expected cyan
border.

CF. I don't want to get into the my
computer was better than yours as our
readers will mainly be C= users,
although I do know of some Spectrum
readers.  There is still a rivalry
between machines why do you think
this still exists?

SO. I think there will always be some
rivalry, but (except for a few vocal
individuals) it seems to be fairly
light-hearted nowadays. Almost
everyone I've spoken to seems to have
at least some appreciation of the
other machine. Perhaps not
surprisingly, most people seem to
prefer the one they grew up with.
Would it surprise you to learn that
in a World of Spectrum poll comparing
the Spectrum 128K & C64 sound chips,
67% of votes were for the SID? :-)

CF. SAM Coupe! Some readers may not
be familiar with this machine you
also have a Vic emulator for this
machine can you enlighten our readers
about the machine?

SO. I see the SAM as a spiritual
successor to the Spectrum, even
though it's no direct relation. It
features a 6MHz Z80B, 512K RAM (plus
up to 4MB externally), 128 colours,
high colour & hi-res modes, 6 channel
sound, & up to 2 built-in floppy
drives. SAM is backwards compatible
with 48K Spectrum software, but only
native titles make the most of the
extra hardware, of course. The SAM
versions of Lemmings & Prince of
Persia stand up well against the
Atari ST versions. Unfortunately,
SAM's release in 1989 was at a time
when 16-bit machines were starting to
become popular. The user base was
also too small for much big name
commercial interest, instead relying
on smaller companies, diskzines &
home-grown software.

The SAM version of the VIC emulator
makes use of extra hardware features.
The faster processor gives a welcome
boost to running speed, the original
VIC colour palette is fully
supported, & the SAA 1099 noise
generator sounds much more authentic.
With a Mayhem accelerator card for
SAM running at 28MHz you can even
have it running at original VIC
speed!

CF. I know about 2 different spectrum
models the 16 & 48k but I have heard
there were other models, does this
emulator run on all spectrums.  Can
you enlighten us on a little spectrum
history?

SO. The 16K & 48K versions were both
released in 1982. The very earliest
software ran on the 16K machines, but
it wasn't long before 48K was the
minimum requirement. Fortunately,
there was a RAM add-on to boost 16K
machines up to 48K. The vast majority
of Spectrum titles were aimed at the
48K market. The Spectrum+ update in
1984 was little more than the
original board in a new case, with a
hard plastic keyboard replacing the
rubber one.

The Spectrum 128K was released in
1986, featuring extra memory & a 3
channel sound chip (AY-3-8912). Games
used the improved sound for menu or
background music, & additional in
game sound effects. Only a handful of
games were 128K only, with most just
using the extra space for the music
player, digitised speech, or
pre-loading game levels.

After Amstrad took over the Spectrum
128 was repackaged in a CPC-like case
with improved keyboard & built-in
cassette recorder, & released as the
Spectrum +2. The final release was
the Spectrum +3, which replaced the
cassette recorder with a 3" disk
drive, as used by other Amstrad
machines. To simplify production the
later +2 machines (known as the +2A)
used the same main boards as the +3,
with boot-time detection of the disk
drive to know how it should identify
itself.

The VIC-20 emulator uses the extra
capabilities of the +2A & +3 to page
RAM into the full 64K address space,
so no memory mapping is needed
between VIC & Spectrum addressing.
That does mean it won't run on the
original 48K or even the base 128K
model, but since most users will be
using a Spectrum emulator it's not a
problem.

There is a second VIC-20 emulator for
the Spectrum, written by Jimmy. It
uses his own 6502 core & does include
the memory mapping needed to run on
48K machines. That does mean a speed
penalty for each memory access, but
the emulator does still run
surprisingly well.

CF. How long did creating the
emulator take?

SO. Start to finish was 18 months,
but I only spent about 2-3 weeks of
evenings actually working on it. The
first evening was to confirm the ROMs
booted, & to get a sample game cart
booting. After that I left it alone
to think about how best to emulate
the display. I only picked it up
again recently to finish it off.

I originally believed that changes to
chargen RAM would be used by games
for character animation. That would
mean tracking the visible characters,
to know which needed updating when
the underlying character memory was
changed. To do that would require
multiple levels of tables, with a
speed hit for all display writes.
Before I'd got that straight in my
head I'd moved on to other projects.

The final emulator is actually much
simplified, ignoring the chargen
memory writing that (it turns out)
very few programs need. Display
writes are still trapped, but the
only work is to write the current
character representation to the
Spectrum display. The only
complications are when the chargen
pointer ($9005) or rows/columns
($9002-3) are changed, when the
entire display must be redrawn.

CF. How many people are involved with
creating the package?

SO. Just me for the coding, but I've
had input from a number of people.
Jimmy helped kick-start me into
finishing the emulator, & various
optimisation ideas we've discussed
have benefitted both our emulators.
Dr Beep also provided a great
opcode-decode speed-up, where the
opcode itself forms the low-byte of
the handler address, for around a 5%
speed boost.

CF. What comments from the Spectrum
world have you had?

SO. Actually not very much, with more
feedback from the C= world! Most of
the Spectrum interest has been in the
6502 core, rather than the emulator
itself. Perhaps the VIC-20 is a
little too unknown to the average
Spectrum user, compared to the C64.

CF. Do you have plans for a C64
emulator for the Spectrum or SAM
Coupe?  I guess speed would be a
major stumbling block.

SO. The C64 would definitely be a lot
more challenging. It would probably
need the extra video capabilities of
the SAM Coupe to support the colours
& modes for games. The need for
memory paging would mean moving from
direct to slower mapped memory
accesses, & trapping zero-page paging
I/O would slow all zero-page writes a
little. Graphic sprites would
complicate the display updating too,
requiring twice the amount of drawing
when they're moved. I'm very tempted
to look at supporting the C64 so that
BASIC is usable & if that goes well
then maybe I'll enhance it further.

CF. With the emulator not running at
full speed are there any programs
that just refuse to run?

SO. The running speed isn't a problem
for most programs, as they're not
aware of how fast they're running.
Any awareness they have of elapsed
time can be adjusted as part of the
emulation, if required. The most
likely reason for non-working
programs will be incomplete
emulation. For instance, I make no
attempt to support the hardware
timers or scan line counters, so
anything relying on them will fail.
It may be possible to add some basic
support for them, but I've not needed
them yet.

CF. How accurate is the emulation?

SO. The CPU emulation is quite
accurate, supporting all the
officially documented instructions.
It's actually a 65C02 emulation,
which includes some page-wrapping
fixes & new instructions that were
missing from the original 6502. The
VIC chip is not fully emulated, but
I've added enough support for the
sample programs to run. The display
is also narrower that the original
machine, but I believe that's just
the way the VIC display is generated,
where the pixels are fatter.

CF. Do you intend to support C=
hardware to attach to the spectrum,
maybe a cartridge port?

SO. It's unlikely original carts will
ever be supported directly as it
would require special hardware to
connect them to a Spectrum. I would
still like to support dumps of game
carts, as used by VICE & other
emulators. Cart support isn't
completely straight-forward either,
as some will move the address of the
VIC display, & the emulator is
optimised for the normal addresses. 
It also depends on the memory banks
provided by the cart, as space is
needed for the Spectrum display & the
emulator itself.

CF. Did you consciously remove some
VIC features so that the emulator
would run faster or be quicker to
produce?

SO. The biggest feature omission is
the high-colour mode, which will be
needed by most newer VIC-20 games.
Not supporting it doesn't always make
a big difference to appearance; it
just shows with fewer colours. The
flags in Blitzkrieg still look like
flags, but they're missing the proper
blue & white colouring. High-colour
mode would only be possible with the
SAM Coupe's 4-bit display mode. The
change would also mean 4 times the
amount of display data for any
drawing, which would slow the
emulator down a bit. I also cut the
available memory from 24K in the
original version to 3K in the
released version.  Part of that was
for software compatibility, but it
was mainly to give more space for the
Spectrum display & some look-up
tables.  I should be able to provide
at least 16K by moving a few things
around, perhaps having the Spectrum
display in a different memory bank.

CF. You have given the source code
away, how would you feel about others
altering & maybe tweaking the
software?

SO. I'm quite happy for any or all of
it to be used, if they credit me
somewhere. That could mean using the
6502 core in a completely different
project, or submitting improvements
to the existing emulator.

CF. Do you have any other software;
we better say C= related in the
pipeline?

SO. Nothing currently, though new
projects do have a habit of springing
up from nowhere! There has been some
recent discussion about a SID board
for the Spectrum, for playing C64
tunes during Spectrum games. It's
certainly wacky enough for me to look
at getting involved if it takes off.

CF. Well whatever your motives I
think this is a major achievement & I
have to take my hat of to you well
done.

SO. Thank you for your interest & an
interesting interview!

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

Graphics & Bigger Screen
in BASIC on expanded VIC20
---------------------------

(This article has previously been
posted on the VIC20 forum 'Denial':

 http://sleepingelephant.com/
  denial/index.html

but this version has a few updates...)
First, (as everyone probably knows),
whth expansion memory (ram in block 1)
then both the basic memory & screen
are moved to other positions in memory

The screen now starts at: 4096 (7680
on unexpanded).

The colours for the screen start at
37888 (38400 on unex.) BASIC memory
starts at 18*256+1=4609 (4097 on unex)

If you are going to use expansion ram
& want to use your own graphics (or a
bigger screen), then you need to move
BASIC memory. The reason for this is
that the VIC chip only can access
internal memory (not expansion memory)
And by default, it only has enough
memory for the default screen before
BASIC memory starts. It's made this
way so that all of the memory can be
used for BASIC programs by default.

So you need to alter the start address
of the BASIC memory & move it forward
in memory to make room for things that
need access to the VIC chip. So that
these things can be put in internal
memory.

(It is however possible to put
graphics data in the internal tape
buffer if you think it's enough with
only 38 characters & a normal sized
screen. Then you don't need to move
the BASIC memory at all. More about
this later.)

Moving the BASIC memory
If you for example do this:
POKE44,32:POKE32*256,0:NEW

Then BASIC memory will start at the
expansion ram (8192) & leave the whole
graphics memory free for your own
graphics, a bigger screen, etc...
(32*256 = 8192). You might not need to
move it that far though. For example
on my Tribbles game:

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
 datormuseum/tribbles.html

I have it at 28*256 I think
 (POKE 44,28:POKE28*256,0:NEW)

REMEMBER - Always load BASIC programs
with just ,8 !!! If you load it ,8,1
then it will be loaded to the same
memory position from where it was
saved, & that is not very good when
you have moved BASIC memory.

A bigger screen
Now when you have moved your memory,
you can use some internal memory for a
bigger screen. (Mostly usable on PAL
where quite much of the display is
unused.) You alter the screen size &
positions with the following VIC
registers: 

36864 bits 0-6: screen horiz. centre
36865: screen vert. centre
36866 bits 0-6: number of columns
36867 bits 1-6: number of rows

In BASIC, to set:

screen x position: POKE 36864,x
screen y position: POKE 36865,y
screen width: POKE 36866,
 (PEEK(36866)AND128)+w
screen height: POKE 36867,
 (PEEK(36867)AND129)+h*2

For an example in BASIC (& for trying
different settings out), download my
"overscan" program.

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
datormuseum/oldvic20page.html#overscan

When you have opened a bigger screen
with a different column size than the
default, then the lines will behave
strangely, but don't worry, this is
normal! The system screen still is
22x23 regardless of how big your
screen is, & this is why the screen
seems to behave strangely. If you
don't like this, then keep the
original width & only make the screen
taller. It's here much of the unused
space is anyway (on PAL). You can't
use print commands to put stuff in the
extra space. So the only way (in pure
BASIC) is to POKE. The screen just
continues beyond where the default
screen ends at 4602, so pokeing values
greater than that changes the contents
of the extra space on the screen. It
works exactly as pokeing on the normal
screen, but you just have a bigger
space now. Another way is to use my
"Extra Screen" program,

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
 datormuseum/extrascreen.html

then you can use normal print commands
(almost). (You are allowed to include
the machine language part in your
programs)

An example using "Extra screen":

10 PRINT "{CLR}This text will be put"
20 PRINT "in the extra space below"
30 PRINT "the 'normal' screen."
40 SYS 5352
50 PRINT "{CLR}And this will be on
 the"
60 PRINT "very top of the whole
 screen."

SYS 5352 just copies the "normal"
screen to below the "normal" screen in
a jiffy. In other words, you don't
need to start the whole "EXTRA SCREEN"
program, just use this little routine
to copy the screen. I did this in my
Mega Omega game.

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
 datormuseum/oldvic20page.html#omega

Graphics
This is pretty straight forward. You
reserve memory the way described above
& then find a suitable place in memory
(after the space used for the bigger
screen). The register to use is:
36869 Bits 0-3

In BASIC: POKE 36869,
 (PEEK(36869)AND240)+a

The addresses 'a' you can use is

13 for 5120
14 for 6144
15 for 7168
8 for 824 (chars 103-127) &
 664 (chars 83-95) (Thanks Mobsie!)
0-3 for the character ROM

So for example, POKE 36869,
 (PEEK(36869)AND240)+14
will use the graphics data at memory
address 6144 & forward.

The easiest way to do graphics is to
use some program to draw directly into
the memory & then save the memory out
as a file (for example with a machine
language monitor). I usually use The
Final Cartridge's ML monitor on the
C64 to input & save the graphics. Then
when you are to use it, you just load
,8,1 & it will load in the right place

The tape buffer - Selecting 8 as 'a'
above makes it possible to put
graphics in the internal tape buffer.
For this you don't need to move the
BASIC memory or anything. And it
should work on both expanded & unex-
panded VICs!!! Also it seems to be the
only possible position if you intend
to compile your program with the
Austro Compiler.

ftp://ftp.zimmers.net/pub/cbm/
 vic20/utilities/8k/Austro-
 Compiler.prg>Austro Compiler

Here is a demo of how to use this
position: Winter simulator.

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
 datormuseum/snow.html

Working/& Saving
When working on a project, it's easier
to first load any graphics & ML
files,8,1, then move BASIC memory as
described earlier & last load the
BASIC ,8. Then just save the BASIC
program ,8 as you progress with better
& better versions.... But when you are
ready & want to turn it into something
that others easily can load on their
VIC... Then there are two approaches.

1. The multiple file approach
2. Single file approach

The multiple file thing is simply that
you make a loader that moves memory &
loads all the files. It can be a
little tricky as the NEW command is
used to move the BASIC memory... A tip
if you like to use this approach is to
use the keyboard buffer that starts at
position 631. Position 198 holds the
number of letters in the buffer. So by
doing this: POKE631,131:POKE198,1 You
put a "LOAD/RUN" keypress in the
keyboard buffer. And if you before
that print something like LOAD
"PROGRAM",8{up}{up}{up} on the screen,
then you can make it load a program
even after the new command. Take a
look at the first file of my "VIC
EXTRA SCREEN" as an example.

The Single file thing is a lot nicer,
& it also makes your game work on both
disk & tape. It involves having 2
BASIC programs as well as any graphics
& ML parts in memory at the same time
& then saving the whole thing. The
main BASIC program at your new moved
BASIC position plus a little starting
program at the original BASIC position
that moves memory & runs the main
program.

To run a BASIC program that is some-
where else in memory & not in current
BASIC memory, you have to set these
pointers first:

43-44   Start of Basic
45-46   Start of Variables  First byte
 after program
47-48   Start of Arrays     First byte
 after program
49-50   End of Arrays       First byte
 after program
51-52   String storage      End of
 memory+1

Let's say we have the whole memory set
up like this:

-Small Basic start
-Room for bigger screen
-Machine Language
-Graphics Data
-Main Basic program

When a program is loaded, the pointers
45,46 etc. are automatically set to
behind the loaded program, & because I
have the BASIC program last in the
resulting file, those pointers are set
by themselves when the file is loaded.
Because of this, I only have to change
the start pointer.

So, if you have the BASIC starting at
8192, you only have to do the
following...

(RESET)

10 POKE 44,32:RUN
(make the small BASIC start)

LOAD "gfx & machine language part",8,1
(loads into the graphics mem)

POKE 44,32: POKE 32*256,0: NEW
(move BASIC to 8192)

LOAD "BASIC part",8
(load main BASIC part)

POKE 44,18
(move back the beginning of BASIC to
default)

SAVE "whole program",8
(And everything saves as one big file)

Very nice as you don't even have to
bother to look what the ending address
is...

Good luck!

Anders Persson
http://listen.to/boray

Commodore Free -
Would like thank Anders Persson for
the reprint of the article.

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

Understanding VIC-20 Ram Expansion
----------------------------------

One of the most confusing things about
the VIC-20 is the screwy way that
memory locations shift around when you
add RAM expansion. Add 8K of RAM or
more & everything changes: suddenly
Screen & Colour Memory move to
different locations. Old programs for
the unexpanded VIC that POKE to the
screen or use redefined character
graphics no longer work. Depending on
the amount of RAM expansion you have,
BASIC even begins in different
locations. Aargh!

The diagrams on this page all come
from Leif Bloomquist's C= VIC-20
Memory Blocks Illustrated. (See VIC20
MEMORY article on this disk)

http://8bitcentral.com/files/
 vicmemory.pdf

This PDF helped me a lot in my quest
to figure all this out. Click HERE

http://home.ica.net/~leifb/
 commodore/index.htm

to visit Leif's site.

Also, Anders Persson has written a
great tutorial:

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/
 datormuseum/expandedvic20.html

(ED Reproduced in this issue of
C= FREE) Graphics & Bigger Screen in
BASIC on the Expanded VIC-20. Anders'
website is HERE.

Another good resource is the book VIC
Revealed, by Nick Hampshire. If you
want to really understand how the VIC
works, you owe it to yourself to get
this book. It's fairly common, you can
often find it on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/

Like most things, it doesn't seem that
hard once you figure it all out ...

FIGURING IT ALL OUT

 DEC    HEX   BLOCK
 -------------------
 57344  E000  Block7
 49152  C000  Block6
 40960  A000  Block5
 32768  8000  Block4
 24576  6000  Block3
 16384  4000  Block2
 8192   2000  Block1
  0     0000  Block0
 -------------------

Let's imagine the VIC's memory as a
series of 8K "blocks," starting at
0000 (block 0) & ending with block 7
(E000). Expansion RAM can be placed in
blocks: 1,2,3 & 5. There's also a
little 3K slice available in block 0
that we'll talk about later.

If you put 8K in blocks 1,2,& 3 your
VIC will have 29K total RAM available
to BASIC. That's the 5K the VIC came
with plus 8K in blocks 1,2 & 3. RAM
has to be contiguous to be seen by
BASIC.  That is, BASIC only sees RAM
as a single big chunk of memory. Since
blocks 1 - 3 are right next to each
other, the VIC can see all of it as
one big 24K hunk of RAM. So, looking
at the diagram, you can understand why
24K is the maximum amount of RAM
expansion available to BASIC.

BLOCK 5

You've no doubt observed that block 5
is not contiguous with blocks 1,2,& 3.
Block 4 is in the way. So BASIC can't
see RAM in block 5.  You might be
asking yourself: If RAM in block 5 is
invisible to BASIC, what good is it?

You can place machine language
programs in block 5, or use the RAM to
store data that can be read with
BASIC's PEEK statement. So, RAM in
block 5 can still be quite useful. The
only thing you can't use it for is to
add to the RAM available for BASIC
programs.

Another feature of block 5 is that
programs stored in this area can be
"auto-started" when the VIC is reset.
Most cartridge games are located in
block 5. You can tell because these
games start automatically when you
turn the VIC on. To further illustrate
the Programmers' Aid Cartridge puts
its program in block 3. That explains
why you have to enter SYS 28681 to
launch the Programmers' Aid. Only
programs located in block 5 will start
automatically when you reset the VIC.

It sounds pretty straight forward,
doesn't it? Can it really be this
simple? Unfortunately, the answer is
No.  We're going to have to take a
look at what's in block 0 & block 4 to
see where things get a little tricky.


BLOCK 0

DEC   HEX  BLOCK
-----------------
57344 E000 BLOCK7
49152 C000 BLOCK6      38912 9800  I/O
40960 A000 BLOCK5      38400 9600 Scn
                             Color mem
32768 8000 BLOCK4 ---> 37800 9400 ---
24576 6000 BLOCK3      36864 9000
                               VIC/VIA
16384 4000 BLOCK2      32968 8000 Char
                                   ROM
8192  2000 BLOCK1
0000  0000 BLOCK0 ---> 7680 1E00 Scn
                                memory
              4608 1200  User BASIC
              4696 1000   "    "
              1024 0400  3k Available
              0000 0000  Basic working
                                Memory

The diagram above blows up blocks 0 &
4 so we can see their contents. Take a
close look at block 0 on the unex-
panded VIC. The area, from 1000 to
1DFF, is User BASIC Area. This is RAM
that's available for BASIC programs.
This one tiny little slice of block 0
is all the RAM we have to work with.
Not much, is it?  Let's start adding
some RAM & see what happens.

ADDING 3K

The section from 0400 to 0FFF in our
block 0 diagram is a 3K area set aside
for RAM expansion. This is where the
RAM in Commodore's 3K RAM Expansion
cartridge or 3K Super Expander goes.
After adding one of these cartridges
our block 0 diagram looks like this:

------------------------------
7680 1E00 Screen mem
------------------------------
4608 1200 User BASIC area
---------
4696 1000  "     "     "
---------
1024 0400  "     "     "
------------------------------
 0   0000 BASIC working Memory
------------------------------

And there we have it-- The beginning
of BASIC moves down to 0400 & we now
have an extra 3K of RAM to work with.
Now let's add an 8K RAM cartridge to
block 1.

            BLOCK 1
  8k RAM CARTRIDGE INSTALLED

8192 2000
------------------------------
7680 1E00 Screen memory
------------------------------
4608 1200 User BAsic area
---------
1024 0400  "     "     "
------------------------------
0000 0000 BASIC working memory
------------------------------

The diagram above represents our VIC
with 3K expansion, plus 8K in block 1.
Uh oh, there's a problem. Do you see
it?  Remember, all RAM available to
BASIC must be in a single continuous
chunk.  Screen Memory (1E00 - 1FFF) is
separating the User BASIC Area from
the 8K expansion we want to put in
block 1.  What do we do?  There's only
one thing we can do: we have to move
Screen Memory somewhere else.  The VIC
does this automatically when you add
expansion RAM to block 1.  Here's what
block 0 & 1 look like after adding 8K
to block 1.

            BLOCK 1
  8k RAM CARTRIDGE INSTALLED

8192 2000
------------------------------
7680 1E00 User BASIC Area
4608 1200  "     "     "
------------------------------
4096 1000 Screen Memory
------------------------------
1024 0400   3K Available
------------------------------
 0   0000 BASIC Working Memory
------------------------------


Screen Memory moves from 1E00 to 1000.
Now we can add 8K to blocks 1,2,& 3 &
all the BASIC RAM will be in one
continuous chunk.  BASIC now begins at
1200 & runs until the end of expansion
RAM.  One more detail: Colour Memory
in block 4 has to be a precise
distance from Screen Memory. Since we
moved Screen Memory, Colour Memory
will have to move too-- from 9600 down
to 9400.

Hey, what about my 3K RAM at 0400?
Since Screen Memory is now separating
our 3K area from the User Basic Area,
RAM in the 3K area becomes invisible
to BASIC just like RAM in block 5.
It's a trade-off, but it allows us to
fill blocks 1 - 3 with RAM that can be
used by BASIC.

The next article on this disk "VIC20
MEMORY" ties it all together with a
diagram showing all the possible
memory configurations. Note how Screen
Memory (block 0) & Colour Memory
(block 4) move to different locations
when adding 8K+ of RAM expansion.

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

In the Beginning Part 12
Lord Ronin from Q-Link
-------------------------

Sound was a bit short for my
rambling prattle, the problem was I
ran out of lines as well as workable
examples for the different C=
machines. I mentioned that there are
programmes to make sounds and music
for you, there are also many books to
teach you more on the subject of
music. What I didn't mention is that
in the users manual has data for the
notes all 124, along with other
information for their use.

We are now at page 91, moving into
Advanced Data Handling. Time has past
since that last sentence and now; my
directory said that at that time
there were just three blocks written
in this section. While there are
around 13 pages in the Commodore
Users Guide left to handle before the
appendices. Going over the
information in that last section,
before writing my editorial comments
to the material. Man they jumped
through the stuff faster than I did
with the sound section. This might
scare you, and so might the titles of
the topics covered. Read and Data,
Averages, Subscripted Variables, One
dimension arrays, Averages revisited,
Dimension, Simulated dice roll with
arrays and Two dimensional arrays.

Alien and scary terms, when I went
through it the first time I was
scared myself. Scares some of the
locals as well when they see the
information, and not just for the
first time. Yet the authors crammed
that information into about 13 pages.

What we are going to do now is cover
that information, along with my
comments on my experiences in the use
of these sections. Including things
that we have done, tried to do and
want to do in programming.

READ DATA is the first thing
presented on page 92. Doing that
sprite program we had the start of
with Read Data. Type in the following
little program, It will give an error
msg. But that is a part of the
lesson.

10 readx
20 ?"x is now : ";x
30 goto10
40 data 1,34,10.5,16,234,56

You can see that it is going to read
the x variable. Then print it in that
X IS NOW : print statement. Got that
loop in 30. On screen you see that it
prints the value of X as each one of
the data entries on line 40. Then
gives "? OUT OF DATA ERROR IN 10".

Each time it loops through the X
part of the read. A pointer is given
by the computer to keep track of the
value to be used next. In this
program the loop keeps going till
there is not a single part in the
data statement to use. So it is OUT
OF DATA. That error is in line 10,
this is Because there isn't anything
more for it for it to read, as
ordered in line 10. Well that is
nice, but a bit useless, and I have
seen many programmes give me that
same error. A handful I have been
able to fix. No not ones that I typed
in, ones that came on disks to me
written in Basic.

Parts of the DATA statement to
understand. You have Got to start the
line off with the word DATA. OK you
can write it as dA for the shorthand.
Each part of the line of information
must be separated by a comma. This
thinggy here , and nothing else. The
Program will crash with different
error message to you. If you use any
other symbols, Or it may give you a
wrong data read out.

Now then what can go into a DATA
statement line? Most of what we have
dealt with already. Integer numbers,
real numbers, you remember the ones
with the numbers to the right of the
decimal point. Number in scientific
notation. You can even put in words
as well. But you CAN'T put in other
variables or math functions. DATA
Z$,12+5,6/3,5*5 is RIGHT OUT!! Not
going to happen as you would like.

Next type in is a little different
because it uses afor next loop to
keep that out of data error off the
screen.

new

10 forx=1to3
15 reada$
20 ?"a$ is now : ";a$
30 next
40 data i, did, this

Yeah it will print out each line,
going down the screen saying what a$
is each time. What happens if you add

50 goto10

Right the return to 10 starts the
program back but you are going to get
the out of data error message, not a
good thing; So in order to reuse the
data just add this line.

45 restore

You don't get the out of data, and
the program keeps going on forever.
What happens is that the data pointer
is restored each time through. Not a
big thing at this time for you to
follow.

Next is a more practical programme
for read/data.

new

10 t=0:ct=0
20 ifx=-1then50
25 ct=ct+1
30 t=t+x
40 goto10
50 ?"there were ";ct;"values read"
60 ?"total = ";t
70 ?"average =";t/ct
80 data 75,80,62,91,87,93,78,-1

You can probably guess what is going
to happen in some degree. Programme
is going to read all the data and
then print out the number of values
read. In this case it is 7 then by
the math in line 70 the program
prints the average after printing the
total. Here the total is 566 and the
average is 80.8571429.

The print statements are easy to
see. Setting the T and CT variables
to 0 at the start is simple. In fact
just about all of what we see in that
program is stuff we have done
already, everything except; there is
this strange thing in line 20 about a
-1. Also in line 80 is that -1 at the
end of the data statement line what
does that one mean? They call it a
flag, it is the indicator that the
read/data part is over. The Program
sees that -1 and then goes to line
50. Where it does the print and math
work. Line 20 is the check for that
flag of -1. No it doesn't have to be
a -1 in your programme. Can be
anything that isn't a part of what
you are placing in the data
statement, I have seen words and
strange numbers used in some type in
programmes. Anything that is out of
sorts with the theme of your
programme can be used for a flag. You
can make a large collection of data
statements, several lines worth, and
not worry about the count thing. When
using this flag concept.

Now here is the last part they give
on the read/data part, showing how to
assign data to a variable.

new

10 read n$,a,b,c
20 ?n$;"'s scores were: ";a;" ";b"
";c
30 ?"and the average is: ";(a+b+c)/3
40 ?:goto10
50 data
mike,190,185,165,dick,225,245,190
60 data
john,155,185,205,paul,160,179,187

Running this and you will get
something like...

mike's scores were: 190 185 165
and the average is : 180

Then the other three follow below
that one. Difference in this one is
that the order to be read is set in
line 10. Starting with n$ <name
string> and following with three sets
of variables for the integers. This
data is written in the data statement
lines in the same manner a text and
then the numbers.

Small little program that is to give
a basic understanding of how this
works. Obviously it can be bigger and
things like entering the data from a
programme can be done as well. I have
seen read/data statements in many a
Basic programs that I saved from
Q-Link. The first one that I tried to
work upon was an Inn Menu for Fantasy
Role Playing games. Altering the text
to fit different games I messed it up
royally. You see I didn't understand
the concepts of the flag and the read
a certain amount of data Or the point
about correctly placing in text in
the text area and numbers in the
number area. Now that I have learned
more I really should try that project
again.

Subscripted Variable, is the next
part; ends right after that above
program. Don't let the words freak
you out. May not have been the best
choice of terms to use for this type
of variable. What this leads into is
one of the mega important parts of
Basic programming, at least from the
part that my group is trying to do at
this time. I'll talk a bit on that
later.

Variables we have seen are like F$,
F%, F. Covering the text integer and
real numbers with the floating
decimal. We also learned that you can
have two characters for a variable.
Like F1$, F1%, F1. Or FA$, FA%, and
FA. That can give us a mess of
variables. Little slots of memory
that we can fill in with things. Now
we are going to expand upon that
idea.

Z(1) is a new thing. Got that the Z
is the variable. What then is the (1)
part? That is the subscripted
section. Even tells us how to say it
as "Z sub 1". Really this is
different than Z1 or even Z. Z(1) is
subscripted. Yeah I know first time
through this is confusing. They give
a chart thing to try to show you what
they mean. Looks something like this,

Z(0)    

Z(1)    

Z(2)    

Z(3)    

Z(4)    

As an attempt to show you the memory
aspects of a subscripted variable.
The way that I see it is that there
is in the above 5 <0-4> slots in the
variable Z. Slots that something can
be put into.

10 Z(0)=25:Z(3)=55:Z(4)=-45.5

A modified form of what they present
next, as a way to see the thing about
putting stuff into those slots.
Modifying the boxes again, it would
look sort of like this in the memory
for Z.

Z(0)  25  
   
Z(1)      
   
Z(2)      

Z(3)  55  

Z(4) -45.3
   

Personally I like the effect of the
expanding box to illustrate the fact
that the size isn't set to just one
or two characters.

New word now, ARRAY. A group of
subscripted variables is called an
array. This one is a one dimensional
one. You can make multidimensional
arrays as well. Mind boggling isn't
it? Gets even more so, as you can be
more complex by adding other
variables or "computations". These
are CORRECT subscripted variables.

Z(X)  Z(X+1)  Z(2+1)  Z(1*3)

Got that? Well it is still weak for
me. Point is that here we have a lot
more power than expected for our PC.
Even if you don't programme, you can
see now that we have more than people
think we have, these days. Now add to
this what we have seen already.
Couple this sort of subscripted
variable with things like Input and
Read statements. Right it is past us
at this time. They don't even try to
explain the how it is done part, only
mention it on page 97. New type in
program for you.

new

5 ?"<shift clear home>"
10 input"how many numbers :";x
20 fora=1tox
30 ?"enter value # ";a;:inputb(a)
40 next
50 su=0
60 fora=1tox
70 su=su+b(a)
80 next
90 ?:?"average = ";su/x

Right it wants to know how many
numbers you are going to insert. Then
it will have you enter each one.
Printing it to the screen. Finally it
will give you the average of all the
numbers.

When you run this I want you to say
that you want 5 numbers and the
numbers that you type in will be 125
167 189 167 158. The reason for this
will be shown a few paragraphs below.
These are the numbers that are
presented in the Commodore users
guide.

We have x as the counter for the
loop. The values are entered and go
into the subscripted variable of b.
Every time it loops through the
variable of A is increased. That is
pretty straight forward. Ah but what
is happening is not that straight
forward with what we understand at
this point. Certainly a is changing.
But not the way we have learned
before. First time through the loop.
We have a=1. OK got that part, the
difference is that it is entered into
the subscripted variable of b. So it
would be written, in the manner of
the boxes above asB(1). Next loop
through thevalue of A=2. This is
entered in the b subscripted variable
looking sort of like B(2) from the
above chart theme thing. this goes on
till the number of entries is
completed.

Remember that when we discussed the
Input and the Read stuff, there
wasn't any way to get back or
retrieve the inputted information? OK
we never tried in the first place.
The Commodore users guide is the one
that brings up that subject. Well
type in the following, while you
still have the above program in
memory.

FOR A= 1 TO 5: ?B(A);:NEXT

The reason that I asked you to type
in the amount of numbers as 5 and
those specific numbers. Simply is to
illustrate the point of this line. 
You will see on the screen...

125    167    189    167    158

The numbers that you typed in for
this example. See they are stored.
Now try out the programme again and
use your own amount and numbers. Then
adjust the line above. Note it isn't
a line number, just something you can
type in on the screen. Alter the 1 to
what ever you chose for the amount.
Then see what happens.

Welcome now to DIMARRAYS. Well they
say Dimension on page 98. But I am
cutting to the chase here. Because as
soon as you tried more than 10
numbers in the above example you got
an error. Probably said "DIMENSION
ERROR". Makes you wonder what sci-fi
movie you entered. You can only have
11 <0 to 10> elements in a one
dimensional array. OK add the
following to the programme.

5 dim b(100)

You just told the C= that you will
have a maximum of 100 things, or
elements in the array. Can be bigger,
I am not going to say how big at this
time. But it is BIG. Better to make
several different DimArrays than one
gigantic one. OK I'll confess the
maximum that you can put in a
DimArray is <hold onto your hats>
32767. If you do, your program is
bulky and will be very slow.

OK then lets run that program with
the new line 5. Then we are going to
change it to...

5<press return>

Right that kills the line
completely. Have to do that to enter
this one.

15 dim b(x)

Now what ever x is will be the
number of elements in the dim array.
Note here is that once an array has
been <dim>ensioned. It can not be
redone in another part of the
programme. However you can have more
than one dim array in a programme and
even on the same line. Following is
just an example, NOT a line to type
in!

10 dim c(20),d(50),e(40)

Soon we are going to type in a new
programme. But first this is
something that isn't in the users
manual. Comes from a book that
teaches making text adventure games.
Put the DIM ARRAYS at the start or as
close to the start of your programme
as possible. That Commodore users
guide uses several dim arrays for the
games. These are all "declared" in
the first several lines of the
programme. Though defined a bit later
in the programme.

An example from a programme that I
modified. No it isn't really that
impressive, remember I am a lamer at
this stuff. I just used some of the
things that we have or will cover in
this users manual. Well the program
is one that I saved from Q-Link. Done
in Basic and it for the creation of
1st edition of Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons monsters. Saved it to disk
and printed it out. I did a few
things to it, such as adding some
stats. Those where different
variables, and we covered them
already. What I did that applies to
this part of the series, is that I
created a Dim Array. Originally,
after you typed in the stats for the
monster for your game. You could
write a description. However the
author made a one dimensional array.
Meaning that I had only 11 lines max
for a description of the monster and
its habits. Not enough when I am
copying them out of old and crumbling
magazines that are over 25 years old.
What I did was simply turn that into
a Dim Array looking like DIM C(40). C
being the existing variable. Now I
have many more lines for a
description. See it isn't that
fantastic. Just a simple re-write of
one line. Oh yeah that was in the
first 15 or so lines of
programming/code.

new
1 rem dice simulation:?"<shift
clearhome>"
10 input"how many rolls:";x
20 forl=1tox
30 r=int(6*rnd(1))+1
40 f(r)=f(r)+1
50 nextl
60 ?"face","number of times"
70 forc=1to6:?c,f(c):next

Running this and you will get a list
on the left of the faces of a D6 <6
sided die> and the number of times
that face appeared out of the total
number of times that you entered for
the number of rolls. F(R) is the
array for the random number generator
in line 30. L is the variable for the
number of times the die is to be
rolled. Line 70 has the C= 1 to 6
Then it wants the value of C printed.
The faces on the left of the screen.
But see that next there is the array
of F(C). Bit confusing as the
explanation in the Commodore users
guide is short and lacking in depth.
My understanding, and it is quite
possibly wrong, is that the F(R) is
the array for the number of times and
the F(C) is the array for that number
for each face or side of the die.

They next turn the page to 100 and
show the same programme using IF THEN
statements. Doubles in the number of
lines used. More than double in the
space in the computer that would be
used.

TWO-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS is the title
for the next part. They start off
with showing us what it would look
like Z(4,6) is a two dimensional
array. First part is the array name
and the other two parts separated by
the, symbol are the subscripts.
Written out in a matrix type box with
the following value of Z(3,4)=71would
look like the following in the above
defined two dim array.


   0   1   2   3   4   5   6
0  -   -   -   -   -   -   -

1  -   -   -   -   -   -   -

2  -   -   -   -   -   -   -  

3  -   -   -   -  71   -   -


First subscript is sort of the row
and the second one is sort of the
column. You can get the idea that
there can now be a lot more installed
than before. OK there are some rules
to follow in creating a two dim
array.

Gotta dim the array: dimZ(4,6) as
the first part. That sets up the
areas for use. Next you need to
assign the data that is going into
the array sort of like: Z(3,4)=71.
Next assign the values to other
variables like: ZB=Z(1,1). Then print
the values. Complex, confusing it
doth sound at this point. Trust me
that I dig that part, no not the
variable thing, that it is complex
and confusing. This is not something
you can get in one sitting. Takes
several goings over, and other
sources of information to slowly
click. Then you ask yourself why you
didn't catch it at the start, since
it is so simple. Or so I have been
told. I'm still at the part of the
light is just turning on for these
arrays. My advice is to just ride
this part for now. Work on the ideas
as you feel comfortable. Now then
lets move onto a type in example.

new

20 ?"<shifted clear home>"
30 forr=1to4
40 ?"Question # : ";r
50 ?" 1-yes  2-no  3-undecided"
60 ?"what was the response : ";
61 getc:ifc,1orc>3then61
65 ?c:?
70 a(r,c)=a(r,c)+1
80 nextr
85 ?
90 ?"do you want to enter
another":?"response (y/n)";
100 geta$:ifa$=22then100
110 ifa$="y"then20
120 ifa$<>"n"then100
130 ?"<sifted clear home>";"the total
responses were:":?
140 ?spc(18);"responce"
141
?"question","yes","no","undecided"
142 ?"--------
-----------------------------"
150 ?r=1to4
160 ?r,a(r,1),a(r,2),a(r,3)
170 nextr

Give it a run and see what happens.
You end up with 4 questions. Well not
exactly, since they are never stated
as what is the question. Then you
have a choice of one out of 3 for a
reply to each of the 4. This is going
to be tabulated at the end with how
many times each of the possible three
answers were given for each of the 4
questions. Line 142 is a bit of a
problem in getting the - lines
correct. Don't worry if you flubbed
that one. I always do myself. Line
140 has a spc(18). That takes the
writing to the 18th space on the row.
Those comma things in line 141, space
out by 10 remember. Making columns
for the final print out on the
screen. 100-120 is our simple get a
reply from the kb. In fact most of
this we have seen and done in some
form already.

The Commodore users guide covers this
entire programme in three paragraphs,
and that is on one page, with a
quarter of the page blank and a chart
at the top of the page. Right; not a
lot of data for you to read and learn
how this all works. That is something
I was recently talking about on the
some IRC chats, how it is easier to
learn with others than by yourself,
and the lack of in-depth information
in the user's manual. Before the
comments though, lets look at the
array stuff in this programme.

Really the array stuff is the new
part. We see an array at line 70. BTW
that will update the element. So says
the rem statement on that line in the
Commodore users guide. What type of
array is it? That is a bit harder to
see. A(R,C) this tells us it is a two
dimensional array. Because of the two
elements inside. But now then, what
are the parameters of these elements?
That takes a little bit of looking at
the programme. In the array of A(R,C)
we look through the programme and see
that the R is in line 30, and is for
the number of questions. There are 4
questions or 4 elements. That makes
the R=4, so A(4,C) is what we have so
far. Line 61 sets up the ends for C
being 1-3. OK that must be the yes
and no and undecided part. Line 65
prints c. C then is 3 and that means
our array of A(R,C) is A(4,3). Right
a 4 by 3 two dimensional array. At
this point it is important to know
that the first row and column of
A(0,0), or the first row and column
of any array is mainly never used. So
is the impression from the Commodore
users guide. Line 160 prints the
values, the values of the elements in
A(R,1) A(R,2) and A(R,3) The numbers
for the yes, no and undecided. Yeah
it is confusing and complicated at
the start. I honestly at this time am
still learning this section.

Outro will have some more statements
on this part. Last of the Commodore
users guide now. Appendices and these
are a list of accessories for the 64,
Advanced Cassette Operation, Basic
term explanation, Key abbreviations,
Screen Codes, Ascii & CHR$ codes,
Memory Maps, Math functions,
Printouts, Programmes to try out,
Basic conversion, Error Message,
Musical notes, and if you have a copy
and are lucky. There is a quick
reference card at the end. May you
find a copy and with this series,
have some fun in programming.

COMMODORE FREE
I tried to put the Commodore Users
Guide into the Loadstar Quick menu,
you can download a copy from the
website www.commodorefree.com

Because of the size I had to split the
manual into 2 d64 images:

  http://www.commodorefree.com/
   tools/guide/guide1.zip

  http://www.commodorefree.com/
   tools/guide/guide2.zip

The text is taken from Project 64
version of the user guide in plain
text so many of the diagrams are
converted to text art.

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

       Commodore Computer club
            2nd Meeting 
       ------------------------

Shaun: 
For me, the weekend started on
Thursday, as I had invited our new
chairman Peter Badrick to venture down
from the North East to the West
Midlands a day early in case there was
any club business to mull over. It
also gave me an excuse to have an
extra evening "playing with those old
pieces of junk", as my partner Lisa
might say. I was due in work in the
morning, & had arranged to finish
early, however I had been in
discomfort with my back for the eighth
day, & finally gave in & went to see
the doctor.

Pete had said that he expected to
arrive at 2pm, & would you believe it,
he arrived on time. "What are the
chances", I thought, "of a bus driver
arriving so punctually?", though I did
not pose such a question to him. I
offered Pete a brew (for those not
from the North, a 'brew' refers to a
hot beverage, usually tea or coffee),
& in usual fashion, he asked for a
black coffee with milk. After being
distracted by my C= 2001 PET, we soon
checked if my Commodore - which I will
shamefully say hadn't been switched on
since before Christmas - was still in
some sort of working order. Happily,
it worked, & I loaded a few pieces of
software such as Metal Dust, Block
Frenzy (a new release on cartridge
which I got from the RGCD shop), &
Wheels, amongst others.

Pete had brought with him his 1541
Ultimate+, an excellent upgrade for
the C64 & 128, which also works with
any other Commodore with a serial bus,
& at some point my Plus/4 & VC-20
appeared. I demonstrated Eslapion's
cartridge which has some 127 games on
it (or is it 128? I can't remember
exactly). Fortunately, all of my kit
seemed to be in working order, &
although I was as usual, not very
organised, at least I knew where it
all was. I get out a couple of PET
machines, one was working but soon
started to fail, which wasn't a nice
experience, so unfortunately there was
little chance of a PET having a
presence during the Saturday. As no
one else could make it on the Friday,
there is little to say about it other
than the pub which had many ASBO-
owning folk from the near-by 'problem'
estate. After paying 1 (!!!!) for a
game of pool, & being surrounded by
the locals, we decided to head into
Birmingham City Centre, to Scruffy
Murphys.

Finally, the big day arrived. To my
relief, Nigel Parker had made the
journey to attend, which made things a
whole lot easier, & Chris Snowden, of
www.commodore16.com, also arrived at
Lisa's door. Our newest member,
Patrick Bakker, was travelling from
Holland for the event, & was bringing
with him a Commodore 116. After buying
tea, coffee, biscuits & juice, we
started to load up the convoy of
stuff. Luckily, Chris had his SatNav
ready & we headed out. Chris then went
to pick up Patrick from the city
centre.

Despite the small turn out, the day
went quite well. Mike Dailly arrived,
bringing with him "yet more junk" (I'm
sure his wife is relieved), & we also
got to see Xeo3 on the C64 & Plus/4.
Various games were played on the
Plus/4, & a few trades were made,
mostly from the stuff that Mike had
brought with him. Chris was busy
fixing several Plus/4 machines,
including two of mine, one of which
was working that I'm sure didn't. With
exception to the Plus/4s piled around
Chris, there were surprisingly very
few technical problems. A lot of the
day was mostly talk & drinking tea &
coffee. All too soon, the day had
ended, & Chris, Patrick, Pete & I went
to Lisa's place to enjoy some
alcoholic beverages. Being a light-
weight nowadays, I only had a few, &
talk covered everything from the
problems with VISTA & joys of 8-bit
computing. The next meet is being
planned for June, & will be held in
the North East of England, hosted by
Pete, & I have something of a "holy
grail" in Commodore terms for those
attendees to see, so keep an eye on
www.CommodoreComputerClub.co.uk for
more news about this. Hopefully, I'll
see you then.

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

..
       Commodore Computer Club
            2nd Meeting 
       ------------------------

Nigel:
Loading up slow process for me just
one item at a time! The 2nd official
Commodore Computerclub U.K. Meeting
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk was
held on the 23/24/25th of January
2009

Still suffering from back problems, I
was only able to attend the main
meeting event on the Saturday 24th, I
loaded up the clubs "for sale" Items
into my car, as we had some hardware
this was a slow process as I had to
transfer each computer one at a time
from one box to another, it took me
two whole days to move all the items
downstairs, not constantly but I
moved a small amount of items one at
a time. Of course if you have any
good back cures now is the time to
let me know!

With the car loaded up, & the wife
dropped off at work, the postcode was
punched into SatNav. It told me that
the journey would take around 1 hour
& 45 minuites from Blackburn. I drove
down the very clear motorway setting
off at 8am. The journey went well &
my back felt good. I stopped several
times to streech & ensure I did my
specific excersises I have been
assigned by the osteopath & physio.

Eventually the tones on my SatNav
informed me "You have reached your
destination" & I started for the
house of Shaun Bebbington. I was more
or less at the door so turned off the
SatNav locked the car & wandered
over.

Shaun open the door welcoming me - he
was glad I had made the effort to
come down & also gladd I had with me
the cash to pay for the hall &
drinks. Shaun showed me into his
house that seemed stuffed with retro
items in every cravess of every room
- a PET here & Commodre there, & of
course a 128 setup with a RAMLink,
SuperCPU, laser printer, CMD HD & FD
4000 floppy drive with some other
items littered around.

Shaun introduced me to Peter Badrick,
having never met except in the
virtual world he looked taller than I
had imagined him, we shook hands &
then set about looking at Pete's DTV
that was faulty. We replaced the
batteries & would you belive the
device sprung into life! Pete had
purchased the device second hand & it
was a NTSC version, we looked at some
of the hidden gems & the interlaced
picture of the creatur Jeri
Ellsworth. Shaun's telly would only
display NTSC in monochrome but that
didn't stop us playing a few of the
games. This was the first NTSC model
of the DTV I had seen. Shaun was keen
to point out the differences, we
chatted about the DTV & I made
comments about the colours being
inaccurate & the sound problems with
the device (I am sure everyone will
hate me now, its good but its not
like playing on a real c64, I expect
most people don't notice the
difference). [Of course, there are
ways to fix the colour problems,
Nigel. You just need to be good at
soldering, which I am not great at -
Shaun].

Shaun gave me a tour of some of the
C= PETs, they look so good, just what
you would call a real retro computer.
Pete had been offered one of the
rarer models by Shaun, but commented
that if he took it home his wife
would leave, so it was the PET or
wife, I hope Pete enjoys his
Commodore & doesn't miss his wife to
much!

Chris Snowden of www.commodore16.com
said that Patrick was also attending
from Holland (Patrick Bakker is one
of the moderators at commodore16.com
& also writes for
http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl) & may
have to pick him up because he always
gets lost in the UK.

Shaun put his young baby girl into
the push chair & we set off to the
shops for the clubs supply of tea &
coffee, all 3 of us chatting eagerly
about Commodore & before we had
walked 5 steps, Ruby Mae fell asleep
in the pram. We collected the
sundries from a local shop & set of
back to Shauns house. We then loaded
up our 3 cars full of goodies & set
off to the Hall a short drive away.

In the hall we paid the lady for our
5 hour stay, excepted the hall rules
& set about lining up tables &
putting out a sign for others to find
the way, & curious people who might
pass by past wondering what the C=
logo was all about. Everyone beavered
away except for myself as I couldn't
lift heavy boxes & felt guilty asking
people to do work for me but little
by little the hall was set up & ready
to go.

The next person to arrive was Mile
Dailly, everyone greeted him & Mike
kindly donated three boxes of junk to
the club. These were various machines
working/not working & other small
pieces of hardware that we could use
a spares or sell of for club funds as
we thought fit. Chris noticed some
rare books for the C16/+4 & wanted to
purchase them, then Patrick bought a
boxed lightpen adding to club funds &
also became a member. Other items
were sold through the day & we didn't
do to badly even with the cost of the
hall. The shop is certianly now well
stocked anyway!

Chris repaired Pete's broken Plus/4,
replacing & testing various chips
from a "stock" of working items he
brought with him on the day. Pete
also gained a transplanted keyboard
from a spare Chris had. Other
machines were tested & badged as
working or dead & dealt with
appropriately. Tea coffee & biscuits
were on hand provided by Shauns
girlfriend, who manned the
refreshments area of the hall.

Chris then went into detail about the
game he created called "Church of
Death". This is a Plus/4 text
adventure. Chris explained the tools
needed & used for the games creation
& gave a brief demo of how it would
be played, also producing a finished
version on tape with professionally
produced inlay & tape through
Cronosoft

Shaun wanted to know what differences
there were between Commando on the 64
& the Plus/4. Both versions were
loaded side by side & there were
pluses & negatives for both. The
Plus/4 suffers from lack of hardware
sprites & the c64 suffering from
small glitches on screen &
multiplexed sprites disappearing, &
of course the SID was superior, or at
least Shaun thought so.

I suggested we watched the Shades
demo on a real Plus/4, after various
attempts to load the demo on the
1541-III, we managed to finally have
the demo run on Pete's 1541
Ultimate+, must be down to the
quality of hardware emulation, the
other problem of course was we only
had the demo on an SD card & no cable
to create a real disk from the D64
image. The 1541-III was a rare sight
for me but seeing two in one room was
unbelievable, bit like a bus you wait
for one then 2 come all at once, a
nice piece of work with the screen
displaying the time needed to load
each file I thought!

Shaun loaded the old Mathmatica demo
by Reflex on a lonely C64 at the back
of the room. As we watched the demo,
which includes a 3D "Doom-like"
environment my thoughts turned to
Doom on the 64. Mike suggested
everyone was fed up with Doom now &
thought that was why there was little
interest in converting or attempting
a conversion to the c64, I am now
wondering if a cut down version of
Doom for the C64 would be anywhere
near enough to call itself Doom
because so many features would be
removed that it would really be a
poor imitation.

We asked ourselves why demo creators
spend so much time creating a demo
rather than a tool or game. Mike
suggested demo & Games coders are
totally different - needing different
logic & program thinking to do each
task. Mike then demoed Xenon TriOxide
(Xeo3 - http://www.xeo3.com) on the
Plus/4 & then on the C64. Although
its still early days for the game we
had to admit it looked very
promising. I especially liked the c64
version as it appeared to run
smoother Mike said this was down to
the C64 using hardware sprites. Mike
said that the game would probably
take two months to complete, if he
could find the time.

Shaun then demonstrated Metal Dust,
which is still the world's only
SCPU-specific game, by Protovision.
Many people claimed I was to hard on
the review & even Shaun though I was
a little critical. True I am no
programmer, but my comments do stand
in that they spent all the processor
time running the digital music & not
enough time on the game content. I
think that Enforcer 2 looks & plays
better, & that doesn't need a SCPU to
run. I also cant tell what is
background & what is foreground on
the game. Mike commented that the
background should be much darker in
colour. I do feel its a lost
opportunity somehow.

Many of Jasons Kelk's games were
shown & played, like the excellent
ViColumns for the unexpanded VIC-20.
I spent a good amount of time playing
this game. It's another Jason game
where everything works & shows his
attention to detail. Shaun also
showed me a copy of Block Frenzy on a
cartridge (again by Jason), which is
based on a java game recreated on the
C64 (and GS) from RGCD's webshop. It
looked like a professionally produced
cartridge, including a colour box. If
you like tetris type puzzlers then
this is a must purchase, its
difficult to describe the game play
but here goes: you guide a square &
can't touch the edges of the screen,
nor the various shapes that bounce
randomly around the screen - it
sounds simple but is this the most
frustrating game ever, possibly. The
simple task is to last longer than
the last guy to get the highest
score.

Next was the VIC multi-cart was
shown, by Eslapion which is sadly not
currently available. Once the machine
is switched on, a simple menu system
is displayed allowing you to select
from over 100 games which load almost
instantly.

Chris pointed out that it was dark &
all of a sudden the day had come to a
close. Sadly we packed & tidied up
the hall. The CCC UK has more items
for sale now. Shaun & Pete have
donated some cassette games & of
course Mike's odds & sods made it
more than worthwhile. We left the
hall & unloaded cars at Shaun's
place, at that point I had to leave &
so I said my goodbyes & set of back
home. By now the back pain that had
eluded me all day was starting to
creep in, & I couldn't take any pain
killers as it would have made it
unsafe to drive home due to the
strength. I made several stops but
eventually arrived safe at home.
Shaun sent a text to see if I arrived
safe & wish me happy birthday, all in
all an excellent day. Well worth the
time, & showing there is interest in
a UK meeting, we decided that maybe
June would be a good date for the 3rd
official club meeting, more
information as & when it arrives.

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

..
       Commodore Computer Club
            2nd Meeting
       -----------------------

My part in this meeting began on the
Thursday. Shaun had asked me to come
down a day earlier, as it looked like
Nigel was not going to be able to make
it. Happily, Nigel improved enough to
be able to make it, but I kept my
plans & set off 10 am on the Thursday.

Loaded up in my car was my C64C system
which was to be used to demonstrate
the 1541U+, a faulty Plus/4 which
needed keyboard cleaning or replacing
& a big box full of goodies to try &
sell. There was also my sleeping bag &
pillow. All the luxuries I could
possibly need.

The route I decided on was straight
down the A1/M1, then onto the M42 for
a short spell, then the M6 for 2
junctions. The run down was nice &
quiet, a few road works but no real
hold ups. As Shaun said, I left the M6
& junction 6, & was pulling up
outside Lisa's house 10 min. later.
Nice quiet run that took around 3.5
hours with a pit-stop.

Shaun was there to meet me on arrival,
coffee was made & I was introduced
to Lisa & Ruby. Coffee in hand, I was
shown into Shauns Lair where I
immediately felt at home. Commodore
gear everywhere I looked, & a great
128D system with SuperCPU, RAMLink &
various other bits of hardware
sticking out all over the place.
Heaven!

After a demo of Wheels, Shaun fired up
Metal Dust, a game he knew I was dying
to see first hand. After a few games,
I started getting used to it so Shaun
plugged in a 2nd joystick & we
embarked on a 2 player game or 5. We
were starting to make good progress
when it locked up! We switched the
system off to let it cool down, &
started on the VIC-20.

I had a look at the 127 game cartridge
& enjoyed Donkey Kong for a while. An
excellent version of an excellent
game. Cosmic Cruncher followed for a
while. I've always had a soft spot for
that game as it was the first ever
game I played on a CBM machine. We
then got a couple of Shauns Plus/4
machines out to test.

One was clearly faulty, garbage on the
screen. The other seemed ok, but had
keyboard problems.

I only had a stuck key on mine, so I
brought it in along with the 1541U+.
We downloaded some games onto SD &
hooked up the 1541U+. After messing
around with some commands, then
reading the fabled instructions, we
got it working. Shaun had heard about
Tom Thumb & how it was an amazing
game. We loaded it up, & it is indeed
a technically great game. However, I
won't be adding it to my list of games
to complete before I die ;-)

We took a break & took Ruby to the
shops, where we bought provisions for
the night & beer.

After dinner, we had a couple beers to
unwind. I turned in around 11, was
quite tired after the drive down.

Friday was a quiet day. No one was due
to arrive, so we just chilled & talked
Commodore & the Club. After dinner we
decided to head to a pub for a drink
or 3. We went to a local, but quickly
realised that we were probably the
oldest there. We paid 1 for a game of
pool (I wanted to play, not buy the
table!!) & were quickly surrounded by
a load of chavs. We finished our game,
drinks & decided to leave while we
still could.

We got on a bus & headed into town &
went to Scruffy Murphies. Loud rock
music & good beer. Oh, & NO CHAVS.

The Saturday of the meet soon came
round. We started getting things ready
to load up the car(s). After a short
while, there was a knock at the door.
Shaun greeted Nigel & showed him in.
It was nice to finally meet him, we
have been emailing for a few months
now & now I had a face to go with the
email address. He looked well
considering his back problems, & I
told him it was good that he could
make it.

A short while later, Chris Snowden
(www.commodore16.com) arrived. Intros
were made & we all hit it off from the
start. We took a walk to the shops to
get the refreshments for the meeting,
& also some batteries. Shaun had
looked at my broken DTV & after
putting my batteries in his unit &
discovering that his was now broken,
he came to the obvious conclusion.

When we got back we put new batteries
in my DTV & it worked straight away.
So, expensive Duracell batteries are
not always the best option. Sometimes
cheap & nasty is the way to go. We
also discovered that my unit was an
NTSC unit, so he showed me how to get
into the hidden features, including a
picture of the creators of the DTV.

Time was pressing on, so we started
loading up all 3 cars, & after some
jigging around, everything & everyone
was loaded up for the short drive to
the hall.

Chris took the lead using his SatNav,
so Nigel & I fell in behind. When we
arrived, Chris unloaded his car &
headed off to Birmingham to pick up
Patrick who had flown in from Holland
via Duesseldorf.

We got set up, Lisa & her helpers got
busy with the refreshments & we
started wandering around to see what
had been brought. There were two large
tables filled with goodies to sell,
should anyone be interested. A couple
items were sold, & the rest went back
with Nigel for the club shop.

Soon after, Chris returned with
Patrick. Its amazing that somebody had
taken the trouble to come such a great
distance for such a small gathering.
True Commodore dedication. Patrick had
brought with him his C116. It was the
first time I'd seen one of these, & it
was a very fine example. There were
also two 1541-III SD card readers in
use on the 116 & Plus/4 machines.

Soon after we got sorted Mike Dailly
arrived with some goodies to donate.
It was great meeting him, & hearing
his views on the machines & software.
Don't forget, Mike Dailly is certainly
qualified to talk about this, he is
responsible for Lemmings on the SNES,
& is currently working on a great
looking shooter for both the TED
machines & the C64. XEO3 looks amazing
& I'll certainly be buying a copy when
it is complete.

Shaun set up his 128D & showed us
Wheels & Metal Dust, before loading up
Sub Hunter for the fantastic music. I
had the Mathematica demo running on my
64 from the 1541U+ which attracted
some attention.

Mike said his goodbyes & left as he
had to get back to his family, his day
release over. Shortly after, Chris
gave a little talk on how he developed
Church of Death using cross develop-
ment. It was great to see another Mac
user. Macs & Commodore users both, we
started talking about using the Mac
instead of Windows & both concluded
that that is the way to be.

Before we knew what had happened, we
noticed that it was dark outside, & it
was already time to pack up. I felt
really sorry for Nigel & he had so
much gear to take back for the shop.
We loaded his car, leaving just enough
room for him, & headed back to Lisa's
house. After unloading what was
staying, Nigel said his goodbyes &
headed back. His back was starting to
act up again & he couldn't take his
pills as he would have been unable to
drive.

Chris, Shaun, Patrick & myself settled
into the lounge to chat & reflect on
the day. Lisa made us a fantastic
casserole & we had a few beers. It was
getting late by this time & we started
to get tired. We headed off to bed in
the early hours of the morning.

Sunday was the day for going back
home, but I had a nice surprise. Shaun
very kindly gave me a PET 2001 series
computer. It is not working, so that
will be a great project for me in the
coming months. I'll be doing a blog on
my progress & what I learn while doing
this. We are hoping to have this &
Shauns 2 other PETs working for the
next meeting, which I will be hosting
in the North East, probably Durham.
Watch the forum for further info.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend,
& well worth the long drives. I'd do
it again tomorrow.

Pete (Badders) Badrick
CCCUK

======================================
========================= 
Commodore Computer Club U.k. 
Membership form 

Membership forms for the Commodore 
Computer Club (UK) (CCC(UK)).If 
you are filling in this form 
electronically (using a word 
processor), then please send it to 
shop@CommodoreComputerClub.co.u 
k stating that the subject is CCC (UK) 
membership. Call the file 
CCCXXXXXXXXXXXXXX when saving 
-replace the Xs with your name. We 
will assign you with a membership 
number.For those people who have 


printed out this application form to 
fill in, please send it with a cheque
payable to 'Commodore Computer 
Club', to:Commodore Computer Club 
Treasurer, 2 Willis Road, Blackburn, 
Lancashire, BB2 2UA -United 
Kingdom.Fees can be arranged 
electronically (via PayPal), or by 
personal cheque or postal order. Once
you have filled in and submitted this
membership form, an invoice will 
follow with relevant payment details,
so please don't forget to fill in 
your contact details.Please sign me 
up for a membership to the CCC (UK) 

I wish to be a member for: 
[ ] 6 months* at 3 GBP 

[ ]1year* at5 GBP 
[ ] life member at 30 GBP 

My personal details: 
**Name: 

**Address: 

**Postal code: 

Country (if outside of the United 
Kingdom)**: 

**Date of application (Please use 
dd/mm/yy format): 
[FOR INTERNAL USE: Date 
membership fee received:] 

**PayPal account (for those paying by
this method): If you have already 
registered on the CCC (UK) forums 
(http://www.commodorecomputerclub. 
co.uk/forums), please tell us your 
username here: 
Email address: Please tick or cross 
the box below once you have read and 
understood the club's rules and 
regulations:**
[ ] I declare that I,the named 
applicant above, have read and 
understood the CCC (UK) rules and 
regulations,and agree to abide by them

fully and co-operatively.I understand
that I am joining this club on a 
personal level, and not as a 
representative of any group, developer
publisher or vendor that I belong 
to.Please tick which computers you 
own: 
[ ] CBM/PET 40 columns 
[ ] CBM/PET 80 columns 
[ ] VIC/VC 20 
[ ] C64/64c 
[ ] C64GS 
[ ] SX-64 
[ ] C16/116 
[ ] Plus/4 
[ ] C128/128D 
[ ] C64DTV [ ] Other Commodore 
8-bit 
[ ] Other Commodore 16-bit 


If you have ticked 'Other Commodore 
8-bit' or 'Other Commodore 16-bit', 
please list these machines 
below:Please tick from the list below
your interests from the following: 
[ ] Gaming 
[ ] BASIC programming 
[ ] Machine language coding 
[ ] GEOS 
[ ] JOS/WiNGs 
[ ] Tech/scene demos 
[ ] Collecting 
[ ] Archiving/preservation 
[ ] Other applications 


If you have ticked 'Other applications
please give details below: 
Please tick if you use any of the 
following peripherals below: 
[ ] Datasette 
[ ] 1541 compatible disk drive 


[ ] 1581 compatible disk drive 
[ ] FD2000/4000 
[ ] CMD HD or RAMLink 
[ ] 1351 mouse or compatible 
[ ] Commodore REU 
[ ] Other 
RAM expansion 
[ ] SuperCPU 64/128 
[ ] Other accelerator 


[ ] MMC/Retro Replay 
[ ] SwiftLINK/Turbo232 
[ ] RR-Net or FB-Net 
[ ] Other networking device 
[ ] 1541Ultimate/+ 
[ ] Action Replay [ ] 
Trilogic Expert Cartridge 
[ ] Other cartridge upgrade 
[ ] Other speed loader 
[ ] Commodore VDU [ ] Other 
hardwarePlease list any items not 
mentioned above which you have 
(especially for other Commodore 8-bit
machines): 

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

COMMODORE COMPUTER CLUB 
(UK) RULES AND REGULATIONS 

These rules were agreed on Saturday 
26th July 2008 at our first meeting 
held at Blackburn, Lancashire. They 
cover all rules of the running of the
Commodore Computer Club (UK), 
herein referred to as 'the club', and
also regarding complaints made to the
club, and membership of the club. 

(1) Membership subscriptions, raising
funds and re-selling items. 
(a) All members will pay a 
membership fee as follows: £3 for six
months, £5 per year and life 
membership at £30. This fee will 
entitle the holder to free entry to 
the meetings, and special limited 
areas of the website, such as private
forums and exclusive downloads,should
we get anything exclusive to download
Membership will always be back-dated 
to the start of the month in which the
member took out the subscription, so 
that everyone joining in the month of
April for one year will see their 
membership expire on the 31st of 
March the following year. 
(b) We should have a 'Commodore 
Computer Club Shop', which will stock
all of the latest hardware mods and 
sods for Commodore computers where 
possible. To stop the 'Maurice Randall
effect, in which the club will have to
repay people for not receiving their 
goods because they haven't been 
delivered but have been paid for,items
will only be on sale if they are in 
stock. (c) There will be two prices,
one for members (cost of item + 
postage and packing + 10%), and one 
for none members (cost + postage and 
packing + 20%). 
(d) Any members that do work for the 
club, organising events,donating items
for auction, coding, or are otherwise 
active, with exception to posting on 
forums and turning up to meetings, 
will be considered for free membership
and/or lifetime membership on merit 
based only on work they have done for 
the club. In certain instances, will 
include what they have contributed 
overall to Commodore computing or 
gaming during their life-time, should 
any 'Commodore legends' show 
sufficient interest to join the club. 
(2) Events, software and other 
developments. 
(a) Any money that is raised by the 
club should be used primarily for 
setting up events, or bolting onto 
other events as appropriate This is 
to go towards, or cover costs of van 
hire, hotels, and food and drink, so 
the person or people who are willing 
to travelling to these events, man 
stalls and generally promote the club
and its work are not be out of pocket
as far as possible. 
(b) Profits made from items sold at 
events should contribute to cover the 
costs of attending, or hosting, and/or
expenses accrued during the event. 

This will not include monies raised 
from membership subscriptions paid 
for during the event. 

(c) The club should also seek to raise
money for the purpose of developing 
hardware and/or software that will 
benefit Commodore users in the UK 
and world-wide, and such items could 
therefore be sold through the club 
Shop. 

(d) Payments to developers who are 
commissioned to work on behalf of the
club should not be made in advanced 
or up front unless otherwise agreed by
the treasurer and chair-person,and any
other two members. This should be 
openly discussed with all members 
either in private members areas of the
site, or at an organised meeting as 
appropriate. 

(e) Hardware that is commissioned on 
behalf of the club which reaches 
production should be sold at a small 
profit, and monies raised to put back
into the clubs funds. 

(f) If it is agreed that the club 
should commission entertainment 
software, the productions should be 
available to download for free from 
the site for members only. Real-media
versions should also be sold through 
the shop with non-members able to buy 
copies, though at a higher price than 
members. 

(g) Any software commissioned by the 
club will either be purchased outright
paying the programmer an agreed fee 
on completion, or paying a lesser fee 
and splitting the profits at an agreed
rate. This should be discussed on a 
case-by-case basis. The chair-person 
and treasurer, and two other members, 
must agree which method should be 
implemented. 
(3) Meetings and monies. 
(a) The club should hold an annual 
general meeting in which members 
have a say in its running,and are able
to make suggestions and table official
club business for the year ahead. 
Membership subscriptions should be 
reviewed at the annual general 
meeting, and any price increases must
be agreed by the chair-person, 
treasurer and at least two other 
members. 
(b) There should be an annual audit of
the clubs finances,with a newsletter
at least every three months.The audit
should be published before the annual
general meeting, and this and the 
news-letter should be available to 
current members online in the private
member areas. Former members may 
request this information,which will be
granted on a case-by-case basis. 
(c) Members will be able to attend any
events that organised and run by the 
club for free when ever possible, 
whilstnon-members will pay a small 
signing in fee of at least £2.50.With
agreement with other event organisers
and at events that the club is 
attending in an official capacity, we
will work towards getting members a 
discounted entry fee.
 
(d) All monies raised will go back 
into club funds. 
(4) End of line. 
(a) If it is apparent that the club is
not running within its means to the 
extent that it is likely to fold, or 
that legal action against it will 
lead to the club being dissolved, all
club assets should be sold or 
auctioned off, the monies raised 
pooled and members will be refunded 
their current subscriptions based on
the length of time they have been 
members. The longest-serving paying 
members will be refunded first as 
appropriate, either partially or fully
depending on the financial 
circumstances at the time. The newer 
members will be dealt with last. 

(b) Personal donations to the club's 
funds can never be fully refunded, and
are not guaranteed to be paid back at 
all depending on the circumstances. 
Club complaints procedure: 
Phase 1: Where a complaint is made 
against the club, or one of the club 
members, there should initially be a 
private apology between the club or 
individual and the plaintiff. This 
apology should be for 'any undue harm
or upset caused', and will not amount
to an admission of guilt or a 
retraction in any way. The club will 
not be able to force any of its 
members to make this initial apology 
except in the instance that the 
individual has clearly and admittedly
worked on the clubs behalf in the 
matter specifically relating to the 
complaint that has been lodged. 

Phase 2: The matter should then be 
investigated to establish the facts.If
it is deemed that an individual club 
member has not been acting on the 
clubs behalf with regards to the 
specifics of the complaint, then this
becomes a personal matter between the
two parties. The club should therefore
stop any further investigations or 
involvement in the matter. 

Phase 3: If the complaint lacks any
real evidence, or it is felt that the 
findings are not conclusive, then the 
matter should be closed. Neither the 
club, nor any of its members, should 
therefore discuss the matter publicly
All findings should be reported to the
plaintiff, and the matter should be 
considered closed from the club's 
point of view. 

Phase 4: Where a complaint is upheld, 
a public apology and/or retraction 
should be published through the 
official website, and in the
newsletter. The club should also give
the plaintiff the opportunity to give
his or her point of view through the 
website and/or newsletter as 
appropriate In this instance,the case
will be considered closed from the 
club's point of view unless the 
plaintiff wants to take the matter 
further through due legal process. 

Emergency phase: If at any point 
during this process the plaintiff 
feels aggrieved to the extent that he
or she instructs a solicitor to take 
the matter up against the club or 
club members who have clearly being 
acting on behalf of the club in this 
instance, the club should then 
consider its legal position on the 
matter, and a meeting should be set 
up with the principle members of the 
club within two weeks of receiving 
legal notice to discuss the matter, 
and what to do next. Obviously, one 
would hope that any complaint would 
ever get to this stage. 

Membership: 
People who join the club will have a 
personal membership to it. They may 
not join the club as a company, 
publisher or software distributor or 
hardware vendor. 


Newsletter and reviews: 
The Commodore Computer Club (UK) 
is an independent user group which 
will review and stock all appropriate
wares. We will do so on merit only, 
and invite all members to have their 
say about any literature published 
through the newsletter or any reviews 
written on behalf of the club. We will
invite hardware and software vendors 
and publishers to have their say on 
reviews written, and we will publish 
their comments through the newsletter.

====END====



