Generation Commodore 64

June Meeting Highlights!

2011-06-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all came out for our June PSCUG meeting. It was tons of fun, and some super pizza. Here are some of the highlights from this months meeting. Thank you to all who came out!

- Goog showed his Stereo SID Board and played some stereo SID tunes

- A Comet64 in a clear cartridge case

- SX-64 with wifi access, using Easy Flash and V-1541

- Vic-20 multi-game cartridge, showing Jungle Hunt

- Used Group Zork chat on CommodoreServer

- Showed a Plus/4, along with software on cassette

- Gene and Pinacolada working on Land of Spur bug

- Agent Friday's Enhancer 2000 disk drive

- Yummy pizza provided by Farrelli's, courtesy of Nightlord

- Used KipperBASIC and RR-NET to write simple chat messages on CommodoreServer's chat room

- Nightlord working on his chat program for CommodoreServer (shown is a picture of his connection to the chat room along with the RR-NET chat program)

- Agent Friday chatting back to both

- Nightlord playing some Ghosts N Goblins on the C64

- Agent Friday demoing his 38.4K baud for the RS-232 port, and his circuit for testing

- This last pic is a game on the Plus/4... Petals of Doom!

A big thank you to Goog from PDXCUG.ORG for his huge contribution in making these meetings possible. Sign onto COMMODORESERVER.COM chat today!

June 19th PSCUG Meeting!

2011-06-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder to everyone that we will be holding our 3rd PSCUG meeting at the Pierce County Library Sumner, Wa. this Sunday June 19th @ 5:20pm-11:00pm. Bring your friends and family. We will be discussing more Commodore goodnesss. Bring your retro Commodore and computer gear that you would like to show off. To the left of this blog there are directions. If anyone has any questions feel free to drop me a line or follow me on Twitter @psc64. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Introductions
Announcements
Presentations
Show and Tell
Q&A
Group Project
Tinker time
Discussion
Gaming time

May Meeting Highlights...Our 2nd official PSCUG club meeting!

2011-05-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to our May meeting. Every meeting is getting better, and the Commodore projects and ideas are enriching. We had a few presentations that were filled with Commodore excitement and generated continual encouragement and improvement to the ever-growing Commodore community. For those who couldn't attend for whatever reason, you missed out. Club member, engineer, and significant Commodore community contributor Gene B brought his projector for us to watch Tron 2010, and show off some presentations. Thank you Gene! Thanks to those who traveled from great distances to attend the meeting. Here are some of the highlights from our May 15th meeting:

- GenCom64 presented GeoRam, GeoPublish, Wheels 128, and Maniac Mansion Gold running on the C64C with GeoRam. Download Maniac Mandion Gold here, Wheels 128 here, GeoPublish help here. Teenage Mutant Hero Heros game was demonstrated on the Educator 64.

- Gsteemso gave a presentation on his IEC Serial Commodore Bus extender which will be ready soon for use, and will have the capability to network Commodore computers. He also discussed the upcoming formation of a new retro-computer group.

Goog presented the EZFlash cartridge and the Comet64 modem using his Commodore SX-64 and WiFi. He also showed off the Tron game for the Commodore 64. For more information about his CommodoreServer and the Comet 64 modem please check out his website CommodoreServer.Com, and PDXCUG.Org. Goog also showed off an early German Commodore 64 production video on the projection screen! What a neat video of early C64 production. Just make sure you brush up on your German.

NightLord demonstrated the his graphics editor that would allow .gif and .jpeg images to be translated into images suitable for the C64 by color coordinating the images with 16 Color Pallet. He uses this to assist in his game and DemoScene creations.

Pinacolada gave an update on his TADA (Totally Awesome Dungeon Adventure) game that is a remake of the famous Land of Spur for the Apple II. For more information on his recent additions to the C64 remake, please check out his blog here

-Gene B showed off his latest YouTube video for his screen framework assembly and test rigging. To view the video click here

- Tron 2010 was shown on the projector with pizza and Stacy's homemade chocolate chip cookies to be devoured by everyone.

- An introduction and presentation to one of the earliest C64 computers the Educator 64.

- Several Commodore machines and devices were shown off such as:
- Commodore Amiga CD32 game console
- Commodore 128DCR computer
- Amiga 1080 and 1084S monitors
- Commodore SX64 portable executive computer
- Commodore Vic-1541 disk drive
- Commodore 1581 disk drive
- Commodore Educator 64 computer
- Commodore 1530 datasette player
- Commodore 64c computer with 1541c disk drive
- Geos GeoRam

Our next meeting we will be continuing to dive into GeoPublish and be working on more fix-its for Commodore computer repairs and updates. Stay tuned.

Commodore in May meetings greetings retro fun May 15th Sumner....

2011-05-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

A reminder to all our Seattle-Tacoma area Commodore fans that we will be holding our PSCUG, every 3rd Sunday of the month, Commodore meeting May 15th @5:20pm-11:00pm Pierce County Library in Sumner, Wa. The location and address are located on the left-hand column of the blog. Feel free to bring any Commodore or retro hardware/software to the meetings to show off. Our last meeting was a huge success, and we look forward to a bigger turnout this next Sunday. If you have any ideas that you would like to share before the meeting, or just have questions in general send me an email. For last meeting highlights please check out PSCUG.ORG Tons of Commodore fun.

Puget Sound Commodore Users Group (PSCUG) Launched!

2011-04-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Last night we had our first PSCUG meeting at the Pierce County Library in Sumner, Wa. Highlights and photos for the event can be found on the http://pscug.org website. It was truly a remarkable event with several guest speakers that gave some of the best presentations in the Commodore community. The meetings will be held every 3rd Sunday of each month. The next two meetings are scheduled on May 15th and June 19th @5:20pm-11:00pm. Don't forget our sister group PDXCUG.org in Portland Oregan serving the greater PDX - Portland Metropolitan area is having it's meeting Tuesday April 19th @ 5:00pm. Details located here for the PDXCUG meeting.

Upcoming Commodore Meetings...

2011-03-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to let everyone in the PNW know that there will be some important dates to mark on your calendars for upcoming Commodore meetings. Starting April 17th we will be kicking off Commodore meetings in Sumner, Washington! For those of you who are in the Seattle/Tacoma area and have been looking for other Commodore Users/Enthusiasts to hang out with, this is it. The meetings start at 5:20pm and run until 11:00pm every third Sunday of the month at the Pierce County Library 1116 Fryar Ave Sumner, WA 98390. Scheduled thus far April 17th, May 15th, and June 19th. Feel free to send suggestions or ideas of contest and/or projects you would like to see at the meetings. More details, and the calendar can be found here http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/UPCHUG_Amiga_C64/ We are gonna have some fun. Would love to have guest speakers come and chat, and new ideas introduced. We will be following an agenda similar to the Portland Commodore Users Group http://pdxcug.org :

Introductions
Announcements
Presentations
Show and Tell
Q&A
Group Project
Tinker time
Discussion
Gaming time

Hope to see you all!

MSD SD-1 and MSD SD-2 Super Disk Drive Repair

2011-03-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

I thought adding a section on the repair of the MSD SD-1 and MSD SD-2 Super Drive would be helpful to all out there that have the common problem of an old MSD drive that just quit working. One of the most common problems with the MSD drives is the capacitors. The capacitors installed on the drive motor circuit boards leak electrolyte. After years of the electrolyte leaking the corrosion begins to eat away at the traces on the circuit board, and cause damage to nearby circuit board components.
   As you can see in this picture, the leaking capacitor has spewed electrolyte all over the surrounding area causing traces to be eaten as pointed out with the arrow. The ICs near the capacitors also need to be removed and checked for underlying corrosion caused by the leaking capacitors. In the following pictures you see where the IC SN7406N has been removed to further clear any damage done cause by electrolyte. You will need some Isopropyl Alcohol, a toothbrush, solder, soldering iron, desoldering braid, and a small flat head srewdriver (to scrape) for the job.
   First, open the drive up and carefully remove the drive board from the drive mechanism. There are 3 screws holding the board down, and 4 circuit plug-ins. Be careful not to yank the plug-ins. Once the board is removed you will see that there 5 capacitors. 2 on the right, 1 on top, and 2 on the left. The capacitors you will need are 16v 10μF, and 16v 47μF. Be careful not to order caps that are too tall, as they will rub against the adjacent drive when re-installed. You can order supplies from http://www.jameco.com  The pictures on the left show the sequence of repair on the leaking capacitors. The 3rd-5th picture on the left show the eaten traces repaired, the IC removed, and the capacitors replaced.
   Carefully desolder the capactitors, and IC that need to be replaced. Use desoldering braid, on the back of the circuit board, and a hot soldering iron to remove the solder. *Note: mark down the polarity of the capacitor before removing, so that when replaced they are in the correct position, and any plated holes covered over by corrosion should be poked through with a tiny wire. Rock the now loose capacitors back and fourth until the capacitors are removed. Once they have been removed, use a toothbrush with alcohol to clean the surrounding area. Once thoroughly brushed down, use a small flathead screwdriver or razor to scrape the area down to the copper traces. Be careful not to remove the trace itself. If for any reason the trace has been removed, you can use solder or quick grid repair compound to mend the trace.
   As you can see on my board on the right, I scraped a good deal of corrosion down to the copper on my board. It is important to know where everything is before scraping, so that when you are replacing the capacitors and ICs that they are replaced in the proper position. Replace the capacitors and IC, and resolder them into their correct position using a hot soldering iron and rosin core solder.
   Carefully reinstall the board back on the drive mechanism upon repair. *Note: ensure all cables are reattached before turning the drive back on. Below is the drive mechanism circuit board schematic for reference:

The leaking capacitors are the most common problem with the MSD super drives. You will notice when you turn your drive on that it may blink 7 times. This is an indication that their is a problem with your drive mechanism. Here is a list of errors noted by the LED on the MSD panel when applying power to the drive:

 Number of Flashes         Component
                             1               Microprocessor U7
                             2                    RAM Ul
                             3                    RkM U2
                             4                    RAM U3
                             5                    ROM U5
                             6                    ROM U6
                             7               Drive Mechanism

The MSD Super Drive user manual is loacted here: http://staff.washington.edu/rrcc/uwweb/MSD%20SD-2/MSD.TXT

Diagrams and scehmatics for
the MSD SD-1 and SD-2 main board are on Ray Carlsen's schematics website:
http://staff.washington.edu/rrcc

Complete downloads for MSD SD-2 here

     A big thanks to Ray Carlsen and his work for helping the Commodore community continue to lead the way in the 21st century!

MSD SD-2 Super Disk Drive

2011-02-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

   I recently added a MSD SD-2 Super Disk Drive to my Commodore collection, and was thrilled to own a piece of MSD history. The device comes complete with an MSD IEEE-C64 connector. This connector lets you connect any IEEE device to the C64. IEEE-488 interface was typical to Commodore PET and early CBM computers from the late 70s and early 80s. The MSD-2 also has serial cable inputs that lets you connect to any Vic-20 or C64/128 computer using a standard serial cable.
   The MSD Super Disk Drives were the first third-party peripherals designed for compatibility with the Commodore 64. What makes this drive so unique is that it contained two onboard drives that used the Commodore DOS duplicate command used on Commodore PET computers that would allow you to copy an entire disk from one drive to the other in less than two minutes, and format a disk in 18 seconds. This was a substantially faster time than the 1541 of the day. The MSD SD-2 came standard using device 8 and 9, but could be changed with a simple change in the jumper cable located inside the cover. MSD made sturdy, quality Commodore compatible products that were quite popular in the early to mid 1980s. The MSD SD-2 was listed in RUN magazine in January 1985 at $449.95.
   The MSD SD-2 was, and still is, an excellent source for quickly copying disks for use and dispersement. There are some limitations with the drive that keeps some copy protected programs from loading due to the difference in DOS code and memory mapping. If you happen to come across one of these you will be one of the few that claim to have ownership of one. Mine currently has an error code that signifies that there is something wrong with the drive mechanism, so this will be a fun repair project at one of our next Commodore meetings in either Portland, Oregon @ www.pdxcug.org, or Tacoma Washington @ UPCHUG meeting. Link to the MSD SD-2 user manual. Link to MSD-2 Wiki writeup. Here is a link to the CMD unofficial homepage for more Commodore rare peripherals.

University Place Commodore Home Users Group (UPCHUG)

2011-01-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

A few of us got together to discuss our various projects when Greg and Steve of PDXCUG.org dropped by. Unfortunately, we scheduled it for a weekday morning, so a lot of people had to work instead of attending, but we still heard about some fascinating projects and ideas from the five who did make it. We also discussed ideas for promoting the arrangement of regular monthly meetings in the Seattle-Tacoma area, which unfortunately has not been a reality in the past year or two.

The University Place Commodore Home Users Group (UPCHUG) dates back to at least the late 90's, and was created for like minded Commodore and Amiga enthusiasts in the greater Tacoma metro area. They currently have a UPCHUG Yahoo User Group that keeps track of the meetings and messages by its members. Their current webpage is located at http://www.upchug.com/. Future meetings will be scheduled in advance, and will be published on the UPCHUG Yahoo User Group forum. Please note the user group calendar for upcoming events and meetings. Please refer to the calendar for updates and changes. Note: No meetings are currently scheduled past the 28th of January 2011.

Contact any member of the posted Yahoo Group for further details.

Commodore Vic-20 demo: Vici Iterum MMII

2011-01-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

For those out there that doubt what 5KB of graphics memory, and a 1 MHz processor can do on a Commodore Vic-20 you need to watch this demo. The Commodore Vic-20 was announced by Commodore in 1980 and was also called the VC-20 in Germany, and the Vic-1001 in Japan. The CPU used the MOS 6502 processor, and memory is expandable up to 64KB. Over 300 software titles were available on Cartridge, and 500+ titles on tape. Following the PET generation, the Commodore Vic-20 used a serial interface to daisy chain disk drives and a user port for RS-232 type connections. The graphics capabilities of the VIC chip (6560/6561) were limited but flexible. At startup the screen showed 176 x 184 pixels, with a fixed-colour border to the edges of the screen; since an NTSC or PAL screen has a 4:3 width-to-height ratio, each VIC pixel was much wider than it was high. The screen normally showed 22 columns and 23 rows of 8-by-8-pixel characters; it was possible to increase these dimensions but the characters would soon run out the sides of the monitor. Like on the PET, 256 different characters could be displayed at a time, normally taken from one of the two character generators in ROM (one for upper-case letters and simple graphics, the other for mixed-case—non-English characters were not provided). In the usual display mode, each character position could have its foreground colour chosen individually, and the background and screen border colours were set globally. A character could be made to appear in another mode where each pixel was chosen from 4 different colours: the character's foreground colour, the screen background, the screen border and an "auxiliary" colour; but this mode was rarely used since it made the pixels twice as wide as they normally were.
The Commodore Vic-20 is a remarkable and easy to use computer the was the preprocessor to the famous Commodore 64. Enjoy this video created by Pasi Ojala and music by Anders Carlsson http://www.cs.tut.fi/~albert/Pu-239/v...

CommodoreServer.com - LOAD games from Internet .D64 files to your Commod...

2011-01-15T19:51:00.000-08:00

Oregon and Washington are on the move

2011-01-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of attending one of the best Commodore clubs out there. The Portland Commodore Users Group PDX extended a warm welcome to us as we traveled from Orting, Wa.   We enjoyed an amazing evening learning about the Comet64 Internet Modem, which connects a real Commodore 64 to the Internet. It can connect to any Internet server, but in its default configuration, it connects to CommodoreServer.com using virtual disk drive (V-1541) software to access your own D64 and PRG files. Newer software allows for speed up to 38.4K, blowing away speeds of a real 1541 disk drive, putting it close to Jiffy-DOS speed. There is also software that can download D64s and copy them on to floppy disks (and vice-versa) so you can archive your disk collection and share them with friends easily. And now, with VICE 2.2, you can access CommodoreServer without the need for special hardware works on the C64 emulator Vice 2.2 download.
   A presentation was given on the new gaming service for the CommodoreServer where a new game soon to be released was demonstrated. This unique online gaming service also gives you the ability to chat on the server while gaming. It was way cool to watch. We also listened to Earl Evans from RetroBits Podcast give a presentation on Buddy Assembler for the Commodore 128 with it's unique ability to program in both Basic and Assembly Language.
   Following Earl's presentation we were shown The Turbomaster Accelerator for the C64 that cranks up the C64's processing power to 4MHz. Karate Champ and several other programs were all tested, and without a doubt it speed up the programs. The Atari Team gave us a presentation of early development and production of Atari games for all the early consoles, including the Commodore 64. It was exciting to meet them. We had tons of questions about some of the best in early Atari gaming.
   The founders of Portland Commodore Users Group PDX have worked for years putting together a group that would gather other like minded Commodore enthusiasts to continue using and demonstrating one of the best selling and most popular computers of all time, the Commodore 64. Their intentions are sincere and genuine, with only the best ideas to help and work with other users out there. I look forward to learning chip assembly and programming at one of the future meetings. I highly recommend the group and their mission to anyone in the Washington and Oregon area. They are open to new ideas, so if you have an interest send them a line on their website http://pdxcug.org.

New Year of Commodore Goodness

2011-01-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone! I had the pleasure of attending a Commodore event last night and had an awesome time. I learned all kinds of new and interesting things about retro computing and some of the cutting edge devices I have ever seen in the 8 bit computing era. The coolest one was the Vectrex. This thing is by far one of the neatest gaming devices I have ever seen. The Vectrex is a vector display -based video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering . It was licensed and distributed first by General Consumer Electric Milton Bradley Company after their purchase of GCE. It was released in November 1982 at a retail price of $199 ($440 compensated for inflation^[1]); as Milton Bradley took over international marketing the price dropped to $150 and then $100 shortly before the video game crash of 1983 .

^{I got to play Pole Position, and Berzerk on this console and it was truly worth the play. It feels like you are back in an 80s mini arcade. I also meet an actual Commodore digital synth musician named Andreus @ www.greightbit.com. This gentleman was amazing. He takes both Nintendo GameBoys and Commodore 64 and turns them into musical instruments that he uses to create low-end 8-Bit synth beats. He gave me a sample of some of his GameBoy music on a portable amplifier he had, and I have to say I was impressed. The AllConsolesGamer shared with me some of his latest YouTube videos and adventures with the latest on Bayou Billy for the NES. I recommend subscribing to his channel. He is quite entertaining and gives great reviews on the best in video gaming.}

Have a Merry Commodore Christmas

2010-12-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

When I was 8 years old I received my first Commodore 64 for Christmas complete with a 1530 Datasette player, Frogger II Threedeep, Jumpman Junior, and Congo Bongo cartridges. This was one of the best Christmases I ever had. I spent days in my bedroom playing games, and attempting to write short Basic programs my uncle had taught me on an early Apple Mac. It wasn't too long after that I was loading games on my 1530 and anxiously waiting for the flashing lights of the game loads to complete. It is still so neat to see that after all these years the C=64 is thriving. Enjoy this short demo that can be downloaded here. Merry Christmas!

ComputerEyes by Digital Vision for the Commodore 64

2010-11-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

ComputerEyes is one of those extremely rare C= devices that we all sought after in the 80's. This little device captures light using a little black box that connects to your C=64's RS232 port by attaching to a video cam or still photo camera. It continuously scans the light source and adjusts using the Sync and Brightness knobs on the black box. The device was premier for it's time, and was an intro into the 8-Bit digitized photo world. The ComputerEyes device photographed in the top left corner of this post is my actual ComputerEyes I acquired for next to nothing from a fellow Commodore collector. There are several additional software add-ons that you can use with the device to make the pictures compatible with Doodle!, Koala, and Geos. Having these programs can be handy when you want to print or save the photos. Here is a link to download that contains the user manual and all the original .d64 software to download if you have the device and are looking for the program to use with it. Of course you will need some sort of transfer from PC device such as Jim Brain's SD/uIEC device, or by using Star Commander with an old 386/486 PC computer and an X1541 cable. To the left is a scanned page copy of an original ComputerEyes ad from Run Feb. '86 Magazine. Notice the price is $129.95. That would equate to about $259.40 in today's market! There are some new programs out there that take a PC picture and create a .d64 image to load on your C=64. In my opinion, this is a cool breakthrough. Now you can see your actual color image taken on your PC camera digitized for view on your C=64. Here is the link for the website on that. If anyone has any pictures taken with ComputerEyes please post them here for all to see and enjoy.

The Three Stooges...

2010-11-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

I recently won this game on Ebay, and could not wait to break into the box and play this game. I had played it once before on the NES and thought it was quite fun. In the picture below I am playing the game on my C128DCR that sits adjacent to my SX64. I use Epyx Fastload on both my systems to decrease load time on my software, and an Epyx 500XJ joystick which, in my opinion, is the best C64 joystick.

The game is quite fun, with the games premise having a noble cause in saving an orphange. The mini-games within the main game actually require a bit of game-play skill. You have to race through a hospital without hitting patients, splat pies on peoples heads, find cash, win at short quizzes based on the Three Stooges cinema life, and find cash. The video below is the Amiga port with fairly decent graphics. The C64 port is not bad and worth the play.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say: The Three Stooges is a video game originally released by Cinemaware in 1987 for the Amiga, based on the comedy act of the same name. In the game, players control Stooges Moe, Larry and Curly in minigames based on classic Stooges films with the aim of raising enough money to save an orphanage. The Three Stooges must rescue an old woman's orphanage by earning money in various minigames based on various Three Stooges films. These include cracker-eating contests (based on the Stooges short Dutiful But Dumb) and boxing contests (based on the short Punch Drunks). Players select minigames by timing a button press as a hand randomly points to various symbols representing in-game events, including non-interactive events that can increase the Stooges' cash total. Each event takes up one in-game day - players have thirty in-game days to earn as much money as they can.
Several different game endings are received depending on the amount of money the player has earned after the thirty days, the best of which has the Stooges not only saving but renovating the orphanage and marrying the orphanage owner's three daughters.The game was later ported to the NES and Commodore 64 and released by Activision.Versions for the Game Boy Advance and PlayStation were developed by Metro3D, Inc. and released in 2002. The game was also updated for release on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh as one of Cinemaware's "Digitally Remastered" editions.

Coca-Cola

2010-11-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

I watched a CNBC special tonight and did a little research on the Coca-Cola companies support of the South African economy. I was quite impressed to know that Coca-Cola was one of their main staples in support of their middle class which averages between 3 and 5 thousand equivalent US dollars a year. South Africa's main sport is Soccer aka "Football", and Coca-Cola is continuing it's efforts in support of the South African economy by their Global Marketing Campaign to Support Sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ Unveiled at Global Press Conference in Zurich. I enjoy studying economics, and believe that an open market with free trade improves lives and the economy throughout the world. Way to go Coca-Cola. I enjoy Coke, but now I have a reason to drink Coke more to help support a growing global economy. Enjoy this Coca-Cola Classic Video created on a Commodore 64 by

Deus Ex Machina. Drink Coke!

Troubleshooting and Repairing an SX64

2010-11-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

So today I am diving into repairing one of my SX64s. Most of you know that these machines can be in need of repair from time-to-time. The issue I am working on today relates to the screen prompt that comes up when I turn the machine on. Sometimes the screen goes completely blank, and other times I turn it on all the letters are garbled up. I have a breadbox 64 that I am using to pull spare chips from to try. According to Ray Carlsen's notes this can be caused for a variety of reasons, and gives a list of suspect chips to replace. I've replaced the UB2 906108-02 (6526) CIA on I/O board, and still the same issue. I've replaced the 901225-01 CHARACTER ROM on CPU board and still no change. The next chip I am trying to replace is the UD3 251104-01 KERNAL ROM on CPU board, but there doesn't seem to be a c64 replacement in the breadbox for this. I am researching to see if there is a duplicate for this chip on the C64. I have a feeling that the Kernal Rom is in fact the culprit. I will keep everyone updated on how this turns out. Last time I had an issue with the Ready cursor not being present and all I had to do was replace the 6526 and all was well in the world. I was able to replace the SX64 Kernal Rom with the breadbox 64 Kernal Rom which is the 901227-03 in the breadbox. It just gives you the standard blue screen C64 instead of the white and light blue SX64 screen with the 251104-01 chip, but they are interchangeable. After I replaced them there was still the garbled screen. So the next culprit was the VIC chip 6567.
After replacing the VIC chip it turns out it was the UF4 906109-04 (6567) VIC (has heat sink attached) on CPU board.
"Blank white screen, no border. Sometimes will produce garbage or
"checkerboard" screen, or screen that lacks contrast. If screen is
blank or garbled from bad VIC, "blind" disk commands from keyboard
-may- still work."
http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/sx64.txt

Ray Carlsen is the man.

C64 Arkanoid Music

2010-11-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

AMIGA-Demo "9 Fingers" von "Spaceballs"

2010-11-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

9FINGERS AMIGA DEMO original

2010-11-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

Geos Operating System

2010-11-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Having learned early basic programming on a 128K Apple Macintosh I definitely grew and affinity to the graphical user interface type of setup. The C64 and C128 both had similar user interface environments that could be loaded onto the machine through one of your choice of drives such as the 1541, 1571, or 1581. Later the development of Ram Drives were introduced such as the 1700 (128k), 1764 (256k), the 1750 (512k), and the Geos 512k GeoRam. GEOS (G raphic Environment Operating System) is an operating system from Berkeley Softworks (later GeoWorks). , GEOS took full advantage of many of the add-ons and improvements available for these systems. Commodore's 1351 mouse was supported by GEOS, as were its various RAM expansion units. GEOS 128 also fully supported the C128's 640×200 high-resolution VDC display mode through a compatible RGB monitor.

The C64 version of GEOS incorporated a built-in fast loader, called diskTurbo, that significantly increased the speed of drive access on the slow 1541. (GEOS 128 could take advantage of the C128's enhanced "burst mode" in conjunction with the 1571 and 1581 drives.)

Geos is a fun to use program that gives the C64/128 the feel of a powerful 16-bit machine. Many accessory programs came out to work along with the standalone program such as:

geoBASIC

geoCable

geoCalc

geoChart

geoDex

geoDraw

geoFAX

geoFile

geoFont

geoLabel

geoPaint

geoPrint

geoProgrammer

geoPublish

geoSpell

geoWrite

geoWrite Workshop

I personally own Geos 1.2 and 2.0 for the C64. I'm looking to score a copy of Geos 128. I've also got the 1700 and 1764 ram expansion along with the 1351 mouse. I have a 1350 mouse laying around somewhere that can also be used. If you have any useful ideas, or creations from Geos feel free to post. I'm looking forward to transferring some pictures I take with ComputerEyes to Geos format to play with. More info...

The Last Ninja - Commodore 64

2010-11-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

Washington represents Commodore...

2010-11-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

With the election results and the countries economy looming in the poles, there is still a great movement already started that is the Commodore 64. This computer dates back to 1982 and is one dynamic machine with thousands of games and programs that were programmed, and a demo and SID music mantra that beats strong throughout Europe. I'm excited to start a blog that we can all share our passions for this machine, and any other Commodore device that suits you. My collection is vast with many of the parts purchased off of Ebay, but also many others collected from people just looking to offload. Please feel free to post a picture of your current setup, favorite game, or just to share your passion for Commodore.