********************
** Commodore Free **
********************

Issue Number 3

Editorial
*********

Issue Number 3 amazingly the 
magazine is round again. I wonder 
where your copy of this issue  

came from, emailed via a friend, 
picked up at some function, doesn?t 
really matter where the  

issue came from as long as you have it 
in your hand that?s all that counts. 
What did you think  

of this and other issues? 

I am conscious that some (or lots) of 
spelling and grammatical errors are in 
the issues,  

although I try to remove anything I 
see, I am no literary genius that?s for 
sure, please  

remember that, the magazine is taking 
up far more time than I had imagined, 
the last issue took  

altogether over 50 hours of work from 
start to finish. 

I hope to have a magazine compiled 
about 1 issue every 2 months, of 
course real life gets in  

the way if I have more time then it may 
continue to be 1 per month, I have to 
do real work for  

a living but that?s the goal. 

I have only had 1 reader write in so far 
with a review, obviously finding and 
writing up the  

news is the hardest part of any 
magazine. 

Feel free to promote your website, 
application or just news you have 
heard, send me an email  

with just a weblink if you prefer, share 
that news around.

Well that?s it for the intro lets see 
what?s in this magazine 

www.commodorefree.com

PS
Anti-spam agent has gone mad in my 
inbox, if you are emailing me please 
use the subject  

?COMMODORE FREE? then I know 
its not spam 

Thanks
Nigelp2k@yahoo.co.uk (Commodore 
free)

Many thanks again goto LOADSTAR 
who have helped out with the disk 
version of the Magazine.
I have also been asked to stick to a 
standard size of text (I sometimes goto 
7 or 7.5 pointsize  

to fit the articles better on the page) ok 
from next issue I will TRY to adopt a 
standard of 8  

points  

The disk magazine is far too much for 
me to manage, I don?t have the time to 
check and reformat  

the text properly (as you can tell) so I 
ask if someone else can check the text, 
I will supply  

the editor needed and the Text in 
ASCII format. 

To everyone who contributed with 
donations via the website I thanks you, 
I haven?t named names  

but you know who you are.

Again If you have any articles or 
information please feel free to pass it 
on to other users via  

this magazine 
 
THANKS 
****************

Index 

Editorial / Index	Page 2 
Readers Comments	Page 3
News			Page 4/ 5 /10
Ebay finds		Page 6
Flac64 flash 64		Page 7
Commodore 64 Browser	Page 8 /9
Vic 20 disk Cartridge	Page 11
Vic 20 Html walker	Page 12
Vic 20 Tracker		Page 13
Commodore 65 		Page 14
Keep up withCommodore 	Page 15/16 
Creative Micro Designs	Page 17 /18 
Website Highlight	Page 19
Laser printing 		Page 20
ECCC DVD 		Page 21
Dumb old machines 	Page 22
Commodore Free disk Mag	Page 23
Fairlight Cd rom  	Page 24/25 
C128 Roms		Page 26/27
End 			Page 28

Now available in a disk format for 
readers who requested this format. 
However the time it takes  

to produce such a magazine is 
extensive and even more errors have 
crept in, I don?t really have  

the time to re-edit this so again I plee 
for anyone with spare time and some 
typing skills to  

help me out.

Anyone could help me with this even if 
its just reading and correcting spelling 
mistakes, Also  

help with the magazine would be 
appreciated 

Thanks 

www.commodorefree.com

****************************************

Readers Letters
***************
Ok more comments here we go :

Hello Nigel

This is Luke Lynde from Australia. I 
really like your Commodore Free PDF 
magazine! I have 5  

Commodore 64 keyboards, all 
working, with 4 power supplies, 2 
xe1541 cables, and 2 av leads  

with left/right audio for stereo input. I 
love listening to real c64 SID tunes on 
my new 160W  

Panasonic Midi Hi-Fi. 6581 definitely 
has a charm about it, but generally I 
guess 8580 is more  

common, and has improved sound 
qualities over 6581. 2 of my machines 
have 8580, 3 have 6581.

A couple of C64 keyboards I have, 
have problems with the RF modulator, 
but I don't bother to  

fix it - as I use strictly AV to my 34cm 
TV - note that 34cm is the "ideal size" 
for C64! When  

you go larger screens, you do lose the 
tightness of the pixels, and it will look 
a lot worse,  

especially if your video on c64 is not 
100% perfect (age, the main factor 
involved here).  

Monitors are probably better, but are 
less reliable than a keyboard all-in-one 
breadbin /  

slim-line unit, disk drives being the 
worst - as far as problems go. 3 out of 
my 5 keyboards I  

would say are in 85-90% condition, the 
other 2 around 70-80%.

I eliminate all use of 1541 drives, 
because I use 64HDD on an early 
pentium 1 laptop with 1.2  

gig hard drive, most of that filled with 
PRG and D64 files - the rest contains 
Windows 3.11  

installed, and some chess games for 
DOS?! PSID64 is a great utility for 
converting SID files on  

PC into a PRG format easily readable 
with 64HDD. I also have a 486-33 
laptop that runs 64HDD  

well, also - but it only has 200Mb Hard 
Drive. My main machine though is 
Pentium 4, 2Ghz, 512Mb  

Ram, etc!

Anyway, I enjoy your magazine, and 
really hope that it continues on, for 
some time to come! I  

also do an english PDF magazine, 
called Joystix. Look for it on CSDB 
and you will find a link  

there, if you wanted to put it as some 
advertisement for your magazine! It 
contains retro game  

reviews with screen shots, and 
minimalist design - something simple. 
Joystix 1 was bad, Joystix  

2 is a lot better.

If you want some article on retro game 
reviews (or PC emulation) for C64, or 
about the C64  

scene, anything C64, let me know - I 
will do them in TXT format, like this.

See you mate!

Luke Lynde
Australia (Kangaroos, Koala Bears, 
and Paul Hogan.)

PS - I also use real c64 about 1-2 hours 
every day. I like the latest version of 
CCS64 on PC,  

though. WinVice is good, especially 
for sound. I hope this letter makes the 
letter section of  

the mag :) I would say I have been a 
Commodore 64 disciple since 1988 ;)

PPS- If you want an article, I can send 
it to you in .D64 format, and will 
include the  

wordprocessor Mini Office 2. If you 
use the printer emulation under 
WinVice, it outputs as a  

99% perfect text file - Capitals and 
lower case, everything! Quite 
impressive.

Commodore Free
Thanks for the Comments and super 
long file if anyone wants to read this 
magazine here is the  

link, Does this mean I have some sort 
of competition? J

Here is a link to the magazine 
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/getinternal
file.php/24082/joystix #1.pdf
AND

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/getinternal
file.php/33732/Joystix2.pdf


Hi! Just wanted to say Thanks again 
for another quality issue of 
Commodore Free and give a tip  

regarding the Singular Browser (for 
RR-net) that 
was released earlier this year: 
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id
=30400 
since I didn't see it mentioned in the 
Web article. Thanks and keep it up!!

Regards,
RaveGuru/Instinct

Commodore Free
RaveGuru/Instinct
Thanks for the Comments, and this 
Browser looks great, Rest assured I 
will have a full review,  

and as if by magic its in this very issue.


Hi Nigel,
Just to say "well done" on Commodore 
Free from an Ex CS subscriber :(I only 
heard about it  

tonight and am very impressed!
Cheers Colin
http://vcsweb.com/~colinjt/

Commodore Free
Collin thanks for the comments to bad 
your website isn?t maintained 
anymore!


Nigel, Finally got time to look at 
Commodore Free. EXCELLENT 
WORK!

Dave Moorman

Commodore Free
Dave many thanks for the nice 
comments, also thanks for all your help 
with my disk version of  

the magazine. Yes that?s right I am 
going to do a TEXT magazine version 
as a downloadable disk  

image. 


Your Commodore Free magazine is 
incredible!  Thank you so much
Mercury7

Commodore Free
Again many thanks 


Grate work, grate Mag.
I am (or was) a Commodore Scene 
reader right to the end and I was pretty 
sad that it all ended  

:-(  There is nothing better than a peace 
of paper to read about the Commodore, 
website can a  

so boring.
 Looking forward to see the next 
issue.Thanks,
Allen Monks Web site: 
www.commodorecheetah.co.uk

Commodore Free
Alan, I agree with the paper mag 
comments yes I like to have a real 
magazine to read, you can  

take it anywhere, although some 
readers still ask for a disk magazine. 
I have created a magazine with the 
help of Dave moorman, available for 
download shortly  its  

noting fancy just basically a text  
version with menu


If anyone doesn?t want comments 
printed please state in the Email, I 
haven?t printed addresses,  

unless you state you want them printed 
with the Email


****************************************

News 1
********
WWW.COMMODORE16.com

SIXTEENPLUS
i have been busy for the last month 
typing in these games from old 
magazines for future  

preservation and no more headaches 
for anyone...it took me eighteen years 
to finally finish  

Egyptian Tomb which must hold some 
sorta record (my bro switched 
computer off as i was about to  

error-check it way back then, i knew i 
should've done a regular save) 

anyway... The first batch of games... 
Flight Master - Commodore Horizons - 
issue 15 (march 85) 
Dot Racer - Commodore User - issue 
20 (may 85) 
Tunnel - Commodore User - issue 33 
(june 86) 
Egyptian Tomb - Commodore User - 
issue 42 (march 87) 

and more shall follow...in due course--
----------
The C16 Magazine Game Listing 
Resurrections
Appreciation to Mort from the Zzap64 
site for the C16 listings.you can buy 
the magazine DVD's  

from the Zzap Zzuperstore on their site

'Your Commodore' game listings are 
now available.
I am still awaiting for the completion 
of the CCI scans.
These are all the listings from various 
magazines, some of which still needs 
to be  

done.meanwhile, anyone who fancies 
having a crack at what's left are 
appreciated and of course  

you'll get the main credits for anything 
you submit.

If anyone has any other magazine/book 
game listing scans/.prg files they can 
donate it would  

greatly help the future growth of the 
whole C16/+4 scene.

Send your .prg submissions to me here 
and let us know in the forum, 
thanks.You can also email  

me on the above link for any 
comments and suggestions.Above all 
else, enjoy
Sixteen Plus.

Link to All Games
http://www.commodore16.com/listings
.htm


****************************************
IDE 64 Interface
*****************

idedos 20061110 (0.90 patch 31) 20:36  

This release adds EPCLink support, 
which means that now it?s possible to 
use a ETFE or RR-Net  

card for highspeed transfers through 
the IDEDOS PCLink network drive. 
Reading speed reaches up  

to 40 kB/s (writing at 20 kB/s), which 
makes burning CDs for huge data 
transfers pointless.  

Unfortunately currently it?s not so easy 
to get an ETFE card or connect RR-
Net simply  

(RR+RR-Net+portexpander), but let?s 
hope this will change soon ;)

http://idedos.ide64.org
 

****************************************
MMC plugin D81 Writer
*********************
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id
=43433
D81 writer plugin V0.1 for MMC64 by 
tnt is available.
D81 writer plugin V0.1

Important:

This is version 0.1, lacking IEC mode 
and all error detection. Make sure your 
C64 has burst mod  

(*1) and that you have disk in 1581 
before pressing RETURN. 

Verify errors hang C64 and 1581, and 
you need to reset both to continue. 
Plugin also sometimes hangs when it 
should start writing, forcing 
you to reset too. BAM copy isn't 
implemented either.

Now the lighter side:

D81 plugin is the fastest method to 
write D81 images to disk on C64. 
Without format/verify that  

takes only 64 seconds. If disk needs to 
be formatted, D81 writer beats 
OmniFlop (*2) too as it  

requires separate
format pass.

When started, program checks devices 
8-11 to find 1581. If one is found it 
then checks for  

burst mod. After that you are given a 
couple of
options:

8,9,0,1	select device 8-11 (only 
changed if new     device is 1581)
F	toggle format
V	toggle verify
B	toggle BAM copy (if selected, 
only necessary tracks get written to 
disk. !! not  

implemented yet !!)

You will be given time estimation 
according to current options. Plain 
write takes 64 seconds  

with burst mode, format and verify add 
32 seconds
each.

(*1) 
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~albert/Dev/burst/
(*2) 
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFl
op/OmniFlop.htm


****************************************
Metal Warier
************
Maybe this should be other news J

http://covertbitops.c64.org/

NOTE: As of 18th November 2005, 
Metal Warrior (C64) & Metal Warrior 
2 (C64) have been  

exclusively licensed to Alten8 and are 
not to be added to any new download 
locations. However,  

any existing free downloads do not 
have to be removed

About Alten8 Limited 

 http://www.alten8.com/

Alten8 is a new force in the 
development and publishing of games. 
A privately owned, totally  

self financed company, which has 
grown massively in a short space of 
time, because of the  

excellent profit sharing deals it is 
willing to do with its partner 
companies.

Achieving official Nintendo GBA 
developer status early on, and working 
both internally and with  

small new external development teams, 
Alten8 is bringing all new IP to the 
market, as we  

believe, quality games deserve to be 
available for gamers to purchase.

With hundreds of licensed retro games, 
a range of all new current console and 
PC format games,  

and a pipeline of mobile phone and 
other mobile device games, you will 
see a lot more of the  

Alten8 name in the future. 

Visit www.alten8.com to find out 
more.
WILD HARE AND ALTEN8 SIGN 
NORTH AMERICAN PUBLISHING 
AGREEMENT
6th October, 2006


****************************************
News Part 2 Commodore Convention
********************************
The Emergency Chicagoland 
Commodore Convention 2006 video is 
available for your 
viewing pleasure. After much delay, 
this video chronicles the sights and 
sounds and  

demonstrations at the September 30 
ECCC. Video by Craig Ernster and 
me. Edited by Craig  

Ernster. Watch demonstrations by

Craig Ernster on copy protection and 
copiers
David Murray on DTV hacking
Chris "The Wiz" on DirMaster
Craig Ernster again on the 1541-
Supercard

The ECCC 2006 video is available on 
NTSC DVD-R, VHS tape, or Beta 
tape. For information on how  

to obtain the video, send me an e-mail.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug/

DVD review later in this issue of 
Commodore Free magazine 

****************************************
New Version of GUI4CBM4WIN 
0.5.0

I?ve taken the liberty to make some 
modifications to GUI4CBM4WIN

* Converted the VB6 codebase to VB8 
(VB.Net 2005). This does require that 
you have the .Net  

Framework 2.0 (or 3.0) installed to run 
the program. I did this for a couple of 
reasons: 1) The  

.Net Framework makes it much easier 
to deal with external processes; 2) The 
.Net Framework with  

Windows Forms is much easier to 
make dynamically scaling user 
interfaces.

* The user interface can now be 
resized, including maximized.

* I?ve created an MSI installer that 
installs both the GUI4CBM4WIN as 
well as installing and  

registering the OpenCBM 4.0 driver. 
This currently is set up for x86 only. 
I?ll make an x64  

version as well when I get the process 
nailed down.

This initial release is very beta. I?ve 
tried everything I can think of, but 
there may be some  

unintended bugs or unforseen side-
effects from the conversion to .Net 2.0.  

http://blog.paytonbyrd.com/?p=50

****************************************
Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du
KIHP88GVQ  GEOs on Nintendo 
DSGeos Running on a Nintendo DS  

handheld console,  
The Cincinnati Commodore Computer 
Club

It's now official - the Cincinnati 
Commodore Computer Club will be 
hosting its second C4 Expo  

May 5th & 6th at the Drawbridge Inn 
in Ft. 
Mitchell, KY (across the Ohio from 
Cincinnati). 

Special rates for attendees
-	$69.00 + tax/night. 

Details will be available on the 
official web site - http://c4expo.org

Details From the Website
CCCC is pleased to announce that 
we're hosting an expo for Commodore 
enthusiasts on may 5rd and  

6th, 2007.  The event is taking place in 
Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Drawbridge 
Inn.   We will  

have a huge room for demos and 
dealers.  There will be a special room 
rate for C4 attendees as  

well: $69/night + tax!  Reserve a room 
today and help make C4 a hit!

ADMISSION: $10/person or 
$15/family VENDORS: $15/table (6') 
or $35/three tables

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA
yVL7H60EM  

gp2x - Commodore 64 emulation via 
frodo2x GP2X running a Commodore 64 
emulator


**************************************** 
Custom Commodore Vic 20 / Vic20 
music sidstation synth.

I spotted this on ebay and followed the 
auction curious at what the ending 
price might be.  The  

auction ended on the 21st of October 
for a price of $44 with 12 bids. If the 
link still works

http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-
Commodore-Vic-20-Vic20-music-
sidstation-
synth_W0QQitemZ110044669186Q 

Qi

Hello and welcome to our auction!

What we have here is a Commodore 
Vic 20 w/ victracker 2.0 software, a 
1541 disk drive, a 16k  

ram cart to get the software going, and 
all needed cables to start. Those who 
enjoy the sounds  

/ dirt of the c64 and sidstation are 
going to absolutely love the sounds of 
the Vic 20! This  

unit was owned by a local musician / 
circuit bender who just didn't want the 
unit anymore due  

to owning a second system. Everything 
works 100% aside from the disk drive 
which works 2 out of  

5 times at looks a little war torn. 
Maybe it has run it's course? Maybe 
the unit number is  

wrong? (this was suggested by a fellow 
ebayer) Who knows? If you have a 
spare drive, spare  

cable, or knowledge of 1541 
troubleshooting then this shouldn't be a 
problem. If you would like  

us to not ship the drive to save on 
shipping that's totally fine. We can do 
that as it's pretty  

heavy. Once again: the vic works 
great!

The paint job is great! If you have seen 
an original Vic 20 then you know just 
how cool this  

paint job is. No more nasty cream 
colored plastic! Also, you might notice 
a red colored button  

/ key next to the f1 key. It says "panic" 
on it and it's just there for show. It is 
non  

functional but was put there to offset 
the red pinstriping. Cool indeed!

As mentioned this auction comes with 
Victracker 2.0 music software and 
takes advantage of the  

included 16k ram cart. 


****************************************
Commodore 1581 3.5" Floppy Drive 
Kits - C64 C128 VIC20

Ever been to ebay just to late and been 
kicking yourself ever since. I have look 
at this  

auction for new commodore 1581 disk 
drive cases and circuit boards. The 
seller offered these at  

$50 plus postage, and with the 
documentation from the last issue of 
Commodore Free, you would  

have been able to fit any standard P.C. 
3.5 inch floppy disk drive and be 
wallowing in mass  

storage on the cheap. Gutted! I 
certainly am. 

This  auction ended on the 10th of 
August wonder how many units he had 
for sale, the other  

auction picture (not shown here) has a 
picture of about 18 drives. 


http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V
iewItem&item=300015973726#ebayph
otohosting

These are brand new Commodore 1581 
disk drives that Commodore removed 
the drive mechanisms  

from, to use in Amiga drives. 1581s 
allow you to use DSDD 3.5" floppy 
drives for an astounding  

3,160 blocks on each disk. 
The case, logic board, instructions, and 
power supply are included. You supply 
the drive  

mechanism. Any PC floppy drive will 
do, but Amiga drives are preferred. 
I cannot provide any technical support 
for these kits. 
Customers in 220V-land will not 
receive a power supply (these are only 
120V), but the price is  

the same because of the extra shipping. 
You can use 1541-II power supplies 
with these as well. 


****************************************

FLAC64
http://www.juggernart.com/retro/flaC6
4/index.html

What is flaC64 ? 

FlaC64 is a fun Commodore64-style 
user interface online-toy made with 
Flash. This toy simulates  

the User Interface (UI) of a C64. It is 
not an emulator! The Commodore64 
was a revolutionary  

homecomputer system of the early 
80s, a so called microcomputer. If you 
want to know more  

about the famous C64 take a look at 
the C64 related links.

FlaC64 is made with Flash4. To view 
it in your browser you need to have the 
Flashplayer Plugin  

.
To use the "PLAY SID" command of 
flaC64, you need to have the SID 
Plugin .SID modules are music  

files made for the soundchip of the 
Commodore 64. They demonstrate the 
impressing sound  

capabilities of the C64 For further 
informations about the "PLAY SID" 
command read "the  

commands" chapter please. 

FlaC64 is a keyboard based interface. 
You have to type in commands to tell 
flaC64 what to do.  

You can only type lowercase letters a 
to z, flaC64 displaed uppercase.Typing 
the uppercase  

letters A to P changes the color of the 
cursor to one of the sixteen colors of 
the C64 black,  

white, red, cyan, purple, green, blue, 
yellow, orange, brown, lightred, grey1, 
grey2,  

lightgreen, lightblue, grey3. Uppercase 
Q creates a special color effect. To 
show the list of  

the keys you can type "keys" (without 
quotations) and press the "return" key. 
Type "help" or  

"?" and press "return" to get a list of 
the commands flaC64 understands.You 
can escape messages  

of FlaC64 by pressing "q" while they 
are written.

The Keyboard You can use the 
following keys:

a - z lowercase
0 - 9
@ at
. period
, comma
: colon
; semi-colon
+ plus
- hyphen
* asterisk
/ forward slash
= equals
! exclamation mark
? question mark
" double quote
' single quote
~ tilde
% percent
& ampersand
( open parenthesis
) close parenthesis

uppercase A - Q
change the color of the cursor
spacebar
arrow keys
move the cursor
return
confirms a command
delete
deletes one character to the left, in one 
line only
delete forward
deletes a whole line
pos1
sets the cursor home
page up
clears the screen

A command consists of one or two 
words. The first is the keyword, the 
second is the statement.  

A command must fit into one line and 
must be confirmed with the "return" 
key.
These are the commands flaC64 
understands:

HELP shows the list of commands 
?same as HELP

KEYS shows a list of the keys you can 
use

ABOUT shows information about 
flaC64

RESET resets flaC64

COLOR1 'COLOR' sets the 
background color; statement 'COLOR' 
can be:BLACK WHITE RED CYAN 
PURPLE  

GREEN BLUE YELLOW ORANGE 
BROWN LIGHTRED GREY1 
GREY2 LIGHTGREEN LIGHTBLUE 
GREY3
example: COLOR1 RED

COLOR2 'COLOR' sets the 
bordercolor; statements same as 
COLOR1 'COLOR'

SOUND ON turns  sounds on and 
plays the last selected SID

SOUND OFF turns all sounds off and 
stops a SID playing

GOTO 'URL'opens a new browser 
window with the specified 
'URL'example: GOTO 
WWW.JUGGERNART.COM

MAILTO 'EMAIL'shows an e-mail 
form to send an email to the specified 
'EMAIL' address example:  

MAILTO 
JUGGERNART@JUGGERNART.CO
M

LIST 'STATEMENT'lists the content 
of the specified 'STATEMENT';
'STATEMENT' can be: KEYS 
COMMANDS COLORS SIDS LINKS 
PAGES STATS
example: LIST SIDS shows a list of 
the SID modules that can be played 
with the PLAY 'SID'  

command
example: LIST STATS shows the 
number of users of flaC64
example: LIST PAGES shows a list of 
the available subpages; subpages can 
be opened with the  

GOSUB 'PAGE' command

PLAY 'SID'plays a SID module 
specified by 'SID'; 'SID' can be SID1 
SID2 ? SID10SID0 stops a  

playing SID
example: PLAY SID7;the PLAY 'SID' 
command only works with the 
SIDPlugin installed on your  

system

SAVE PREF saves the current user 
settings (colors, sound, sid) in a cookie 
file; next time the  

user opens flaC64 or on RESET, 
flaC64 starts with the saved settings; 
Works with a cookie  

enabled browser only

SAVE DOCSdownloads the flaC64 
user guide

GOSUB 'PAGE' opens a subpage 
defined by 'PAGE' in a new browser 
window example: GOSUB PAGE1

Error messages 
?SYNTAX ERROR
The user typed something flaC64 does 
not understand, or he typed a command 
followed by a  

statement, but no statement is needed.
?UNDEF'D STATEMENT ERROR
A needed statement is missing or 
flaC64 does not understand the typed 
statement.
?BREAK ERROR
A message from flaC64 was escaped 
by the user (by pressing "q").
?EMAIL SYNTAX ERROR
The statement 'EMAIL' of the 
MAILTO command has a wrong 
syntax (for example missing "@").
?SOUND IS OFF ERROR
The user tried to start a sid file with the 
PLAY 'SID' command after the sound 
was turned off  

with SOUND OFF.
?NOT YET IMPLEMENTED ERROR
A known command is not yet 
implemented in the current version of 
flaC64.
Credits Thanks to, Dank an: Jeroen 
Kessels, www.kessels.com, for his 
FlashDB package, fr sein  

FlashDB Paket.

Copyright flaC64 by Markus Eichler 
juggernart@juggernart.comhttp://www
.juggernart.com
flaC64, the flac64.swf and flac64.fla 
files are Copyright  2000-2004 
Markus Eichler. All  

rights reserved.
Any modification to FlaC64 and its 
files is strictly prohibited! Selling, 
licensing or  

distributing the code of this program 
without prior written permission of the 
author is  

expressly forbidden.


****************************************

Commodore 64 web browser 
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id
=30400 

The Singular Crew in cooperation with 
The Dreams presents a graphical 
browser for the C64 and  

C128.

This is a technology preview, not user 
friendly at all, but you can view single 
pages from the  

network with it. Basically it can 
download a html page, pharse it's tags 
and inline stylesheet  

(no external stylesheet support) and 
displays it with various fonts and 
colors on VIC II or VDC  

screen. Tables, forms, frames 
andimages are not supported.

Scrolling backwards is not 
implemented yet. (I use double linked 
lists, so it should be  

possible without much change) 
Scrolling forward can be done by 
pressing space. The parsed page  

must fit into memory, only the first 
64K of C128 mode is used, and no 
superram, +60K, REU or  

whatever is
supported yet. There's no error 
checking done.

Only (E)TFE or RR-net is supported 
currently, as for the original http-load.

The networking is preconfigured in 
"http/s_data.asm" to:

IP: 192.168.0.2
MAC: $44 $52 $45 $41 $4D $53
NETMASK: 255.255.255.0
ROUTER: 192.168.0.1
NAMESERVER: 192.168.0.1

Use 64tass 1.45 for recompiling. 
(http://singularcrew.hu/64tass/)

I've got not much time for this project 
currently. ;-( If you're
interested, you can write to soci at 
c64.rulez.org.

It recognizes the following tags (for 
stylesheet usage, some of them have 
built in default  

stylesheet entries):

BR P B I U DIV S A EM TR TD TH 
STRONG STRIKE CITE DFN CODE 
SAMP KBD Q
FONT CENTER UL OL H1 H2 H3 
H4 H5 H6 PRE TABLE IMG DIR 
MENU DL DT DD LI
VAR ABBR ACRONYM INS DEL 
TT SMALL BIG SPAN SUB SUP 
CAPTION HR ADDRESS
BLOCKQUOTE BLINK FORM MAP 
FIELDSET LABEL LEGEND NOBR 
PLAINTEXT XMP
LISTING SELECT OPTION 
OPTGROUP TEXTAREA BUTTON 
THEAD TBODY TFOOT BODY
HTML HEAD SCRIPT STYLE 
TITLE

Understangs and converts colors:
BLACK SILVER GRAY WHITE 
MAROON RED PURPLE FUCHSIA 
GREEN LIME OLIVE
YELLOW NAVY BLUE TEAL 
AQUA ORANGE TRANSPARENT 
INHERIT #rgb #rrggbb

Understands following stylesheet 
properties:

COLOR BACKGROUND 
BACKGROUND-COLOR MARGIN-
TOP MARGIN-BOTTOM MARGIN-
LEFT
MARGIN-RIGHT TEXT-ALIGN 
TEXT-DECORATION FONT-STYLE 
FONT-WEIGHT FONT-FAMILY 
WHITE-SPACE  

LIST-STYLE LIST-STYLE-TYPE 
DISPLAY 

Recognized entities:
amp AMP gt GT lt LT quot QUOT 
apos nbsp iexcl cent pound curren yen 
brvbar sect uml copy ordf  

laquo not shy reg macr deg plusmn 
sup2 sup3
acute micro para middot cedil sup1 
ordm raquo frac14 frac12 frac34 iquest 
Agrave Aacute Acirc  

Atilde Auml Aring AElig Ccedil 
Egrave Eacute Ecirc Euml Igrave 
Iacute Icirc Iuml ETH Ntilde  

Ograve Oacute Ocirc Otilde Ouml 
times Oslash Ugrave Uacute Ucirc 
Uuml Yacute THORN szlig
agrave aacute acirc atilde auml aring 
aelig ccedil egrave eacute ecirc euml 
igrave iacute icirc  

iuml eth ntilde ograve oacute ocirc 
otilde ouml divide oslash ugrave 
uacute uacirc uuml yacute  

thorn yuml euro sbquo


fnof bdquo hellip dagger Dagger circ 
permil Scaron lsaquo OElig lsquo 
rsquo ldquo rdquo bull  

ndash mdash tilde trade scaron rsaquo 
oelig Yuml

Builtin fonts (all 8 pixel height, iso-
8859-1): Times, Times bold, Times 
italic, Arial, Arial  

bold, Arial italic, Fixed, Fixed bold

List styles supported: 
NONE DISC CIRCLE SQUARE 
DECIMAL DECIMAL-LEADING-
ZERO LOWER-ROMAN UPPER-
ROMAN LOWER-ALPHA  

LOWER-LATIN UPPER-ALPHA 
UPPER-LATIN INHERIT 

Text-align (justify does not work):
LEFT CENTER RIGHT (JUSTIFY) 
INHERIT 

Text-decoration (Overline and blink 
does not work):
NONE UNDERLINE (OVERLINE) 
LINE-THROUGH (BLINK) INHERIT 

Font-weight:
NORMAL BOLD BOLDER 
LIGHTER INHERIT 

Font-family:
SERIF SANS-SERIF SANS 
CURSIVE FANTASY MONOSPACE 
ARIAL HELVETICA VERDANA 
TAHOMA IMPACT TIMES  

COURIER INHERIT 

Display:
INLINE BLOCK LIST-ITEM NONE 
INHERIT 

Font-style:
NORMAL ITALIC OBLIQUE 
INHERIT 

White-space:
NORMAL PRE NOWRAP INHERIT
Editor Comments on the Browser

First let?s note this is a preview and so 
an unfinished proof of concept. As 
such its succeeded  

very well indeed. Pages are rendered 
very quickly and seem to be accurate, 
from my tests.

This VERSION (from the above link) 
is the disk version so you have to save 
the website to the  

same disk as the browser and name it 
test2.html, the program loads it and 
displays the results  

on screen, assuming that it fits into 
memory.

There is however a version for the 
Retro replay Cart and the final 
Ethernet adaptor to  

download. 

Retro replay 
The Final Ethernet 
Of course to be of use to download live 
pages I would need to be able to 
change the DNS server   

(or nameserver) to one used on my 
network and the only way to do this is 
to recompile the  

application, I don?t have the skills to 
attempt this.

If you read the last issue of 
Commodore Free you will understand 
the other numbers, Ip netmask  

and router should be familiar. The 
MAC address is a number assigned to 
the card by the  

manufacturer and isn?t normally 
changed by the user, as long as its 
unique on your network you  

should be fine. 

If you know the IP address of the 
website you can enter this when the 
application prompts you  

Here At the URL http://  
Enter the IP address of the website you 
want to view 
To find the ip address you can ping it, 
from a unix, linux or Windows 
machine. for example 
Ping www.amiga.com
Press return should give you a 
response 

C:\>ping www.amiga.com

Pinging www.amiga.com 
[69.44.18.43] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 69.44.18.43: bytes=32 
time=133ms TTL=53
Reply from 69.44.18.43: bytes=32 
time=126ms TTL=53
Reply from 69.44.18.43: bytes=32 
time=128ms TTL=53
Reply from 69.44.18.43: bytes=32 
time=125ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 69.44.18.43:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 
0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-
seconds:
Minimum =125ms, Maximum 
=133ms, Average = 128ms

You see the reply from the servers IP 
address,

So typing http://69.44.43     should get 
to to the website problems will arise as 
some web  

servers host multiple websites. If your 
router has DNS forwarding you should 
be able to work  

straight out of the box!
But you at leas get to trial your setup 
without recompiling the code.

You need to pick sites that were 
designed for any browser or text sites 
to have the browser  

display neat websites but as can be 
seen below almost anywhere will 
work, if the site fits into memory.

Above the ?Evil empire of Micro$oft?
And while the picture listed below 
isn?t an all inclusive example it gives 
an idea of the  

formatting power of the software.

Note the Change of fonts and colours 
and the software?s ability to centre 
text. Even  

recognising a table and correctly 
handling the rows and columns Very 
impressive.

Anyone reading will be immediately 
building up a list in there minds of ?ah 
but it should be  

doing this or that? Remember this is a 
test an early version.
I would like to obviously see some 
form of moving backwards through the 
text, currently only  

scrolling forward by pressing the space 
bar is implemented.

I would like to see extra hardware 
recognised and be utilised for example 
?spooling? websites  

to disk or even utilising disks as 
?buffers? Memory expansions 
recognised for copying the whole  

site to memory for faster access. 

Of course I am sure these are all on the 
horizon of the programmers who are 
struggling with the  

evil of ?lack of time?


****************************************

News Part 3

Retrogaming times monthly

Freely available retro gaming 
magazine, covering all formats, the 
magazine is a view online  

webpage format. Avalable from the 
link below:

http://my.stratos.net/~hewston95/RTM
/RTM_Home.htm 

RETROGAMING MONTHLY

10/31/06 update:   Click the "Current 
Issue" to read our Nov 2006 Issue, 
RTM #30. 110 "*"  

months in a row - longest-running 
online free Retrogaming newsletter 
ever!

Scott Jacobi - Chief Editor, "Nintendo 
Realm" & "Syntax Era" Classic 
gaming magazine reviews.

Alan Hewston - Assistant Editor, Web 
Manager "Many Faces of . . . reviews" 
surveys & more.

Adam King - past Editor, "Commercial 
Vault", "8-Bit Face-Off" & "Stardate 
7800"

Andrew "Tonks" Tonkin - "Vic 20 
Reviews", "Collecting in Australia" & 
more.

Tom Zjaba - "Retrogaming Times" 
Founder, MAME Reviews, "Dr. Sane", 
& more.

Mark Sabbatini -  "Many Faces of the 
Radio Shack 
Color Computer" & "The Thrill of 
Defeat"

David Lundin Jr. - "Tengen Reviews" 
"NEScade".

Bryan Roppolo - "TI-99/4A arcade 
game reviews".

Nathan Kozlowski - "ColecoNation" & 
more.

Andrew Masters - Sinclair Spectrum 
Reviews & "Lost Faces of  . . ."

David Winter - "Continuing the 
Odyssey"

Tim Roach - Web assistance, graphics 
and our RTM logo designer.

The ?Retrogaming Times Monthly? is 
the continuation of the ?Retrogaming 
Times?as was previously  

created & edited by Tom Zjaba, of 
Tomorrow's Heroes.  Please visit his 
site.

RTM Chief Editor: Scott Jacobi   Web 
Manager & Senior Staff Writer Alan 
Hewston  Most recent  

update on October 31, 2006

Other News

Australian air guitar T-shirt actually 
rocks Monday November 13, 04:42 
AM    
 
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian 
scientists have invented a T-shirt that 
allows air guitarists to  

play actual music as they strum the air.

The T-shirt, created by scientists from 
the Commonwealth Scientific and 
Industrial Research  

Organisation (CSIRO), is called a 
"wearable instrument shirt".

The shirt has sensors in each elbow 
and sleeves to detect and interpret the 
air guitarist's arm  

movements -- one arm chooses chords 
and the other strums imaginary strings.


The gestures are then connected 
wirelessly to guitar audio samples to 
generate the music.

"It's an easy to use, virtual instrument 
that allows real time music making, 
even by players  

without significant musical or 
computing skills," said CSIRO 
engineer Richard Helmer.

"It allows you to jump around and the 
sound generated is just like an original 
mp3," Helmer  

said in a statement on Monday.

Researchers specialising in computing, 
musical composition and textile 
manufacture combined  

their skills to create the musical T-
shirt.

"The technology, which is adaptable to 
almost any kind of apparel, takes 
clothing beyond its  

traditional role of protection and 
fashion into the realms of 
entertainment," said Helmer.

A video of Helmer demonstrating the 
air-guitar T-shirt is available on the 
CSIRO's Web site,  

www.scienceimage.csiro.au/mediarele
ase/air-guitar.html 

www.yahoo.co.uk /news

****************************************

c64 Micro cook book

I just wanted to let everyone know 
about a new website I put up. I was 
chatting with Snogpitch  

of the Cincinnati Commodore 
Computer Club this past Saturday at 
the #c64friends IRC chat, and I  

had mentioned that I have the original 
Commodore disks of the C64 Micro-
Cook Book. He expressed  

interest in these, so I decided to post 
them for everyone to try out. There 
was some trouble  

with the recipe disk at first, but he 
clued me into a "trick" using rubbing 
alcohol to revive  

an otherwise unreadable disk.

So anyway, I ZipCoded the disks (had 
to Six Pack the program disk due to 
copy protection), and  

linked the files with Lynx XVII. So 
just to be sure everyone would have 
everything they need, I  

posted Zip Code 2, Lynx XVII, Lynx 
docs, the C64 Micro-Cook Book 
program disk, and the C64  

Micro-Cook Book recipe disk. All 
these files can be downloaded at the 
following website:

http://www.wiskow.hpg.ig.com.br/

Enjoy! :-)

-Andrew

****************************************

Disk Utility Cartridge for the VIC-
20This was the result of collaboration 
over on the VIC-20  

Denial  
http://www.sleepingelephant.com/deni
al/ forums. 
 It started with user Boray's excellent 
X-Menu program  

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/datorm
useum/vicmenu.html for the VIC, a 
very handy utility for  

making it easier to load programs, as 
well as file operations like renaming, 
scratching,  

printing.  In fact, this program was so 
useful that I thought it would be handy 
to have on a  

cartridge, always available at the press 
of a button.
I had no idea how to make a cartridge 
for the VIC20, but over the course of a 
few months we  

tackled all the problems one-by one.  
Plus, even in a 4K cartridge there was 
some left over  

space to  put in a few extra goodies, so 
I included the DOS Wedge from the 
VIC-1541 Demo Disk  

and a couple of other things.   We 
learned lots of useful programming 
tricks for the VIC in the  

process, such as how to move BASIC 
programs around in memory and relink 
them.

 
DOS Wedge to simplify disk use on 
the VIC-20. @$ to view a directory, @ 
to send a command or  

view
drive status, and / to load files.

 X-MENU: Displays an interactive list 
of all the files on a disk. Allows you to 
run, delete or  

rename files,
format the disk, or print the directory 
with a single keystroke.

 Disk drive head scrubber program to 
maximize the effectiveness of cleaning 
disks. It commands  

the
drive to move from Track 35 to 33, 
then 34 and so on.

 Works with Device numbers 8-15. 
Compatible with all Commodore 
drives, 64HDD and uIEC.

 Emergency UN-NEW for rescuing 
BASIC programs after a NEW 
command or lockup.

 Reset button.

 Switchable between Block 3 ($6000) 
and Block 5 ($A000).

Block 5 Usage
When switched to Block 5, the 
cartridge automatically starts and 
displays a menu of the  

available features.


F1 Display a summary of the Wedge 
and Block 3 SYS commands (see 
below).

F3 Start the X-MENU utility.

F4 Start the disk drive head scrubber.

F5 Restore a previously NEWed 
BASIC program and return to BASIC.

F7 Go to BASIC with the Wedge 
enabled. (Default after ~10 seconds)

F8 Go to BASIC without the Wedge 
enabled (Normal BASIC 2.0)

+ or - Select the default drive number.
To get to BASIC immediately with the 
Wedge enabled, hold down SHIFT 
when turning on the power  

or pressing Reset. Similarly, holding 
down the Commodore key takes you 
directly to BASIC  

without enabling the Wedge.

Block 3 Usage
When switched to Block 3, the 
cartridge will not autostart, but all the 
functions are still  

available through easy to remember 
SYS calls.

SYS 25000 Display a summary of the 
Wedge and Block 3 SYS commands.

SYS 25020 Start the X-MENU 
utility.*

SYS 25030 Start the disk drive head 
scrubber.*
SYS 25050 Start the command Wedge.

SYS 25080 Restore a previously 
NEWed BASIC program.

*Note that these two commands will 
destroy any BASIC program currently 
in memory.

Tips
To speed up a 1541 Floppy Drive 
when used with the VIC-20, use the 
Wedge command @UI- . It  

switches
the 1541 to ?1540 compatibility 
mode?, which is slightly faster than the 
1541 default.

To change the active device number 
after startup, type POKE186,x where x 
is the drive# from 8  

to 15.
To find out the filename after a FILE 
NOT FOUND ERROR, type SYS 
63065.

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

****************************************

Html Walker VIC 20
This program will display the text of a 
html file with much of the html 
formatting intact. HTML  

Walker was built on my program Text 
Walker.  Why this program?
Has the World Wide Web finally 
reached your vic20? Well, the main 
purpose of HTML Walker is not  

to display existing web pages on your 
vic (even though this is possible), it's a 
program for  

you who like to do some word 
processing on your Commodore 8 bit 
computer. Use your favourite  

Commodore 8bit text editor to write 
the text while using html codes to 
format the text. Then  

use HTML Walker to print it out, or to 
watch it with formatting on the screen, 
or to convert it  

to plain petasc without the html codes. 
There are several benefits with this: 

You don't have to care about how the 
text looks while writing it. Focus on 
the contents  

instead. HTML Walker will format it 
for you later when you print it out.The 
result looks rather  

nice with the headings and formatting 
on a Commodore printer. (Made for 
the MPS1250)

You can print on different paper 
formats without changing the 
document. Just change the print  

settings. You can easily export your 
document with the formatting intact 
(after converting it  

to ascii). For example - load it into 
WORD on PC or put it on your 
homepage.As a bonus, you  

will learn html! HTML Walker can use 
both petascii files as well as ascii 
(including all ascii  

dialects for PC, Unix, Amiga etc.). 
(Except for non-English characters). 
But it's faster on  

petascii (the standard charterset for 
Commodore's 8 bit computers). 

HTML and compability HTML codes 
are stated withing "greater and less 
than" brackets. I can't  

write them here as HTML Walker (as 
well as any web browser) would think 
that it's a HTML  

command. So look at this text in a text 
editor for examples. In the rest of this 
document, I  

will use "[" and "]" instead, just to 
display the codes in plain text. 

You must have a [html] code in the 
beginning of your text file, as well as a 
[/html] at the end  

of the file. This is part of the html 
standard as well as it's helping HTML 
Walker to know  

where the start and end is. There is a 
big benefit from this: HTML Walker 
can use the file  

format from most text editors directly 
without any conversion. For example 
Notepad on The Final  

Cartridge saves two extra bytes at the 
beginning of the file and the rest is 
pure petascii. As  

HTML Walker first looks for the 
[html] code, then those extra bytes are 
skipped automatically.  

So texts written with most text editors 
will probably work. Later in this text 
there is a list  

of some editors that I have tested. 
There is no end of file checks (to 
increase the speed), so  

if you don't have [/html] at the end, 
then the program will end with a 
"string too long" error. 
HTML support 

Some HTML commands are one single 
word, for example [br] for a line break. 
Others are two  

commands, one to turn something ON 
and one to turn something OFF. Then 
they follow this  

pattern: [something] to turn it on and 
[/something] to turn it off. For example 
[h1]Big  

heading[/h1]. 
The following html codes are 
implemented: 
[h1] [/h1] Headings 
[h2] [/h2] 
[h3] [/h3] Same as h2 
[h4] [/h4] Same as h2 
[b] [/b] Bold 
[i] [/i] Italic 
[li] list item 
[br] break 
[p] (new paragraph) 
[hr] horizontal line 
[ul] [/ul] indent/outdent 
tables are displayed, but not great. 
[html] [/html] MUST be used!!! 
Extra feautres: 
[esc] For printer escape codes. 
[n] For increased numbers, for 
example [n][n][n] will display 1. 2. 3. 
Useful for chapter  

numbers or CD tracks etc. 
[n0] Reset the increasing numbers 
above. 

All other html commands are just 
skipped... But if a html tag is longer 
than 255 characters,  

then the execution will stop with a 
"string too long" error. 
	Directly Compatible Editors
	ZED on C128. 
	Notepad on The Final 
CartridgeIII (C64) 
	Text64 (C64) 
	WriteNow (Vic20) 
	All editors that can save 
petascii or ascii text. 
How to use HTML Walker
When you have written your text 
within the [html] and [/html] marks 
and used any of the  

additional html codes and saved it to 
disk. Then load and run HTML 
Walker. First you will be  

asked about the filename. All questions 
after that has a default value (that's 
displayed within  

brackets). So for most of the questions, 
you can just hit return. 

Here are some of the questions 
explained: 
File type SEQ or PRG (s/p) - This is 
the type of the actual file on the disk. 
When you show the  

directory of a disk, it says PRG after 
most files, but some programs saves 
text files as SEQ.  

If you load from tape, then this 
question is skipped (and the filename 
is ignored). 

Petascii, Ascii or WriteNow (p/a/w) - 
This is the charterset of the file. If the 
file was  

written on a Commodore 8bit 
computer, then it's most likely petascii, 
so this is the default  

value. (However, filenames ending 
with .html or .htm gets ascii as the 
default value and names  

ending with .wn gets WriteNow as the 
default value). Select Ascii for files 
that comes directly  

from the web or was written on a 
PC/Amiga/Unix or whatever. If you 
get the whole text in the  

wrong case, for examle everything in 
upper case letters, then you picked the 
wrong one.  

Petascii is faster by the way. 

Print Setup - The default values of this 
part will vary depending on if you are 
going to print  

or if you are going to display the file 
on the screen. If you for example have 
a C64, then the  

width for the screen will be 39 by 
default. If you select to print the text 
with a printer,  

then you will get futher questions 
regarding if you want to use NLQ etc... 

Swedish characterset and HtmlWalker
The Swedish special characters ( 
and ) are shown in petascii and 
WriteNow files, provided  

that your computer has them on the 
keyboard, but they are not shown in 
ascii files. All of the  

included converter programs however 
converts the Swedish characters. So if 
you for example use  

them in a WriteNow html file, they 
will show in HtmlWalker. If you then 
convert it to ascii,  

then they won't show in HtmlWalker 
but they will show on your PC. Files in 
the package
	H-MENU-20 - Automatic 
menu for the disk (vic-20 only) Vic 
Menu H20 Special version that  

autostarts html documents (by loading 
htmlwalker and inputing the name). 
	H-WALKER - HtmlWalker; 
The basic version. Runs on any 8bit 
Commodore. 
	H-WALKER-20 - Vic-20 
compiled (Requires 8K expansion) 
	H-WALKER-64 - C64 
compiled 
	H-WALKER-P4 - Plus/4 
compiled 
	HTMLWALKER.HTML - This 
document 
	 VICMENU.HTML Doc for 
vic-menu. 
	 WRITENOW.HTML - 
Instructions for the vic-20 editor: 
WriteNow 
	WN2ASCII - Convert a 
WriteNow text to ascii. 
	ASCII2WN - Convert an ascii 
text to WriteNow. 
	TW12 - TextWalker, program 
for using the basic editor as your text 
editor. Instructions  

included. 
	TW12EMPTY - TextWalker 
without the instructions, ready for your 
own text. 
	LC2ASCII - Convert Petascii 
files to ascii 
	LC2ASCII.HTML - 
Instructions for lc2ascii. 
 20SOURCE.BAS - Basic source 
optimized for Austro compiler Vic20. 
Won't run interpreted. 
Speed The vic-20 compiled version is 
the fastest (71 cps on ascii) followed 
by the c64 (61 cps)  

and Plus/4 (46 cps).

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/datorm
useum/htmlwalker.html
VIC-TRACKER 2.0
VIC-TRACKER is a full-featured 
tracker-style music editor for the 
Commodore Vic-20. It includes  

a cross-compressor which produces 
compact assembly source code output 
suitable for inclusion in  

demos and games.

As of version 2.0 VIC-TRACKER also 
supports Sync24/DIN-Sync making it 
easy to synchronize it to  

modern sequencers and electronic 
music hardware such as drum 
machines.

VIC-TRACKER is designed and 
programmed by Daniel Kahlin and 
released under the BSD-license,  

which makes it pretty much free for 
you to use and modify. 

Note: To run VIC-TRACKER you 
need at least 16KB expansion memory, 
but compiled songs normally  

work on unexpanded machines.

BACKGROUND
One day in 1994 Mats Wicksell and 
Daniel Kahlin found an old Vic-20 at a 
junkyard. Mats picked  

it up, and Daniel fitted it with a new 
keyboard. Later that summer the 
original VIC-TRACKER 0.6  

was written during one week by Daniel 
Kahlin with (mostly moral) support 
from Patrik Wallstrm  

and Bjrn Stenberg.
In 2001 at the LCP2001 gettogether 
VIC-TRACKER 1.0 got the last touch.

NEW IN 2.0

 
Now two years later VIC-TRACKER 
received a huge update. Many useful 
features were added!
Among those are: 

SYNC24/SYNC48 support. You may 
now sync VIC-TRACKER to an 
external sequencer /synthesizer/drum  

machine. 

(SHIFT-)INST/DEL inserts and deletes 
in the patternlist. 

SHIFT-CLR/HOME clears the current 
pattern. (After asking) 

Songs may have a repeat step that is 
different from the start step. 

Rastertime display may be toggled 
on/off (V). 

Multispeed player, 1x, 2x, 3x & 4x 
interrupt speeds. 
Sanity checks have been implemented 
in many places. 

Patterns may be transposed up/down in 
the pattern editor (C= T, C= Y) 

Arpeggio modes 0, 1 and f are 
implemented correctly. 

A default arpeggio may be set up in the 
sound. 
A frequency offset may be set up in the 
sound definition. 

A default glide may be set up in the 
sound definition. 
Cut and paste in pattern editor. 

The current pattern may be changed 
from within the pattern editor. 

The patternlist row that is to be edited 
may be changed from within the 
pattern editor. (C= N,  

C= M) 
Sounds may have length. 

New player effect Set Flag. 
New player effect Cut Note. 
New player effect Delay Note. 

The pattern list has a new column 
allowing the length of the patterns to 
be selected per row in  

the pattern list. 

Arpeggios may now have up to 16 
steps, and have their speed, length, and 
repeat position  

individually configurable. 

Sounds may be edited. 
Support for both NTSC and PAL 
interrupt speeds. 

Support for up to 16 different songs in 
each module. (different StartStep, 
EndStep and  

StartSpeed for each) 

Pressing C= Q,W,E,R toggles voice 1-
4 on and off. 
Error check during load and save. 

Loaded songs are padded with zeroes 
during load. 
Pressing '<-' in the pattlist editor enters 
the first unused pattern 
Empty notes (00) in patterns now show 
'--' and continuation notes (80) show 
'++'. 
SPACE enters an empty value, and 
moves down. 
SHIFT-SPACE enters a continuation 
note in the note field. 
The editor cursor is blanked when 
input is required in the status field 

The cursor is positioned on the same 
voice when switching between the 
pattern editor and the  

pattern list editor. 
completely new directory structure 
RUNNING VIC-TRACKER

Just load the VIC-TRACKER binary 
on your Vic-20 computer and type 
RUN. 

Note 1: Currently there are no 
emulators that correctly emulate the 
Vic-20 sound chip  

(especially the noise channel). You 
should use the 'real' thing.
If you must use an emulator, I 
recommend VICE which as of version 
1.15 has pretty good sound  

emulation.

Note 2: The intro will look messed up 
on NTSC (American) Vic-20's, and in 
some emulators. Just  

press SPACE to skip the intro.


****************************************

http://www.kahlin.net/daniel/victracker
/vt-2.0/Commodore 65
I see many stories about the 
Commodore 65, and looking at the 
specifications, I wonder if  

Commodore were right in their 
decision to scrap the machine as a 
project. 

Of course some of the technology 
made its way into the Amiga system, 
in some form or another.  

Although sadly it would seem, not the 
twin S.I.D. chips.

For an upgrade to the Commodore 64 
the specifications do look good, over 
twice the clock speed  

of the original machine, and an easily 
accessible memory upgrade port to a 
massive 8mb of  

memory! Who would have possibly 
needed this amount of memory, and 
just think of the games that  

could be created for such a system. Not 
to meantion the productivity software 
that 8mb of  

memory would permit. Think of Geos 
loading directly into memory with no 
further disk access  

required!

Featuring enhanced colour graphics 
capabilities, with a very capable for the 
time and even now  

256 colours on screen in a 320 x 200 
screen resolution. 

Could this have been a machine 
Commodore management should have 
released into the wild, maybe  

that?s why the management at 
Commodore killed the company, 
because they made bad decisions.

The main benefit though to 
Commodore 64 users must have been 
the built in 3.5 inch floppy disk  

drive, and backward compatibility with 
Commodore 64 titles, although 
everyone has there own  

view on the percentage of titles what 
would have run on such hardware 
without any form of   

modification.  The system wasn?t a 
Chip backward system like the 
Commodore 128 was with  

basically all the chips from a 
commodore 64 to enable virtually 
100% compatibility on the 128 

Speculation goes that the system would 
have been anything from about 65% to 
over 95%  

compatible, with a commodore 64  
machine.

When Commodore finally went bust, 
in 1994 the prototypes of the 65 went 
?missing? One would  

assume employees borrowed these 
systems in luie of wage payments still 
outstanding. Again no  

one is sure of the exact amount of 
machines that could be in the wild, 
estimates vary from 60  

to 2000 find a working one is a rare 
treat, and one I personally have yet to 
see! Be assured if  

one of these systems appeared on Ebay 
you would need substantial funding to 
be amongst the  

winning bidders of such a rare item.

Commodore decided to concentrate all 
efforts on the Amiga machine, 
presumably thinking all  

users would upgrade from the 
Commodore 64 to an Amiga and 
would not like to upgrade to a  

Commodore 65 and then have to later 
upgrade to the Amiga,



Commodore dropped further 
development on the Commodore 65. 
Most of the options prepared for the  

65 found there way into the Amiga in 
some form or another as stated earlier. 

The trapdoor memory upgrade, 
enhanced video, the C65 would have 
been capable of displaying some  

of the Commodore Amiga?s screen 
modes. 

To the Commodore management 
?Problem is, I for one would have 
bought one of these machines?,  

then I would have upgraded to an 
Amiga. At some leter date So did 
Commodore miss out on some  

sales of machines?

I of course would have liked the way 
the 128 was handled with basically a 
Commodore 64 mode  

able to use almost all of the 
Commodore 64 software on 
the c65 this would have made a better 
proposal to c64 users.  


Main C65 features

The CPU named CSG 4510 R3 
(codenamed Victor) was a custom 
CSG* 65CE02 (a MOS 6502 
derivative),  

combined with two MOS 6526 
complex interface adapters (CIAs) 

A new VIC-III graphics chip named 
CSG* 4567 R5 (codenamed Bill), 
capable of producing 256  

colors from a palette of 4096 colors; 
available modes include 320200256,  
640200256,   

64040016,  128020016, and 
12804004  (XYcolordepth i.e. 
number of colors/bit planes) 

Two CSG* 8580R5 SID sound chips 
producing stereo sound (the C64 had 
one SID) 

3.54  MHz clock frequency (the C64 
ran at 1 MHz) 

128 KB RAM, expandable to 8 MB 
using a RAM expansion port similar to 
that of the Commodore  

Amiga 500 

Heavily improved BASIC: 
Commodore BASIC 10.0 (the C64 had 
the relatively feature-weak BASIC  

2.0) 

Proposed feature, not implemented in 
the final prototype: one internal 3" 
floppy disk drive 

(* CSG = Commodore Semiconductor 
Group, previously known as MOS 
Technology, Inc.)

Specifications taken from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodo
re_65
****************************************


Are You Keeping Up with the 
Commodore?
When it comes to computers, the 
average person usually believes that 
?newer is better?. After  

all, you can get more memory, a faster 
processor, and a larger hard disk, 
merely by waiting a  

few months. Old hardware is usually 
shunned as being of little value. In 
contrast, the  

elementary education sector has 
consistently found traditional 
educational methods to be  

superior to the newest, latest, and 
greatest methods. Some of the most 
knowledgeable and  

capable children are produced by the 
schools that use seemingly antiquated 
techniques. So what  

happens when the world of technology 
collides with the world of education? 
Why, the Commodore  


64 makes a comeback!

Meeting the Commodore
In 1982, a calculator company cum 
home computer manufacturer designed 
and developed one of the  

most impressive home computers on 
the market. On the outside, it was 
nothing more than a  

keyboard that hooked up to your 
television set. But on the inside, it was 
equipped with an  

advanced microprocessor, a cartridge 
slot, built-in BASIC, and an unheard of 
64 kilobytes of  

memory. All for the low price of only 
$595! Of course, this price wasn?t 
everything. While the  

cartridge port made the system a 
capable game machine, you still 
needed a tape or floppy-disk  

drive to load and save programs. To 
actually play most games, you also 
needed to pick up at  

least one joystick. Two, if you wanted 
multiple players.

Commodore Meets the 21st Century
Ever since the Jakks ?Plug and Play? 
controllers hit the market, I?ve been 
infected with the  

classic gaming bug. I?ve purchased a 
few such PnP controllers, obtained an 
Atari Flashback 2  

(compatible with the original 2600, 
right down to the joysticks!), and even 
acquired an  

Intellivision. As a result, my wife 
wasn?t too shocked when I came home 
with an oversized  

typewriter more commonly known as a 
Commodore 64. She at least waited 
until I told her ?it  

could be an educational computer for 
the kids? before she start shaking her 
head in  

exasperation.
I?m not quite sure what inspired me to 
use the C64 as an educational machine. 
Perhaps it was  

the seller, who mentioned that his kids 
loved playing on it when they were 
younger. Perhaps it  

was the wealth of edutainment 
software I found for it. Or perhaps it 
was the fact that the  

hardware and software reminded me of 
the IBM PC I learned to program on. 
Whatever the reason, I  

found myself supplementing my new 
purchase with a 5 1/4? floppy drive 
and copies of Fraction  

Fever, Odell Lake, Math Blaster, and a 
few children?s entertainment titles.

Future, Meet the Commodore 64
Once I got the hang of loading up 
programs on my new (really, really, 
old) Commodore 64, I  

decided to introduce my six year old 
son to Fraction Fever. He?s in first 
grade, so he?s never  

seen a fraction before. But with a 
simple explanation (?The top number 
is the boxes filled in,  

while the bottom number is the total 
number of boxes.?) he was off on 
pogo-sticking adventures!  

At first, he did had some difficulty 
with getting the fractions correct. But 
after a bit of  

practice, he was quickly moving from 
floor to floor with ease. In fact, he was 
getting  

spectacularly good at this when the 
unexpected happened? The boxes 
were gone!It seems he had  

passed enough floors to begin testing 
on the next level of fractions! Instead 
of discrete  

boxes, he was being shown partly-
filled vertical bars. His job was to 
guess which vertical bar  

was closest to the provided fraction. 
Again, with a simple explanation 
(?Pretend like you  

divide the bar into a number of boxes 
equal to the bottom number,

 then look for the top number of boxes 
filled in.?) he was off to even higher 
levels!To date,  

he has been unable to move fast 
enough to advance past level 20, but I 
expect it will happen  

soon enough. When that happens, we 
will see if he?s able to deal with 
reduced fractions. For  

now, at least, he?s riding high on this 
game. It has instilled in him a desire to 
learn about  

these ?fraction? things, which is far 
more than a parent could ever hope to 
ask out of a six  

year old. But wait, there?s more!

Odell, Odell, Wherefore Art Thou 
Lake?


It wasn?t long before my son was 
asking if I had any more of these great 
games. I mentioned  

that I had a game called ?Odell Lake?, 
but that it was going to be a very 
difficult game for  

him. He would have to read quite a bit 
of text to play it. It was also played 
with the keyboard  

rather than the joystick.His response 
surprised me. He was ecstatic that 
daddy had another  

game. He wanted to play it, and to 
heck 

with the difficulty!Now you need to 
understand. At six years old, he still 
has difficulty  

reading. He?s doing quite well, but he 
often guesses at words rather than 
sounding them out. He  

really needs to read more, but he gets 
so bored and frustrated that he looks 
for shortcuts out  

of the task. If he wanted to play this 
game, he would need to sound out the 
words correctly or  

the instructions wouldn?t make 
sense.Never one to pass up an 
opportunity though, I taught him  

the magic disk-loading incantation 
(?LOAD?*?,8,1? then ?RUN?) and the 
loading screen appeared.  

I had him wait until the title screen 
appeared, then asked him to read out 
the instructions. It  

took a few minutes before he 
understood that he needed to hit the 
SPACE BAR to continue.  

However, he was persistent and 
managed to play the game. In the end, 
this game required a bit  

more hands-on help from daddy. I 
would point him to the important text, 
and help him sound out  

the words. I heard the ?I can?t do it!? 
cry on several occasions, but he always 
said ?no? when  

asked if he wanted to stop. Even when 
mommy told him to take a break, he 
was asking to get back  

at it within minutes.The game was as 
difficult as predicted, but it again 
inspired him torward  

learning in ways that modern methods 
failed to instill. I was honestly 
surprised at how much he  

enjoyed these titles.
  
It?s Not Quite Dead Yet
The original C64 was very difficult for 
Commodore to replace in the 
marketplace. Its existing  

software base, low price, and thriving 
community all conspired to keep the 
system alive. In  

fact, Commodore went bankrupt in 
1994 (12 years after the system was 
released) before the  

official ?end of support? date came to 
pass.Today, a young woman by the 
name of Jeri Ellsworth  

has continued the C64 tradition by 
using modern chip design methods to 
create a C64-on-a-chip.  

This design was used in the mildly 
successful Commodore 64 Direct-to-
TV Plug and Play Joystick.  

(C64DTV for short.) While this 
joystick was technologically sound, 
The Toy Lobster Company (the  

manufacturer) was only able to acquire 
licenses to publish games produced by 
Epyx. While some  

of these games were quite good, only a 
select few were the ones the C64 was 
known for. As a  

result, the unit sold mostly to C64 fans 
and homebrewers who wished to 
modify the joystick into  

a complete system. Realizing that the 
C64DTV was great technology, The 
Toy Lobster Company  

released a Hummer PnP game based 
on the C64DTV design. This board had 
certain advantages for  

modders over the DTV joystick, so it 
again sold well to the C64 fans but not 
the public at  

large.

The Only Direction From Here is Up
Every highly successful product finds a 
niche. Some products can compete in 
the market directly  

as there is already a strong desire for 
the product. For other products, it often 
means they  

don?t fill a common want or need and 
that they need to reinvent themselves 
to fill a new  

role.Such is the case with the 
C64DTV. It?s an incredible 
technology, but it cannot compete  

with the popular Jakks sticks. It might 
be mildly profitable in the short term, 
but interest  

has a way of dropping off quickly. 
Thankfully, I believe that The Toy 
Lobster Company has a  

real opportunity to market the 
C64DTV technology as a long term 
product.

A New Commodore for a New 
Generation
From what I?ve seen of the 
Commodore, it is still relevant to the 
current generation as a tool  

of education. It has already proven its 
worth to me as more useful than all the 
modern tools I  

have at my disposal. So what is to stop 
The Toy Lobster Company from 
targeting the educational  

market? Consider, all that?s needed is 
to embed the C64DTV into a keyboard 
similar to the  

original Commodore, but updated to 
appeal to children and parents alike. 
Such a device could be  

bundled with several media cards or 
cartridges, each containing a classic 
educational title.  

More titles could be purchased 
separately, thus allowing for the 
licensing costs to be split  

up. In theory, new educational titles 
could be written as well; though I have 
my doubts as to  

the wisdom of such a venture. At the 
very least, a lot of research into the 
success of the  

existing software would be required. In 
the end, you?d have a toy that?s very 
similar to  

VTech?s ?laptop? offerings. The only 
difference would be that the keyboard 
would use composite  

ouputs to a television, and that the 
games would be more complex. The 
black and white LCDs of  

most ?children?s laptops? are 
horrendous, and may even impair the 
child?s ability to learn.  

(Assuming that the onboard games are 
of any use.) If the concept is 
successful, then a ?laptop?  

model of the C64 is not out of the 
question. The one caveat is that a color 
LCD screen would  

drive up the price. One defining feature 
that I believe would be necessary is a 
proper manual.  

The original Commodore 64 manual 
was unique in that it taught the C64 
owner how to program the  

machine. (In my opinion, it was 
superior to the contemporary Usborne 
books   

http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/manua
ls/cats/usborne.html on BASIC 
programming.) Many of the  

educational game manuals followed 
this example, and provided guidance to 
the parent or teacher  

on using the software with their child.

London Bridge is Falling Down
Now that I?ve breeched the subject of 
parents and teachers, there is one 
matter I would feel  

remiss in my duties not to mention. Put 
simply, I don?t think these units would 
be useful in  

schools, nor do I think that gaining the 
acceptance of parents will be easy. I 
will address  

each point in more detail. 
Commodores were once regularly used 
in schools because they were  

affordable, and because there was a 
wealth of software. These computers 
remained dominant right  

up until Apple subsidized school 
purchases of Macintoshes. In that time, 
these units were  

rarely effective. Drawing on my own 
childhood experiences, I found the 
following: Because there  

was only one computer, students had 
very little time to work with the 
machine. This limited  

time prevented the student from truly 
focusing on the computer program that 
he or she was  

using.  Like the computer, there was 
only one teacher. If the teacher was 
focused on helping  

students with the computer, (s)he 
wasn?t focused on the rest of the class. 
If the teacher was  

focused on the class, than the students 
on the computer had very little 
assistance. As with  

most classroom lessons, the students 
were to follow a lesson plan, and thus 
learned at the same  

rate as the rest of the class. 

This negated the use of a computer, 
which held much of its value in being 
able to adapt to the  

student?s level of knowledge. (e.g. You 
didn?t fail at Fraction Fever, you 
simply didn?t  

advance until you were ready. 
Similarly, you could zip to later levels 
quickly if you  

understood the material.) In result, a 
computer in the classroom was usually 
more trouble than  

it was worth. While the economics of 
the C64 have changed considerably 
since the 1980?s, the  

number of televisions that would be 
necessary to provide a classroom with 
computers is still  

prohibitively expensive. Not only that, 
but populating a classroom with 
inexpensive computers  

would still fail to provide students with 
the individual attention of a teacher 
and/or the  

ability to work at their own pace. A 
much more useful place for a computer 
was (and still is)  

at home, with a parent available to 
help. Unfortunately, there are plenty of 
parents who would  

fail to find an educational Commodore 
useful for their child. The 
socioeconomics of today?s  

world are such that both parents 
regularly work a full time job. These 
parents are usually  

looking for a so-called ?electronic 
babysitter? rather than a device which 
requires the  

parent?s assistance. Which means that 
an educational product designed for 
parental assistance  

is going to have a difficult time 
breaking into the educational market. 
Thankfully, there  

remains a reasonably large market 
segment which would be interested in 
an educational tool like  

this. Home Schoolers, for example, 
spend extraordinary amounts of time 
learning with their  

parents. A C64 targeted at this market 
could help reduce the work-load of 
these parents through  

entertaining education and automated 
drilling practices. Parents who send 
their children to  

private schools also tend to take an 
active role in their child?s education, 
and may be  

similarly interested.

More generally, any parent who is 
willing to spend even a small amount 
of time on their child?s  

education is in the market for this 
product. The key would be in finding a 
method of marketing  

to these parents directly. Home 
schooling trade shows would be a good 
start. With the correct  

presentation, word of mouth would 
handle the rest
.
Take Two Floppy Disks and Call Me 
in the Morning
So what might an Educational 
Commodore 64 (eC64) look like? 
Well, it would probably go back to  

a full keyboard design rather than the 
joystick design of the C64DTV. It 
would run on either  

batteries or a small wall-wart, and have 
composite cables extending to the 
television. The  

joystick ports could remain exactly as 
the originals. This would allow it to be 
compatible with  

nearly any joystick from the C64 era. 
In addition, the simple port design 
would help keep the  

manufacturing costs of the bundled 
joystick(s) down. Mammoth Toys 
could even consider  

contracting Atari for a large shipment 
of the joysticks used in the Flashback 
2. Given that  

most games are single player, only one 
joystick would need to be bundled with 
the unit.  

Additional and replacement joysticks 
could be sold separately.
The serial port would probably be 
dropped for cost reduction reasons, 
although it might be  

possible to leave solder pads for 
homebrewers and tinkerers. Similarly, 
the datasette port  

would almost certainly be elminated. A 
cartridge port would be inexpensive to 
include, and  

could easily be pin-compatible with the 
original C64. However, the port would 
likely be smaller  

than the original, allowing for carts 
more akin in size and appearance to 
GameBoy cartridges.  

If pin compatibility is maintained, 
homebrewers could build an adapter to 
allow original  

cartridges to be plugged in.
Given that one of the key purposes of 
the machine would be to teach BASIC 
programming, some  

sort of long-term storage media would 
be a necessity. SecureDigital Cards 
would be an excellent  

option, although they would also be an 
overkill for the C64?s limited memory. 
The main  

advantage would be that these cards 
could transfer files between a PC and 
the eC64. Depending  

on piracy concerns, however, this 
could also be seen as a disadvantage. If 
necessary, a custom  

memory card format could be 
designed. Each game cartridge or game 
card would come with detailed  

instruction for both parents and 
children on how to get the most 
education out of the game(s).  

To prevent the parent from treating the 
eC64 as an ?electronic babysitter?, the 
manual should  

provide recommended methods for 
assisting the child with the program. 
Using Fraction Fever as  

an example, the parent could be 
instructed to help the child by offering 
simple to understand  

explanations, similar to the ones I gave 
on the previous page.

The eC64 unit should include a User 
Manual that would be as helpful and 
instructive as the  

original. It should not only explain 
how to setup the hardware and run 
programs, but it should  

also give a complete introduction to 
the BASIC language and the 
architecture of the eC64. The  

parent could then chose to teach 
programming to the child directly, or 
purchase more simplified  

introductions along the lines of the 
Usborne series.

The box should also contain offers to 
subscribe to eC64 magazines. These 
magazines would  

contain programming projects that 
children could follow along. To keep 
costs down, a single  

series of magazines should be created 
for each age group that would be 
expected to use the  

machine. The customer would then 
receive a magazine each month until 
the series is completed.  

At which time they should be offered 
to subscribe to the next series, aimed at 
a higher age  

group. A magazine directly aimed the 
parents would be a possibility further 
down the road.

Links
Commodore 64 DTV - 
http://www.c64dtv.co.uk/  The Toy 
Lobster Company?s website for 
promoting  

the C64DTV unit.
Hummer DTV - 
http://home.earthlink.net/~dgdtv/dtv/da
ta/hummer_faq.html A C64DTV unit 
built and  

branded specially for Radio Shack.
Lemon64 -  http://www.lemon64.com/ 
The quintessential source for all things 
Commodore
Why Johnny Can?t Code -  
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/200
6/09/14/basic/index_np.html A  

look into why children are no longer 
learning to program.
C64 Commercial - 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_f
3uIzEIxo  The namesake of this article.
As usual, the author can be reached at 
akaimbatman@gmail.com. 

http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.
com/wordpress/archives/42

****************************************

Creative Micro Designs 

A Brief History
Creative Micro Designs, Inc. (CMD) 
was founded in the fall of 1987 on the 
strength of JiffyDOS,  

a new DOS speed enhancement 
product for the Commodore 64 and 
128. Company President and  

co-founder Mark Fellows developed 
JiffyDOS during 1985 and 1986, and 
began marketing JiffyDOS  

nationally through his own company, 
Fellows, Inc., in the fall of 1986 via 
classified ads in  

'Computer Shopper' and 'Keyboard' 
magazines. Mr. Fellows continued 
marketing JiffyDOS alone  

until fall of 1987, when he was joined 
by Charles A. Christianson, a relative 
and recent  

college graduate majoring in business 
and marketing.  

Mr. Christianson began helping out 
part-time with the marketing, sales, 
and business aspects,  

and helped to formally incorporate 
CMD at the end of 1987. Sales of 
JiffyDOS continued to rise  

steadily, and a partnership was soon 
formed with Charles R. Christianson, 
father of Charles A.,  

who operated an export business of his 
own at that time. The senior Mr. 
Christianson brought  

years of business experience to the 
company and helped to transform it 
from a basement  

operation into a full business.  

In April of 1988, Creative Micro 
Designs, Inc. became a full-time 
business, and tripled its  

annual sales in dollars each year in the 
first three years of operation. The 
company made its  

first jaunt to the annual World of 
Commodore show in Philadelphia in 
November of 1988. Work  

continued on improving JiffyDOS, and 
CMD rolled out the present version 6 
of the product in  

mid-1989.  

Amidst the rise in popularity of 
JiffyDOS, CMD began work on a 
SCSI-based hard drive system  

that featured a highly-compatible DOS 
coupled with partitioning options that 
helped it to  

emulate other Commodore disk drives. 
CMD began development of this 
product in 1989. Special  

attention was paid to assuring 
compatibility with important software 
products such as GEOS,  

CP/M, and Superbase. The level of 
compatibility of this new series of hard 
drives, along with  

its expandability and versatility, made 
it an instant hit when the product began 
shipping in  

1990.  

With the development of the CMD HD 
Series hard drive and DOS completed, 
CMD turned its hardware  

development capabilities toward 
developing a RAM-based disk device. 
This effort resulted in  

RAMLink, an expandable RAM drive 
with a capacity of up to 16 Megabytes. 
RAMLink was also  

capable of maintaining its contents 
indefinitely through its own power 
source, or for several  

hours of actual power loss through the 
use of a battery backup system. Many 
other features were  

employed into RAMLink, such as a 
parallel interface to the normally 
serially-operated CMD HD  

Series hard drive, a slot for using 
memory from other third party RAM 
expanders, and a  

pass-through port for other types of 
utility and I/O cartridges. The HD 
Series hard drive DOS  

was ported to this new device, along 
with some changes and improvements, 
and again  

compatibility with important software 
was kept very much in mind.  

Initially, RAMLink could not be used 
directly with GEOS. However, 
gateWay, a new GEOS  

'front-end' provided GEOS 
compatibility, and was offered with 
RAMLink units that shipped in  

1991. While gateWay provided some 

capabilities that GEOS itself could not, 
it also presented some trade-offs and 
added to the  

learning curve of using RAMLink. A 
new GEOS CONFIGURE file replaced 
gateWay in RAMLink  

shipments beginning in 1992, while 
gateWay was further revised as an 
independent product.  

Two other products joined the CMD 
family in 1991: SwiftLink and SID 
Symphony. These products  

were initially developed 

and sold by Dr. Evil Labs, a 
partnership formed by college 
classmates as an experiment in  

designing, manufacturing, 

and marketing products. SID 
Symphony provided additional sound 
voices to Commodore computers,  

and helped lead to the development of 
hundereds, perhaps thousands of 
'stereo' music files. SwiftLink, a high-
speed RS-232 interface for the 64 and 
128, has grown  

constantly more popular as faster 
modems have been developed and 
dropped in price.  

CMD added several more GEOS-
related software products to its product 
line in 1992. The first of  

these was geoMakeBoot, a utility 
program that operates in the GEOS 
environment to create GEOS  

boot disks on any device currently 
supported by the GEOS Configure 
system in use. This made it  

easy to create boot partitions on CMD 
HD Series hard drives and RAMLink.  

The next product added to the CMD 
line was also a GEOS-related product, 
originally marketed in  

Germany as "GEOS LQ." To avoid 
any possible problems with trademark 
infringement, CMD released  

the English language version of this 
program under the name "Perfect Print 
LQ" This product was  

well-received by the market, as it 
helped to patch over one of the weaker 
points of GEOS itself  

-- printer output quality. It could easily 
be said that this product is the GEOS 
equivalent of  

the much heralded Adobe Type 
Manager for the Apple Macintosh. 
Perfect Print was further refined  

later in 1992, incorporating better 
quality output drivers and the ability to 
use borders  

within geoWrite documents.  

Two more GEOS-related software 
products joined the CMD line in 1992. 
The first was geoCanvas, a  

new 'paint' program for GEOS in 40 
column mode. Sales of geoCanvas 
weren't up to expectation,  

however, and CMD's distribution 
contract was not renewed when it 
expired. The second release  

was a collection of various utilities 
written by one of the best known 
programmers in the GEOS  

community, Jim Collette. This latter 
release was aptly titled, "Collette 
Utilities" and  

included several popular applications 
and Desk Accessories such as Jim's 
Font Editor,  

PSProcessor (Postscript pre-processor), 
MiniDesk, and Wizard.  

While the list of software releases from 
CMD grew in 1992, hardware 
development was still  

underway creating a replacement for 
the Commodore 1581 disk drive. 
CMD's FD Series floppy  

drives maintained backward 
compatibility with Commodore's 800K 
1581, but also had the ability  

to format and use high density disks 
storing 1.6 Megabytes. The FD-4000, 
CMD's top-of-the-line  

model, provided further capacity with 
the ability to format and use enhanced 
density disks  

storing 3.2 Megabytes. Again, the 
same high-level DOS that CMD used 
in the HD and RAMLink  

product lines was ported to allow users 
to conveniently partition disks. By the 
end of 1992,  

the FD drives were shipping to 
Commodore users all over the world.  

The FD Series drives made their print 
debut in the very last issue of RUN 
Magazine -- the  

Nov/Dec 1992 issue. With the loss of 
RUN as an advertising avenue, CMD 
created close ties with  

Tech Media, the 'Special Products' 
division of RUN, which continued 
operation for several  

months after the magazine itself 
folded. CMD eventually purchased 
Tech Media in May of 1993  

from International Data Group (IDG). 
The purchase included rights to all of 
the 8-bit holdings  

of Tech Media, including RUN and all 
of Tech Media's remaining 
Commodore-related product  

inventory. This single event changed 
CMD's role in the market significantly, 
instantly making  

them one of the largest dealers of 
Commodore products left in existence.  

With the purchase of Tech Media, 
CMD not only gained a large product 
inventory, but also took  

over responsibility for some of the vast 
backlog of unfilled orders created 
mostly through  

mismanagement by the order 
fulfillment company employed by 
Tech Media. The major portion of the  

backlog was for GEOS and GEOS 
application software produced by 
Geoworks (formerly Berkeley  

Softworks). CMD immediately 
contacted Geoworks, placing large 
orders for GEOS products. It was  

CMD's continued success at selling 
large quantities of GEOS products that 
eventually led  

Geoworks to grant CMD full 
production and distribution rights to 
the English-language versions  

of Geoworks' Commodore product 
line.  

Two more CMD products began 
shipping in 1993. CMD Utilities 
offered a selection of disk  

utilities and copiers useful to CMD 
device owners as well as other 
Commodore users. On the  

hardware front, CMD began shipping a 
new 3- button mouse at the end of 
1993. The "SmartMouse"  

offered full backwards-compatibility 
with Commodore's 1351 mouse while 
adding an extra button,  

new GEOS drivers, and a built-in real-
time clock.  

In 1994, CMD bought the rights to 
Skyles Electric Works' 2+1 cartridge 
port expander, and began  

offering this product. With the demise 
of another print magazine (Compute) 
at the end of 1993,  

CMD decided it was time to enter the 
publishing business. In late April of 
1994, CMD shipped  

the first issue of Commodore World 
magazine. In August, CMD released 
"SmartTrack", a trackball  

with compatibility and features 
identical to that of their SmartMouse. 
By year's end CMD had  

released "geoCable II" for printing 
from GEOS, began providing 
computer and disk drive  

servicing, and started to offer both new 
and refurbished Commodore 
computers, drives and  

monitors.  

As 1995 began CMD launched the 
EX3 cartridge port expander, replacing 
the 2+1 which had turned  

out to be too expensive to produce and 
market effectively. The EX3, however, 
lacked the  

horizontal expansion port of the 2+1, 
so in May CMD released a modified 
version of the EX3 with  

this feature -- the EX2+1.  

In 1996, CMD unveiled the next big 
step in pushing Commodore computers 
to the edge of their  

capabilities -- the CMD SuperCPU 20 
MHz Accelerator for the Commodore 
64. This new product used  

the 65816 processor, a 16-bit big 
brother of the 6502 that is at the core 
of the processor in  

every Commodore 64 and Commodore 
128 computer. The new accelerator 
offered up to 20 times the  

speed of stock Commodore computers, 
and promised the ability of expanding 
usable RAM to 16 MB  

at some future date. 
 
When 1997 arrived, so did the future... 
Commodore users were now able to 
add up to 16 MB of RAM  

to their systems if they had the CMD 
SuperCPU 64. And few months later, 
Commodore 128 users  

were able to get into the act as CMD 
released the SuperCPU 128 
Accelerator. Applications for  

the Commodore 64 and the 
Commodore 128 could now both be 
accelerated, and some important  

software titles began to take advantage 
of the new speed Commodore 
computers were capable of.   

On June 1, 2001, CMD ceased all sales 
of Commodore-related items. 

 
At 1:30 AM EDT Saturday, July 21 in 
the year 2001, CMD officially turned 
over its Commodore  

product line and all remaining order 
requests to Maurice Randall. It was 
with the financial  

assistance of several devoted 
Commodore enthusiasts that made this 
possible. 

Maurice to the rescue

Luckily for us as Maurice Randal 
stepped in to save CMD and its 
product line for the 64,  

Maurice bought up the rights for Jiffy 
dos and all the hardware for the 64.  
Fast forward a  

couple of years and products ordered 
from Maurice slowly trickled into 
hungry power users  

hands. 

Problems though are coming to light, 
now in 2006 users have been waiting 
literally years for  

products to arrive! Having paid 
Maurice in full, then waited sometimes 
3 years and still no  

products! Maurice has said that for a 
Super Cpu accelerator is takes roughly 
8 hours to  

construct!

Maurice recently appealed to users to 
stay calm and that this was a ?sideline? 
for him (his  

real job is running his automobile 
repair shop) Maurice explained he was 
sorry people had to  

wait so long for products and that he 
was now focusing all his spare time to 
ensure users would  

receive their products. Thus clearing 
down the backlog of items ?owed? to 
his customers. 

Now Commodore users are patient 
people, we realise perfection takes 
time, but 3 years is a long  

time to wait, when you are paying 
these sorts of prices. Maurice is still 
taking orders for  

hardware and software on 
www.cmdrkey.com, but before you 
order I would advise you that some  

users are still waiting for products after 
3 years. Commodore scene 
www.commodorescene.org.uk  

used to run an import services for 
Maurice?s products, 

Alan took orders and passed the money 
on the Maurice for his hardware. Now 
after 3 years of  

waiting customers are angry, and took 
out their anger on Alan. Because Alan 
is a decent person,  

he decided to refund all orders then 
claim the money back from Maurice, 
Alan sent emails and  

even phoned America to talk to 
Maurice but all to no avail. Now Alan 
has handed out over 1500  

in refunds but has had no money 
returned from Maurice.

Alan is understandably annoyed and 
now closed the Commodore importing 
service for all products.  

Maurice could be swamped with orders 
and unable to fulfil them in a timely 
manner, if so why  

does the CMD website state that most 
hardware is available within a 3 month 
period, was this  

just a typo and should have really read 
3 years.
Great that Maurice does support the 64 
and 128, but a more realistic timescale 
needs to be  

achieved.

Maurice has received numerous offers 
from people wanting to help 
manufacture products, or  

general help with orders. Of course 
Maurice is keen to protect his 
investment, of hardware and  

software purchased from CMD. But 
some form of compromise need to be 
made, if that means having  

the devices made by a 3rd party then 
Maurice could always create a none 
disclosure agreement on  

his products. 

With the diversity of Commodore 
users I could almost guarantee that we 
have some solicitors  

reading who would gladly draft up the 
relevant documentation. My solicitors 
has a Saturday  

morning surgery where you go on 
speak and they help you out for free 
there and then , (hopeful  

to recoup the cost for further problems, 
or pick up money on trip, slip fall 
claims)

Otherwise we are going to find ?grey? 
versions of the product, recently I 
found someone in  

Germany that could supply within 3 
days Jiffy dos ROMs, to any one for a 
small cost, of course  

these were pirate copies. If you have 
paid for Jiffy Dos and waited and still 
received nothing,  

I can?t blame people for going down 
this route, after all you have paid for a 
product so why  

cant you use it. I can see a similar 
thing happening with the hardware, 
after all we have some  

really technical people using 
Commodore machines, wouldn?t take 
them long to ?backward  

manufacture? any of the CMD 
hardware.
 
I wish Maurice would take some of the 
help offered, Or even subcontract out 
the hardware to  

another user or company; maybe Jens 
of individual computers, who seems to 
specialise in low  

volume orders of hardware

**************************************** 


Website Highlight


Sid recordings in MP3 format

W E L C O M E !!

Currently 500 MP3s of the original 
SID 6581 and 8580 chips available. All 
tunes are recorded  

from HardSID card and encoded at 
256kbps in mono. Always get the latest 
tunes as they appear by  

using the RSS feed
http://sid.oth4.com/

Another great idea, take a Sidcard and 
a great sid tune record the output onto 
a machine and  

save as an Mp3 file, perfect for your 
portable device, they are saved at a 
very high bit rate,  

and quite large in size but easily 
resample.

****************************************

Hardsid

http://www.hardsid.com/

The HardSID Quattro PCI and the 
HardSID PCI are the only SID cards 
with MIDI support for  

Windows XP and Windows 2000. 

The new PCI HardSID drivers are fully 
32-bit WDM kernel-mode drivers. 
(Since the HardSID.DLL  

has been updated for use with the PCI 
cards, all of the existing software are 
still working,  

just like with the ISA cards) The 
HardSID Quattro PCI is NOT using 
any IRQs/DMAs, just like our  

popular ISA cards! So, there won't be 
any mess with IRQ/DMA 
configuration conflicts. 

The card works with any MIDI 
software just like Cubase, Cakewalk, 
Logic, Fruity Loops, etc...  

You simply select the HardSID MIDI 
Synth as the output MIDI port and the 
card is ready to rock  

even on Windows XP! Official drivers 
with serious MIDI capabilities are 
present for Windows XP  

/ Windows 2000 / Windows 98 / 
Windows ME. 

There are six connectors on the card. 
Five external stereo jack plugs and one 
internal CD-audio  

connector. 

The internal connector:
- One stereo mixed CD-audio 
connector with mono/or fix-panned 
stereo sound of all of the four  

SIDs

The external stereo jacks:
- One stereo mixed output with 
mono/or fix-panned stereo sound of all 
of the four SIDs (mono is  

recommended for the external mixed 
output)

- Two stereo "dry" outputs for 
professional usage (the separate sound 
of each SID on four  

channels)

- Two stereo inputs for external sound 
filtering

The HardSID Quattro PCI is the 
ultimate solution for both MIDI 
musicians and C64 music addicts  

with its (up to) 12 voice SID sound and 
unlimitedly variable 6581/8580 
support.

 
Here is a great idea; a website 
dedicated to programs listed in 
magazines, but these you don?t  

need to type in; No sir ? e ? bob.  

Instead they are just d64 images to 
download. All the applications seem to 
be written in basic,  

so you can break out of them and list 
the code. A great way to learn 
programming, and a real  

link with the past.
 
Great what a simply brilliant idea!

PROGRAM LISTING Central

****************************************
 
Updated on : [ Sunday 6th November 
2005 ] : Updated Section Highlighted 
in RED
-----------------------------
Do you remember the days when you'd 
use to sit for hours typing out Program 
Listings from Books  

or Magazines ? Either they worked or 
they didn't ! It was the buzz of typing 
them in, to see  

what the end product would be. 
Sometimes they would be great and 
other times they'd be not so  

good ! With this collection of Program 
Listings, I hope to bring back those 
memories again. 

Some of the Programs have been typed 
out myself from Commodore 
Magazines like : Commodore  

Horizons and Personal Computer 
Games in Vice, from the Scans by 
Mort. For the moment I am  

placing Commodore 64 Program 
Listings into this archive, but if anyone 
else wishes to submit  

ones for the Vic-20, C16, Plus/4 or 
C64 as well, then you are most 
welcome to. They can be  

Games, Demos or Utilities: e-mail: [ 
alex.aris@btinternet.com ] with the 
following 

Program Listing Submission in the 
Subject Header

Attachment in D64, T64 or PRG 
format

Submission must be in it's original 
form and not modified in anyway. For 
example : cracked by  

Another Some of my recent finds have 
found Program Listings that have some 
else's name taking  

credit for 

another?s work ! I guess this was a 
normal thing to happen back then ! 
Plus, they must be from  

a Magazine or Book, thus fitting the 
Program Listing Central theme. You 
will also find many  

Star Programmer Listings from the 
likes of ; Antony Crowther, author of 
Loco and Trap, plus  

David Whittaker - renound Musician 
and author of Lazy Jones and Mayhem.

http://www.btinternet.com/~alex.aris/p
lc.htm

**************************************** 

Fast Laser Printer for Commodore 
Users
by R. Bruce Thomas

Are you in need of a new printer?
Do you want to get superb output from 
your Commodore computer?
Do you use a different flavor of 
computer in addition to your  
Commodore?

I am a dedicated GEOS user and for 
the past 18 years I have used numerous 
PostScript equipped  

Laser Printers to print my geoPublish 
documents in 
such varied locations as Print Shops, 
Computer Stores and the Elementary  
School my children  

attended.

For the last 9 years my printer of 
choice for output from my 
Commodore,  as well as my PC's,  

has been a Lexmark LaserPrinter 4039 
Plus sitting  beside me in my home 
office. This unit stood  

almost 2 feet tall with the extra  paper 
tray installed. It had 16 MBs of RAM, 
a duplexer for  

double-sided  output, manual feed tray 
for single sheets and envelopes, 
maximum 600 * 600  DPI,  

built-in Network Card so it could 
function on my LAN and all the  
computers in the house could  

print to it, a Parallel port so I could 
connect my Commodore to it and, 
most importantly for my  

GEOS needs, PostScript  Level 2 
emulation. The Parallel port and 
PostScript are requirements to  

make  the most of my GEOS/Wheels 
printouts using geoPubLaser and 
PostPrint. When  a geoPublish  

document comes out of the PostScript 
Laser Printer you can't  tell it was 
produced on a  

Commodore.

  I got the Lexmark printer (2 of them 
actually and managed to get one 
working unit from all the  

parts) from a company that was tossing 
it in  1997. The printer has created 
almost 463,000  

pages and has been a great unit  but it 
is definitely long in the tooth and 
getting to the  

point where it  would need some 
serious maintenance performed. When 
my last toner cartridge  

recently ran dry (I had a number of 
partially used cartridges) it would  
have cost me $200 for  

a new one or $100 for a reconditioned 
unit. I held off 
for a couple of months on making the 
purchase.

 Everyone switched over to using our 
Lexmark OptraColor 40 color  printer 
as their main output  

unit. A big drawback with the Optra is 
it only has a
parallel connection so I can't have it 
hooked to my network print  server and 
the Commodore at  

the same time. This necessitates 
changing cables and
occasionally resulted in someone not 
being able to print if the cable  wasn't 
changed. The  

Optra also doesn't have duplex printing 
capability.

 A couple weeks ago one of the local 
office supply stores advertised a  Color 
Laser for under  

$700. I thought this might be nice and 
went to check it 
out. I didn't take the flyer with me and 
couldn't remember exactly which  
printer was  

advertised and they only had the 
previous week's flyer in the 
store. On the front page of the previous 
flyer was a nice looking monochrome  
Laser for $300.  

Since we had the Optra for color 
already I felt the $300 printer 
would be a suitable unit.

 It has amazing specs. Up to 30 Pages 
per minute. Built-in Network  card, 
USB and Parallel  

interfaces. 32 MBs of RAM standard 
and expandable to 544 

MB. Built-in duplex capability. 300-
sheet paper input capacity with a 
multi-purpose tray for  

envelopes and single sheets. Up to 
1200 * 1200 
DPI print quality. And, most important 
for my Commodore GEOS print needs, 

it has PostScript Level 3 emulation. 
And if you aren't a GEOS fan the unit 
has EPSON FX-850  

emulation that  may work with your 
software.

 The store has a 30-day no-questions-
asked money-back guarantee so I  had 
nothing to lose and  

everything to gain by taking one home. 
After a few 
weeks of using it I have packed up my 
old Lexmark beast and will be hauling  
it to the recycle  

center next week. I LOVE my new 
printer.

So what is this miracle printer, you 
ask?
It is a Brother HL-5250DN. Brother 
makes 3 models in this line and the 
5250 is the middle unit.
The low-end 5240 only has 16 MB of 
memory and doesn't have the Network 
Card or the duplex unit.

 The high-end 5280DW has built-in 
wireless networking in addition to  the 
RJ-45 ethernet  

connection. It also has an LCD display 
that allows you  to configure the 
printer from its  

console. If you don't have any PC's you  
may want to opt for the 5280 as all 
configuration is  

otherwise done from
utilities and printer drivers on the PC. 
It may be possible to convince  a 
salesman to  

configure a 5250 at the store before 
you take it home to  your Commodore 
but you would have no  

way to change the settings after that.

 The Epson emulation mode works 
wonderfully with Busy Bee Software's  
The Write Stuff (TWS) 128  

word processor and, with the right 
printer  driver, from geoWrite and 
geoPaint as well. The  

BR-Script3 (PostScript  emulation) 
mode works fine from GEOS\Wheels 
using PostPrint. It  

supports all of 
the 11 GEOS LW fonts out of the box 
and you can load fonts into the printer 
as instructed in  

Dale Sidebottom's Laser Lover's Disk 
documentation.

 The footprint of this printer is a small 
14.6" * 15.1" and it is under  10"tall. It 
has an  

excellent power save mode (9W 
compared to 80W on  standby or 610W 
when printing) and wakes up  

out of power save very fast. From  
standby mode the first page is 
advertised as coming out in  

8.5 seconds. The  paper tray is re-
configurable to handle numerous paper 
sizes including   

Letter,Legal and A4 up to 28 lb. Bond 
(43 lb in the multi-purpose tray). The  
toner cartridge  

that comes with the printer is rated for 
3500 pages and a
high-yield cartridge (7000 pages) is 
also available.

 So, if you are in the market for a new 
printer to use with your  
Commodore,especially if you  

are a GEOS\Wheels user, check out the 
Brother  printers mentioned here. I'm 
very happy with  

mine and am sure you will find it  to be 
an exceptional unit as well.

enGEOy!

****************************************

ECCC DVD
Emergency Chicagoland Commodore 
Convention


I purchased this DVD from Robert 
http://videocam.net.au/fcug/ for more 
details, as usual the  

disk arrived quickly and well 
packaged.

The disk is a DVD-r recorded in NTSC 
format, and although I don?t have any 
NTSC video  

equipment, most DVD and Televisions 
can display these disks without 
problems. My DVD player  

states in the manual PAL format only 
this player will not play NTSC or 
DVD-r disks!

Firstly I must comment on the quality 
of this disk, the actual video footage is 
very clear,  

sound is good and some nice titles 
before each presentation, but only one 
option on the menu  

that basically plays all. 

I would say though that the sound 
suffers on the presentations because of 
the use of an onboard  

sound mike, as opposed to having a 
microphone on each presenter, this 
leads to the background  

noise being picked up as well as the 
speakers comments. 

The video starts with a walk around on 
the various people setting up machines, 
and a look into  

some of there hardware setups and the 
amazing monitor fix, repaired by 
stuffing a screwdriver  

into the power switch! Various items 
are for sale including Amiga 3000`s 
motherboards, Amiga Cd  

roms and disks.

Commiewars (software protection)
This presentation looks at the various 
copy protection methods used on 
Commodore disks, with  

various copy systems talked about, 
also a look at the various copiers 
available at the time  

including:

Disk Copiers

	Fast copiers
	Nibblers
	Bit copiers
	Custom copiers with parameter 
disks
	Cartridge copiers

Copy protection systems

	Disk errors
	Track protection
	Custom formatting
	Rapidlock 
	Vmax
	V6rpal
Both fast loaders with copy protection
	Dongle protection
	Code wheels and books 

DTV hacking ? David Murray
Shown are various hacks in stages of 
development looked at on the disk are:

Ps2 mouse ? adding a ps2 mouse 
directly with custom software 
producing a mouse pointer on  

screen.

Various hummber boards 

Hummer board with small 20 x 4 LCD 
screen the screen scrolls to show all the 
line of text. 

DIRMASTER
windows software allowing the 
creation and alteration of disk images, 
the software can edit and  

create; D64 D81 and D71 disk images.

Permits the editing of the filename 
within an image file 

Bam and Sector editing

The BETA version 2 in development 
permits graphics viewing Download 
the older version 1 from  

www.style64.org this will be reviewed 
next issue of Commodore free 
magazine.

The software can decompress ZIP and 
Lynx files
Supports Reading of G64 file formats
Has a built-in basic code editor
And features drag and drop support.

1541 supercard demo
The amazing supercard fits inside a 
1541 disk drive, in theory and with a 
knowledgeable user  

cold copy any protected disk software 
for the Commodore 64 machines. 

The presentation shows how the 
system works and basics of how to use 
such hardware with a  

modified Disk drive, showing such 
things as :

Variable disk formats
Features and 8kram allows reading and 
writing of a full track of data 
Creation of perfect mirrors of disks 
Doesn?t de-protect the software!
Sometimes the presenter says the disk 
has to be copied 4 or 5 times with 
varying settings  

because some disk protection used a 
number of different formatting 
standards across the disk,  

and varying other protection methods. 
Each system needs setting individually 
hence the need to  

copy the disk 4 or 5 times with 
differing settings!

In effect the system is a programmable 
disk copier

Summing Up
Difficult to review such disks because 
of the technical nature of the contents 
of the disks, as  

can be see here the disk is mainly for 
Commodore 64 fans. 

So summing up the disk quality is 
good featuring some amazing 
presentations, and software  

demos, but at times the speaker?s 
comments are merged with the crowd?s 
comments and coughing,  

you can still make out the presenter 
from the din but have to listen 
carefully. 

**************************************** 
 
This old Dumb machine

People make fun of others; it?s a fact 
of life! Sometimes it?s due to a 
misunderstanding, other  

times it?s a lack of knowledge, or even 
because they are different. 

Sadly this has happened to me. I hasten 
to add that at school (when I attended 
and wasn?t  

?bunking? of to play video games in 
the local arcades) I never really had 
any bullying or name  

calling that I can remember. 

Maybe I was lucky. Nope the real 
reason was I knew all the ?hard nuts? 
at the school and used  

to do all their dirty work. Stuff like 
asking out girls and getting girls phone 
numbers. 

Back to the present and I am now 
called a geek by one of my ?friends? 
because he saw some of my  

commodore items. Now I put this more 
to lack of understanding more than to 
name calling for the  

sake of name calling.

My friend always owns the latest 
hardware, fastest pc affordable, with 
the most memory;  

quickest internet connection money 
can buy. You know the sort of person. 
The kind that would  

Jump from one fad to the next with a 
flick of the hat, so to speak, never 
realising the full  

potential of the hardware or software e 
has, never reading manuals.

He phoned me and said he had a 
problem with his P.C. System not 
booting up and could I take a  

look, as he need to print out some 
letters very urgently. I said to bring the 
machine round and  

I would look, in the meantime I would 
print the letters for him. 

The door bell rang, my friend stood 
outside in the rain with his now failed 
machine dripping  

wet and cold. I looked and grinned, 
knowing what was about to happen, 
something that although  

isn?t life changing, makes you stop and 
think, puts everything into perspective.

I took the pc and helped my friend 
through the door, we dried him of and 
fired up the pc  

system, sure enough the system was 
dead alright, seems like some sort of 
virus infection, I  

said politely. He asked if it was 
repairable as he had documents on the 
hard disk unsaved. I  

said I will do my best. 

I took my friend to the loft space 
where my Commodore systems are 
now housed, in all there  

glory. I have fitted out the space and 
it?s now obtained heating and 
carpeting, heck I even  

painted the walls and ceiling white. 

I sat down on my Commodore 64 and 
hit the power button. Shocked my 
friend said ?what you going  

to do with that old piece of junk? I said 
noting as the machine sprang almost 
instantly to  

life. 

Now in the back of the machine is a 
cartridge with a piece of software on it, 
the software is  

some form of word processor, I don?t 
think its commercial, the cartridge was 
found in a junk  

sale, I just bought it for the case really, 
well worth 50 pence !

The system came up and I typed out 
my friend?s letter on the screen then hit 
print. My friend  

fell on the floor, I can?t take letters 
from that thing, they are 


documents for the bank not some fan 
club of old computers.

The documents printed out to a 
connected laserjet serial printer, ok it?s 
not fast but it  

worked and the 

Quality is superb from the old 
machine. I handed over the copies to 
my friend and said ? it may  

be old but at least my system works? I 
had printed out the docs in less time 
than it takes his  

system to load into windows.

My friend just stood looking at the 
machine, the documents and the 
monitor, hardly believing  

his eyes. He had just had one of those 
moments we all hate an ?I told you so 
kick in the teeth  

moment? he was clearly wondering 
what had just happened. 

I fixed the P.C. by removing the 
infected files and then installing a 
firewall, and  

anti-spyware software onto the 
machine. We booted up the system and 
checked everything was ok. 

I asked if the Letters were acceptable 
for the bank and my friend said ?they 
are fine?

He asked if it was worth purchasing a 
Commodore 64 and an old serial 
printer in case his P.C.  

broke down again. I suggested my 
system was always available and the 
choice was down to him. 

We said our goodbyes and he thanked 
me for the letters and his fixed 
machine. Then he walked  

out into the cold night and the rain, I 
watched him dash into his car and 
drive away. 

I smiled to myself and closed the door. 
Walking back into the loft space I 
closed down my  

system, didn?t have to shut it down, 
just press the power button. I thought 
to myself ?life is  

complicated enough without the 
complexity of P.C.? and went to bed, 
another job well done.

Lying in bed I thought to myself ?I 
didn?t even charge him for my service? 
dam I must be going  

old and soft.

I have no idea what the carriage is, I 
don?t even know where it came from!  
The software gives  

no help but it does look a little like Zen 
word processor. 

The software can convert ASCII to 
PETSCII and back format and save to 
disk. There is no spell  

checker or anything fancier than being 
able to make text bold or italic and 
underline nothing  

else is supported with the exception of 
an 8 column format. So its as basic as 
can be. 

The lesson my friend learnt was that 
things don?t have to be complicated. 
Sometimes the simple  

things work the best. As I am sure you 
are all aware a Commodore 64 and a 
printer is more than  

adequate to produce some simple 
letters to the bank. 

Maybe you had similar experiences, if 
so I would love to here them; we could 
share them with  

other users.


****************************************


Commodore Disk Magazine

I have been asked by a couple of 
readers for a disk magazine, or disk 
version of the PDF  

Commodore Free magazine. The 
reason is that 8 bit systems (who the 
magazine main readers are)  

cant access these PDF magazine files 
from there system unless they enter the 
evil world of  

Apple or Microsoft. I have been 
accused of maybe alienating my 
readers and forcing them onto  

other platforms!

I struggled with the idea of the 
magazine for a long time, delaying its 
launch for a variety of  

reasons. Should I produce a webpage 
magazine, should it be downloadable 
text, should I have the  

text in ASCII or PETSCII format 
(more of these standards next issue) 
should I produce a disk  

magazine? My programming skills are 
lacking, mainly due to spending most 
of my Commodore  

childhood on Geos or playing games, 
mainly elite and the sentinel. So the 
disk magazine was  

out, also I really liked paper magazines 
as you can read them anywhere. 

Question is ?how would I be able to 
produce a disk magazine and would it 
be acceptable for  

readers with my lack of knowledge?. 
My quest for a disk magazine began. I 
downloaded a couple  

of really good magazines, the Scene 
world magazine really stood out for its 
editorial content,  

ease of use and pal/Ntsc compatibility, 
looking at the disk content revealed a 
woven menu  

content, could this be a simple engine I 
could use? 

I contacted a couple of people, one 
being Andrew Fisher, he said the disk 
magazine text is in  

screen code format (now that confused 
me as I thought this was PETSCII 
coding, again next issue  

I will look at these different formats) I 
asked Andrew if he could help out, or 
if I could  

license the Scene World engine. 

Andrew said its quite complex and 
time consuming to compile text for this 
system. Andrew said  

all text was formatted with voodoo 
writer, on the Scene world disk, I tried 
this out and found  

it quite easy to use. I then contacted 
Dave ?loadstar? moorman, he produces 
?loadstar disk  

magazine? just in case you didn?t get 
the hint from the text. David seemed 
over keen,  

expressing a desire to work with me on 
such a problem.
 
I explained I wanted a main menu 
system, a nice logo would be good, the 
ability to print and  

after reading text be returned to the 
main menu. The ability to run actual 
applications from  

the main menu would be great. If you 
have ever used Loadstar you know 
where I wanted my disk  

magazine to go
 
But the system needed to be easy to 
use ?compatible? and also clean 
looking nothing over the  

top. I also asked for a system that 
would be easy to manage for my 
limited amount of time.

Dave came to the rescue with a disk of 
tools he was working on for loadstar 
called ?mini  

presenter? a sort of cut sown engine 
from loadstar, the system seemed 
perfect for my needs.  

Here is the original disk of utilities sent 
through to me.

The basic concept was perfect, and 
Dave said he sent this out to users 
wishing to create disk  

magazines for clubs etc. Dave has also 
offered a full write up of the disk and 
utilities so  

hopefully this will be in the next issue, 
if he is short on 

time I will put pen to paper and create 
a walk through of my efforts.

The original system was for me a large 
learning curve, creating text for the 
main menu and  

having everything look right was a 
challenge with the tools. Not that the 
utilities were hard  

to use, but with so much on offer, you 
end up running the applications and 
not reading the  

documentation. DOH

I am guilty of going in hand over fist 
and running when I can?t walk. I took 
time out to calm  

down; maybe timescales would slip for 
the disk issue 

Stepping back and printing out all the 
documentation, reading and then 
understanding what was  

on offer soon had my mind better 
comprehending how everything fit 
together, and how all the  

tools worked.

My efforts paid off and with some 
tweaking of applications from David I 
have a finished issue  

Commodore Free issue 1 

Above is the main screen you can use a 
mouse to move or the cursor keys and 
ENTER to select the  

item. A submenu will appear with 
options to Read the text or forget it to 
close the box. If  

there is an associated Application you 
also get the option to run the 
application.

Once the desired text is selected you 
can view it and scroll around using 
cursor keys or  

pointing to the top with the mouse and 
clicking on the text to go up and 
bottom to go down.  

Clicking on Exit will take you back to 
the main menu and Print will print the 
page. Of course  

you can use the shortcut keys E and P 
respectively.

So for everyone that asked here it is 
issue number 1 as a disk magazine.  I 
hope my efforts are  

welcome and the people who 
complained about PDF files and 
wanted a disk magazine I hope this  

fulfils your needs.

Let me know your comments after all 
the amount of work that went in to 
converting all the text,  

re editing it (badly) and correcting 
SOME of the mistakes from the 
conversion, was time I  

didn?t really have.

I feel that the effort put in was worth 
my time though and I learned a lot 
about text and more  

about my C64. 

I don?t think this will win disk 
magazine of the year as there is 
nothing flash just plain good  

old information, readable on screen 
and printable. However this was my 
goal so you could say I  

have been 100% successful.

If you would like to use the system for 
your own club or magazine please feel 
free to contact  

loadstar

www.eloadstar.com

who will be happy to help and provide 
support for the tools and utilities, of 
the disk.

****************************************

FairLight - 10 Years Of Glory
- ORDER NOW -

Ever wanted to get your hands on all 
the stuff ever produced by FairLight? 
All the stuff from  

the glory days of this scene legends 
forever impacting scene on 64, Amiga 
and to some extent on  

the PC as well! Rest no more - it's all 
available on a CD! 

You now have a chance of buying the 
collection as complete as we could do 
it after months of  

deep dives in the disk boxes, help from 
friends on the net and sysops of the old 
board who used  

to host us. We can't say it's 100% all of 
it, but it's as close as we could possibly 
come using  

joint efforts! Find any pre 1997 stuff 
not on the list which I don't have, and 
I'm willing to  

discuss a price reduction! Find TEN 
programs not on the list - which I don't 
have - and you'll  

get a CD for free! 

Some of you might be aware that 
FairLight rocks on the PC ISO scene as 
well, but this CD has  

nothing to do with that! The group is 
the same, but we don't sell. Selling is 
piracy and  

pirates are losers! 

People keep asking me if this deal is 
still on: 
I burn a new copy for every order, so 
there is no stock I can run out of. This 
also means;  

There is a CD for you as well - don't 
worry :-) 

Also; Delivery has been slow lately as 
I have been moving houses. This phase 
should now be over  

and I can start sending within a week 
again.
 
Contens
C64	75MB of D64 images in 476 
files, including index files over the 
sequence of disks

Amiga	314 MB of heavily packed 
DMS files - 661 files in all, structured 
after the release  

year!

PC	14MB - Two programs only; 
Which will remain a secret for you to 
find out

Music	497K c64 music - in 122 tunes

Graphics	A set of FairLight logos 
along the currently available set of 
Cracking Comics  

and a few banners from the sites.

Tools	Lots of the tools you need to 
access and manipulated the images 
included. The most  

recent emulators for the PC in order 
for you to run an emulated Amiga and 
C64 are included.

Music	As this is a mixed mode CD, 
you have also 19 minutes of FairLight 
related musics. This  

is real audio which can be played in 
any CD on your stereo. These pieces 
are known to make  

grown sceners cry :

HTML	Copies of the two sites 
www.fairlight.org and 
www.fairlight.to . When purchased 
through  

me you always get a copy of the files I 
actually work on for the home page, so 
you could even  

get a more recent version than the one 
on the web! I could have updated it, 
but not uploaded  

it! (Which is the case when writing this 
for example!)

Price for this lump of gold

Svenska kronor	200
Dollars		20
Pounds		15
Euros		20

Postage is included in the above 
prices! 

Means of payment

1) Place your order by sending the 
money in an envelope to: 

Pontus Berg
Solhemsvgen 23
163 54 Spnga
SWEDEN 

2) If you can provide me with a type of 
check where the overhead is all on 
you, and the money  

ending up in my end is the specified 
amount, then I'll accept that as well! 
An example is the  

swedish "PostGiro Utbetalning" 

Not accepted means of payment
In order to accept credit card you'd 
need to have a real business - this is 
selling the result  

of a hobby and I'm no where near the 
turnaround needed, so credit cards are 
hence out of the  

question. 
Also national COD in Sweden 
demands that you have a "PostGiro 
Konto" which I don't have! It has  

a yearly overhead which wouldn't 
make it worth the trouble getting for 
this! I'm not certain of  

international COD though. 

Also EuroChecks aren't accepted! I got 
one from a buyer, but no one accept 
them around here. I  

visited several banks and exchange 
bureaus, but I's still stuck with this 
crappy piece of paper  

noone can make money from! :-P 
Paypal seems like an interesting 
option, but as noone has described how 
to get cash OUT of the  

system, then I am not interested in it 

Is it safe to send money to me?

SECTION OF EMAIL TO 
FARILIGHT

>
> Bacchus
>
> Just checking this cd is available for 
purchase still,
>
> Also would you have any objections 
to me Copying > the CD page for the  
magazine  

>www.commodorefree.com
> Would you want your name and 
address removing from the article and 
> just a link to the website (some users 
cant read the PDF so will be 
> viewing on Real commodore 64 with 
disk drives)
>
>
> Also if you have anything that you 
feel you would like to share with
> other readers of the magazine I 
would be grateful.
>


Sorry for the delay, X-mas times are 
hectic ...

Do mail me at pontus@berg.to as the 
fairlight.to is over flooded with  spam 
and if you write  

something that is even close to 
objectable, the 
spam filter will kill it instantly ;-)

I'm fine with a full copy - including the 
mean to address me for an order.

If my address can be like that on public 
internet, then I guess there is no harm 
in adding it  

to your publication as well!


/Pontus
Assuming that snail-mail works, I can 
only give you my word that I'll serve 
you. I planned to  

sell a bunch of those CD:s and the only 
way to do it is to keep a reputation. 
The first one  

feeling cheated will say so in Usenet 
news, and then I won't be able to sell 
another one!  

Please consult any source you can find 
in order to verify my credibility.So far 
I've had one  

case of trouble caused by the mail 
company in a south american country 
(The secure mail  

envelope was actually steamed open 
and plundered), but that was settled to 
both parties  

content. If you have any questions, 
please do not hesitate to send me a 
mail 

How long is the delivery time?
All orders are served ASAP - within a 
week is a normal ambition. Mind that I 
travel frequently  

in my work and hence may not be able 
to reply mail the same day. Also note 
that if you use my  

account in the bank, then also 
remmeber to mail me about it, as I 
don't check that more than  

once a month - if you let me know, I 
can check it via the web. Write a 
message including your  

name on the payment! 

Principles/Piracy
Pirates sell copies of games in order to 
make a profit, and harm the legal 
business while doing  

so. FairLight don't sell games. 

We have collected the FairLight stuff 
to make sure we preserved the part of 
history we took  

part in. It's our view that these games 
are no longer commercially interesting 
and won't harm  

any legal business, hence this is not 
piracy in out view, even if it's strictly 
legally  

technically is! 

If you run or represent a business, 
which feel that this collection harm 
your business in any  

way, then please let us know and we'll 
happily remove the part disturbing 
you. The intention is  

not to cause harm, but to spread a part 
of the history we're proud of! 
TestimonialsThe dinkum aussie 
Mayhem says:
"It works fine & the music is 
awesome! Love the Druid II Remix & 
the Wizardry Rave Mix." 
Michael Derendorf says:"hi Bacchus! 
your cd is here...great piece, im 
feeling nostalgic! i  

never forget the time of glory, the 
80s... c64 rulez! " Thomas Gottschall 
had some very nice  

words:"... the FairLight CD has arrived 
here (last Friday or so). It's great it 
simply can't be  

described in words what the feeling 
was when I went through the whole 
C64 files. I had  

something important to do but I said 
what the hell I want to see them all and 
so I did. The  

Druid II Remix is perfect.
...
Thanks again, for quick delivery, for 
the stuff and for some more wonderful 
moments when  

looking back to the good old days. " 
'JoKer' says"just a short note to say 
thanks for sending  

the CD. I just received it. It is great. I 
love all the music and the programs 
that you have  

provided. Most of all I am greatful for 
you and Fairlight for producing such a 
comprehensive 64  

and Amiga CD for the enjoyment of 
people around the globe." 

Oliver from Germany claims: 
"Anyway, thanks for your convenient 
shipping, another satisfied  

customer more. Which proves again 
that Fairlight is...the best there was, the 
best there is and  

the best it`ll ever be..."


EDITOR COMMENTS
It seems that Fairlight like all of us are 
plagued with the dreaded SPAM, I sent 
an email to  

the address given and waited for a 
week nothing. Then just as I was about 
to give up and remove  

the article from the magazine, I 
received an email with an apology to 
tis effect.

****************************************
 
C128 Rom`s
Get 3 add-on ROM chips that add 
functions to your C128 or 128D or 
17xx Ram module.

Normally I sell the chips for $25 each 
+ Shipping & Insurance. But you can 
get all three at a  

special price! 

****Chip #1 ****
Put GEOS inside your C128 (or RAM 
expansion) and load it instantly!The 
Commodore C128 has an  

extra socket that can hold 60K of 
GEOS code so it does not need to be 
loaded from disk!

Installation is easy: just remove the 
screws of your C128, pop the cover off 
and pop in the  

chip in. Now when you start you C128, 
you can go to Geos rightaway.You still 
have 100%  

compatibility with all other C128 
software. The chip will let you boot 
CP/M, start in 64 mode  

or native C128 mode.

GEOS will boot to the 80 Column 
mode, but you can switch to 40 
Column mode with two taps of the  

RETURN key.

*** 1750 or 1700 Ram Expansion 
owners:
The 1750/1700 has a space for a ROM 
chip! Yes you can put the GEOS Boot 
ROM in the 1750 and  

boot GEOS. This keeps your C128 
internal socket free for other ROMS.

QUESTIONS I've been asked:
Q: Is this for GEOS 64 or GEOS 128?
A: This chip boots GEOS 128 Version 
2

Q: Can I use other C64 cartridges with 
this istalled?
A: YES, C64 cartridges force the C128 
into C64 mode where the GEOS Chip 
is disabled.

Q: Can I put the chip in the WRONG 
way?
A: No, The Chip has a notch and so 
does the C128 socket. Just line up the 
notch and the chip  

will go in correctly.

Q: Does this chip violate any 
copyright?
A: NO - this chip is offical, approved 
and legal!

Q: With this chip, do I need the GEOS 
disks?

 
A: YES, you still need your appliction, 
work and desktop disk. The chip just 
loads GEOS in  

under a second.

Q: I'V opened my 1750/1700 RAM 
expansion and see no open socket?
A: Some 1750/1700s need a socket 
added. It takes about an half am hour 
to solder in a socket. I  

can do this if you send me your 1750 
and some $$$ to do the work. Anyone 
that is good with a  

soldering iron can install the socket 
you need.

Q: Are there other ROMS for the 
C128?
A: YES, there are four as far as I 
know. I am working with the copyright 
holders of the other  

three chips to be able to sell all four 
here on eBay.
Q: Can I have more than one ROM in 
the C128?
A: YES, you can have two or three. 
One in the C128, one in the 1750 
RAM expansion. You can turn  

these on and off with switches or by 
holding special keys down when the 
C128 is powered up.

The GEOS Boot ROM also solves the 
"disk serialization problem". When 
GEOS first came out ever  

boot disk had a serial number. All 
applications needed to have this same 
number or they would  

not run.

Without the boot chip, any application 
you get on eBay may have a different 
serial number than  

your boot disk ... and won't run.

The boot chip solves this problem. 
Now you can run any GEOS 
application regardless of the  

serial number.

The ROM solves this problem so you 
are freed to use your applications or 
buy new ones on eBay  

that have been serialized. 
There is "virtually no support" needed 
for this ROM. You just open your 
C128 and the guides  

make the installation a snap.


The Chip correctly uses what ever 
drive you assign as Drive 8. There is 
no need to fiddle with  

disk utilities to assign a drive number. 
The chip always finds the right drive. 

****Chip #2 ****
The BASIC 8 ROM is both rare and 
useful. It allows you to write BASIC 8 
programs that extend  

the Commodore 128s BASIC graphic 
commands.

The C128 has advanced support for 
graphics in the 40 col mode. BASIC 8 
adds the commands (and  

more) to the 80 col mode.

****Chip #3 ****
This is the Servant ROM that adds 
features to your C128 or 128D. Here is 
what the author wrote:

THE SERVANT is a ROM-based 
utility package designed exclusively 
for the Commodore 128 

Hi! And welcome to THE SERVANT. 
The guys who designed the 
Commodore 128 dida great job. Both  

you and I have enjoyed the fruits of 
their efforts. In the design of the C128 
they included a  

feature which has only rarely been put 
to use. If you open your trusty 
128 (or 128D) there seem to be 
something missing. Among all the 
black, rectangular chips  

there's a vacant socket meant to 
contain a ROM chip. A lot of goodies 
can be put into that  

space.

This is where THE SERVANT comes 
in. THE SERVANT offers a plethora 
of nifty utilities and  

convenience features designed to make 
your computing life easier and more 
fun. Even if you only  

use the 64 mode, the chip still gives 
you added features.

THE SERVANT is designed with 
maximum convenience, compatibility 
and security in mind, making it  

unusual or even unique in many ways.

Well see for yourself and enjoy!

OVERVIEW OF THE SERVANT's 
FEATURES SERVANT features, 
main menu:
* 100% compatibility with all software 
and hardware you might throw at it.
* RAMDOS is fully supported where 
appropriate.
* Does not use any memory.
* Supports 40 or 80 column mode, fast 
(2Mhz) operation in 80 columns.
* Simple device number selection. 
Device numbers other than 8 (9 
through 12) can be accessed by  

holding down SHIFT, C=, CONTROL 
or ALT along with the command key.
* Your computer won't try to boot a 
disk when powered up or reset. If you 
DO want to boot a  

disk, just press the "0" key which is big 
and easily accessible on the numeric 
keypad.
* Run the first program on a disk as a 
BASIC program.
* Load the first program, switch to 64 
mode, and run it.
* Run C64 programs as if you entered 
'LOAD "*",x,1' in 64 mode where 'x' is 
the device number.
* Directory. RUN, DLOAD, BLOAD 
or BOOT a 128 mode program, or run 
a 64 mode program by pointing  

at the desired file.
* View the contents of SEQ, PRG, 
USR, REL and even DEL files.
* Display as ASCII or screen codes 
* Quick and convenient 1581 partition 
selection.
* Scratch selected file.
* Recover a NEW-ed BASIC program.
* Even works after a reset when a 
graphics screen was involved.
* Go to 64 mode AND back to 128 
mode, and then re-enter 64 mode with 
ML programs, BASIC  

programs and variables as you left 
them.
* Even utilities will still be working!
* Enhanced DOS commands. Validate 
will now protect the boot area (if boot 
sector exists), even  

if it consists of several sectors.
* Device number change/swap 
command.
* Recall last command.
* Swap 40/80 column screens.
* Convert memory to BASIC DATA 
statements.
* Create stand-alone program or merge 
DATA statements into any BASIC 
program.
* Select initial line number, increment, 
line length and data type (2 types of 
decimal and 3  

types of hexadecimal).
* Read all banks and memory ranges.
* Integrated file manager for the 
QUICK BROWN BOX. Unlike the 
QBB's own file manager it won't  

interfere with JiffyDos, programs, 
utilities or anything else.
* Fast (2Mhz) and convenient one-key 
loading from the box.
* Download files from disk by using 
the directory.
* You can freely mix 64 & 128 mode 
programs within the same box.

SERVANT features, disk tools:

****************************************

Missing Disk

In 1996, I completed an adventure 
game on the C128. You can read about 
it here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.
sys.cbm/msg/c08325c385fd8a7e?dmod
e=source&hl=en


I *know* I sent out copies of the disk 
to some peopleon either comp.sys.cbm 
or  

comp.sys.cbm.binaries.

If I did, and I know I did, please 
contact me immediately. I really need a 
copy of this game  

back,as disk recovery is a real 
longshot.

Please, think back if I sent you 
something that was ona Commodore 
128 disk in 1995-96. My email  

at that time was: 
pap@dana.ucc.nau.edu


The disk would have had the word 
"WESTFRONT" on it. Itis not the 
same WESTFRONT that I uploaded  

recently toACUG. That is a re-created 
version from memory.

What I need is the original. 

Thanks! :)

Paul
* Can use all device numbers 4 
through 30.
* Automatically detects the hardware 
you are using, and adjusts accordingly.
* Uses burst mode whenever possible.
* Recognizes RAMDOS as any other 
drive.
* Full 1581 partition support.
* The built-in copiers automatically 
detect, and take advantage of, 64K 
VDC memory.
* Built-in copiers also take advantage 
of 1700, 1764 and 1750 memory 
expansion.
* Will automatically detect the size of 
the REU (up to 1Mb supported) when 
selected.
* View normal directory on source or 
target disk, or view an extended 
directory which displays  

deleted files as well.
* Disk report - Statistical overview of 
the number of files of each type, the 
blocks they use,  

boot blocks and blocks free on disk.
* Disk copier - Copy whole disk or 
only the tracks which are used (marked 
as used in the BAM).
* Single or dual drive copy.
Automatically detects if the disk is 
single or double sided.
* With 64K VDC memory (but 
without a REU), it will copy a whole 
single sided disk in one pass.

File copier:
* Single or dual drive copy. * 
Adjustable sector interleave on target 
disk for maximum reload  

speeds.
* No limits on the use of 1581 
subdirectories.
* Copy files freely between 
subdirectories, even from one 
subdirectory to another on the same  

disk.
* Automatically detects the space 
remaining on the target disk, and 
reports if the space is  

inadequate.
* Options to make multiple copies of 
files, scratch copied files from the 
source disk, and  

automatically replace of duplicate files 
on the target disk.
* Bulk scratch the files you select. 
* Recover scratched files. Will report 
which files are recoverable or not.
* Can recover all file types, even CBM 
files.
* Header/format disk.
* On the 1571 you can select single or 
double sided format, and you can 
convert a single sided  

disk to double sided.
* Change disk name & ID.
* Create partitions and subdirectories 
on the 1581.
* Graphic representation of the disk 
which displays the free space usable as 
subdirectory  

areas.
* Edit directory. Re-arrange, sort, 
rename, lock/unlock files.
* Change program load address, 
change file type & compress directory.
* Print directory.
* Output directory to printer including 
all normally hidden information. This 
includes start  

track/sector, REL file side sector and 
record length.
* Optionally, print start and end 
addresses for PRG files and SEQ/USR 
file lengths.
* Autoboot tool. Create boot sector on 
a disk for a variety of purposes. 
* Write a BASIC command line to be 
executed upon booting. Limited only 
by BASIC and size of the  

boot sector; all direct mode commands 
can be used.
* Make boot sector to run 64 mode 
programs, even programs requiring a 
SYS command or LOAD  

"*",8,1 to execute.
* Analyze boot sector.
* Kill boot sector, transfer boot sector 
from one disk to another.
* Convert boot sector to an executable 
program or vice versa.
* Boot sectors will support all device 
numbers. 

If you prefer, the Servant ROM can be 
put into a cartridge or even inside the 
1750/1700/1764  

REU's. Installation is easy: just remove 
the screws of your C128, pop the cover 
off and pop in  

the chip in.

You still have 100% compatibility with 
all other C128 software. The chip will 
let you boot  

CP/M, start in 64 mode or native C128 
mode.

*** 1750 or 1700 Ram Expansion 
owners: The 1750/1700 has a space for 
a ROM chip! This keeps  

your C128 internal socket free for 
other ROMS

http://www.lightbolt.com/c128chips.ht
ml.


THE END

Another issue has come to an end.

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