If you were following along with my previous post about converting an SX-64 to a DX-64 by adding a second floppy drive, you’ll know that the process isn’t without it’s problems. There are some irreversible changes that need to be made to the case to accommodate all the extra equipment.
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The SX-64 was Commodore’s portable version of the best selling C64 computer that wrapped the C64, a 5″ color display and a 1541 floppy drive into one case that loosely resembled a Kaypro. They were also called luggables because, well, they are quite heavy. Despite folks calling them rare, they litter eBay very frequently and command a premium price.
Introducing the Sony PS-F5– a very unique turntable created in 1983 around the same time as the Walkman. It was arguably the beginning of Sony’s own burgeoning portable music craze. It unfortunately wasn’t the same success as the Walkman. Production was halted and the remaining inventory was quickly sold at a discount and largely forgotten along with the records they played from the late 80’s through the late 2000’s.
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The Commodore 64 CP/M cartridge was released sometime in the early 1980’s, shortly after the introduction of the C64 itself. The cartridge contained the necessary Z80 chip inside to run CP/M software natively. While a novel idea, it was a bit too late with the popularity of CP/M waning which itself had been released almost a decade earlier. To make matters worse, it seems to only work on very early revisions of the Commodore 64. I personally am only able to get it to work reliably on a Rev A motherboard (1982, with no s-video output).
The latest acquisition is the JE520 by Jameco. This external voice synthesizer came in two variants: the JE520-CM for Commodore and JE520-AP for Apple II. The only difference was the interface connection to the computer. The Commodore version, the one I have, connects to the user port while the Apple II version connects via an interface slot card. Otherwise, I believe the rest of the hardware to be the same. I found an advertisement for it in RUN issue 7 1984— it retailed for $115-$150.
I’ve been invited to have a guest DJ set for All Tomorrow’s Parties on WVUD 91.3FM in Newark, DE. It’s simultaneously exciting and terrifying. The theme is synthpop, new wave and the Fairlight CMI. I’ve attempted to put together some cuts that I enjoy myself while trying to weave some threads through the artists.
I’ll be on Tuesday June 23, 2015 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm EDT.
I’ve put together a quick program that can convert an .SVG file into data statements that can be used to plot it on a Commodore 1520 Printer/Plotter. The program doesn’t run on the Commodore 64 (yet) but instead runs in the browser. It’s not ready to release yet as it’s fair picky about the types of .SVG files you feed it.
To whet your appetite, I’ve prepared a .D64 disk image that has four BASIC programs that will plot four different Commodore logos.
And if you need plotter pens for your Commodore 1520 printer, you can get new old-stock pens from @futurewas8bit!
It’s BASIC Week on Reddit/r/RetroBattlestations and I ported the BASIC Week program “Under the Sea” to the Commodore 64. The original code was written by FozzTexx for the IBM PC which allows for variable names longer than two characters. The Commodore 64 BASIC version 2 would probably still work using the longer names, it would just ignore everything after the first two characters. Doing this though would run the risk of overwriting variables so it was best to convert them. You can find a list of the variable name conversions at the end of the post.
If you’re keen to type the program in yourself, you can do so here. There’s a few special characters used the code. “CBM-” means hold the Commodore key (lower left) and hit the character after.
If you want to simply run the program from a disc image or to make a floppy, you can download a D64 disk image of Under The Sea here.
The BASIC version is quite slow and there’s room for optimization of the display code. Instead, I ran the code through the BLITZ! BASIC compiler and it runs much faster. This version is on the disc as “c/underthesea”
There’s three keys used the game. ‘A’ makes the turtle (you) go up, ‘Z’ goes down and ‘Q’ will quit the game.
Variable name conversion
Turtle$ = t$
TurtleWidth = tw
TurtleHeight = th
TurtleErase$ = te$
TrutleDead$ = td$
Enemy$() = nm$()
EnemyErase$ = ee$
EnemyW = ew
GameOver$ = go$
GOWidth = gw
GOHeight = gh
AirMax = am
Sea$ = se$
TurtleY = ty
Surface = sf
Score = sc
LastY = ly
TurtleX = tx
NumEnemies = ne
BubbleX = bx
BubbleY = by
Enemy X = ex
Enemy Y = ey
EnemyHit = eh
Food$ = f$
FoodX = fx
FoodY = fy
NewX = nx
NewY = ny
EnemyC = ec
NumBubbles = nb
NumFood = nf
exV = xv
eyV = yv
rows = rw
cols = cl
Recently on the Lemon64 forum, user Rizthomas posted some excellent scans of some plots that he did on a Commodore 1520 Printer/Plotter back in 1986. The plots were well executed and very intricate. Some were 2D “string art” and some were 3D functional models. Unfortunately, Rizthomas was unable to locate the original disks for his plots (still hopeful they’ll turn up!) but was generous enough to point everyone in the direction of where he began.
One route was Transactor Magazine Volume 6, Issue 4 which contained a program called The Projector by Ian Adam of Vancouver, B.C. The program was of combination BASIC that built on top of a series of machine language routines (from Transactor Volume 5, Issue 6) that made it easy to draw lines, circles, and text on a hires screen. The routines were called with a SYS command from BASIC and were passed coordinates as variables. This made it incredibly easy to patch the program to also send those coordinates to the Commodore 1520 Printer/Plotter with a few modifications.
You can download the program (and required ML program) here.
The nice thing about the program is that it will draw a line on the screen while drawing it on the printer simultaneously so you can see both evolve together. Enjoy and a big thanks to Rizthomas for the pointers to the code! If you’re able to get it working, let me know in the comments (and let’s see what you plotted).
Here’s a quick Vine of the plotter working:
If you use your Raspberry Pi without a keyboard and monitor, you know how frustrating it can be to use it without knowing it’s IP address. By default, the Raspberry Pi is configured to use DHCP to obtain an IP address. This is great for moving the unit around to different networks but can be annoying when you want SSH to the unit. Typically you can use the zero-config/Bonjour “raspberrypi.local” address but this doesn’t always work. I’ve instead come up with a way to use Prowl to notify me of the current IP address after it boots. As a bonus it works with either an Ethernet or WiFi (or both) connection.
Prowl is a Growl push notification service for iOS. It costs $3 and is available from the iTunes App Store.
1. The first step is to download and install Prowl and setup an account. Next, obtain an API key from Prowl. Copy the API key– you’ll need to insert it into a script below.
2. Next, create two files in your home directory (/home/pi/) called prowl.sh and prowlip.sh. Insert the API key into prowl.sh as shown.
File: prowl.sh from koma5 on github.
#! /bin/sh
# Usage: ./prowl.sh priority(-2 to 2) app event description
# Example: ./prowl.sh 0 "transmission" "torrent has finished" "Coen Brothers Compilation has finised downloading"
app=$2
priority=$1
event=$3
description=$4
apikey=PASTE_YOUR_HEXADECIMAL_API_KEY_HERE
if [ $# -ne 4 ]; then
echo "Usage: ./prowl.sh priority(-2 to 2) app event description"
echo 'Example: ./prowl.sh 0 "transmission" "torrent has finished" "Coen Brothers Compilation has finised downloading"'
else
curl https://prowl.weks.net/publicapi/add -F apikey=$apikey -F priority=$priority -F application="$app" -F event="$event" -F description="$description"
fi
File: prowlip.sh with apologies to original author.
#!/bin/sh
eth=`ifconfig eth0 | awk -F':' '/inet addr/&&!/127.0.0.1/{split($2,_," ");print _[1]}'`
wlan=`ifconfig wlan0 | awk -F':' '/inet addr/&&!/127.0.0.1/{split($2,_," ");print _[1]}'`
if [ "x$eth" = "x" ]; then
eth=""
# Variable is empty
else
eth="eth0: $eth "
fi
if [ "x$wlan" = "x" ]; then
wlan=""
# Variable is empty
else
wlan="wlan0: $wlan"
fi
/home/pi/prowl.sh 0 "Raspberry Pi" "IP Address" "$eth$wlan"
3. Set both files to executable by typing
chmod 755 prowl.sh prowlip.sh
4. Add this line to /etc/rc.local before the “exit 0” line. This will execute the script at startup.
/home/pi/prowlip.sh
5. Reboot your Raspberry Pi and you should receive a push notification from Prowl on your iOS device with the current IP address(s).
