I’ve owned a Commodore PET* 8032 for a few years now. I’ve been able to download and run many different programs for it, like WordPro you see above. But one thing always remained elusive. I’ve long wanted to connect it to a standard RS-232 device and use it as a terminal. The PET’s classic shape, green monochrome monitor, and 80 column display all lend itself perfectly as a terminal.
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You might be asking yourself, less stripes? No, not the colorful stripes on your breadbin badge. We’re talking about the stripes on the video image. The same stripes that we’ve all become accustomed to over the many years of playing Commodore 64 games, watching demos and carrying on with modems and BBS’s. These stripes, which are actually interference, come in a variety of flavors: horizontal, vertical, and checkerboard patterns. The intensity of the stripes also varies from machine to machine. Some say with that these stripes become even more apparent when using a C64 with a modern LCD monitor.
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
