How the Final Cartridge III Freezer works
by Daniël Mantione
64 Tips & Tricks [PDF]
Michael Angerhausen, Lothar Englisch, Klaus Gerits, Frank Thrun:
64 Tips & Tricks
Düsseldorf: Data Becker, 1984. (4. erweiterte und überarbeitete Auflage)
ISBN 3-89011-001-0.
(386 pages, 26 MB)
Danke an Dirk Wagner für die Bereitstellung des Buchs.
6502 Illegal Opcodes in the Siemens PC 100 Assembly Manual (1980)
The 6502’s “illegal” opcodes were of intense interest to home computer enthusiasts, and analyses were published in various magazines. But one would have never expected a company like Siemens to document illegal opcodes in a programming manual from 1980.
Siemens Personal Computer PC 100 Bedienungsanleitung, Ausgabe 1981/1982
The Siemens PC 100 was a version of the 6502-based “AIM-65” SBC in a case and with slightly modified ROMs. Siemens offered a set of German-language manuals, which included translated Assembler (MOS Resident Assembler) and BASIC (Microsoft BASIC) manuals, but also a general manual (“Bedienungsanleitung”).
Brotkastenfreunde Interview
In Folge 017 des C64-Podcasts Brotkastenfreunde bin ich diesmal Gast.
Das Titelbild vom 64’er Sonderheft 2/85
Am 25. März 1985 kam das zweite 64’er Sonderheft mit dem Thema Abenteuerspiele raus. Genau 40 Jahre später ist es nun als HTML und PDF online verfügbar – im Kontext des Projekts 64er-magazin.de. Der Drachenreiter auf dem Original-Titelblatt ist der damals 18jährige Boris Schneider-Johne – wer genau schaut, wird auf der Website erkennen, dass wir das Bild aktualisiert haben:
64'er Magazin – mit 40 Jahren Verzögerung jetzt monatlich im Web
Zum 40jährigen Jubiläum des 64’er Magazins präsentieren wir das Kunstprojekt www.64er-magazin.de: eine Website, die so tut, als wäre 1984. Exakt 40 Jahre nach der ursprünglichen Veröffentlichung erscheint hier jeden Monat eine neue Ausgabe:
[Ankündigung] Vortrag “Apollo Guidance Computer” an der Embedded Computing Conference in Winterthur
This post is about an upcoming talk in German.
The Easter Egg in the “Schrott-Tornado” at the Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich (Germany) has a new art installation as part of the reopened Electronics exhibition: The “Schrott-Tornado”, a tornado-shaped sculpture made from scrap electronics. There is (at least) one item in it that is most definitely not trash.
darmok.com: Memes in the Tamarian Language
I have created darmok.com, a website that lets you share common memes in the Tamarian language.
PostScript Cartridge for HP LaserJet
We have recently dissected and dumped the Level 2 “Plus” version of HP’s PostScript cartridge series. This time, we will look at the earlier Level 1 “PostScript Cartridge”.
Scanntronik Manuals
The German company “Scanntronik” offered a lot of high-quality hardware and software for the Commodore 64 series computers, most in the space of graphics and desktop publishing. They are well-known for their Pagefox and Printfox software as well as their Handyscanner 64 hardware. This page offers most of the German-language manuals from across their product range as searchable PDFs.
The Commodore AUTOMODEM (Model 1650)
The Commodore 1650, also known as the “AUTOMODEM”, is Commodore’s first full modem directly connected to the phone line. It supports pulse dialing in software and 300 baud duplex connections.
A 1960s Children's Book about Computers
The 1963 book “Robots and Electronic Brains” (by Robert Scharff) from the “How and Why Wonder Books” series is an early children’s book about computers. Let’s look at some of the interesting contents – and how the German translation “Was ist was: Roboter und Elektronengehirne” from 1967 changed some details.
Digitizing Analog Video through a Digital Camcorder
This article explains a setup and workflow for digitizing analog video (e.g. VHS, Beta, Video 2000, LaserDisc, …) using a Mac and digital camcorder – in high quality and with interlacing intact; optimized for archival. We will use a old-school digital camcorder (they are cheap!) to convert the analog signal to a high-quality digital “DV” stream and then record the DV stream on a Mac using a FireWire connection.
Dissecting a Dummy Promo MiniDisc
Many pre-recorded MiniDiscs are rare and expensive. An extra rare special case is the dummy promo copy of Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”, which we will dissect in this article.
The Commodore VICMODEM (Model 1600)
The Commodore 1600, also known as the “VICMODEM”, is Commodore’s very first modem (1982): It supports 300 baud duplex connections, and is connected to an existing telephone’s handset connector instead of the phone line. This kept the price down, but required the user to dial manually through the phone.
PostScript Cartridge Plus for HP LaserJet III
The HP LaserJet III laser printer from 1990 used the “Printer Command Language” PCL 5 by default, but could be upgraded with the “HP PostScript Cartridge Plus” cartridge, which contained 2 MB of ROM with Adobe’s PostScript Level 2 rasterizer. Let’s look at the ROM contents and some of its hidden gems.
CCGMS Future 0.2
CCGMS Future 0.2 was just released. It adds 80 columns support, a true ASCII charset (in 80c mode), and bug fixes.