28 Apr
1997
28 Apr
'97
12:56 a.m.
On Fri, 25 Apr 1997, Larry Anderson & Diane Hare wrote:
Uh... was he looking for data redundancy or something? ;)
I intend to write the software on my own, but fast serial routines might
come in handy. I want to at least get 2400bps out of the thing. I don't
think that'll be a problem for the VIC-20, as it's faster at I/O than the
64. I'll probably have to put in a lot of RAM, though, to act as buffers
for the slow disk drives. :)
Do you mean the music teacher's programs, or the Cursor tapes? :) I think
I have copies of tapes #1 to #8, plus a couple of games from later tapes.
I wish I had the originals... but these were copies made from the high
school music teacher's subscription. :)
Ouranos! is an awesome game, BTW. I had the PET print up the listing and I
intended to port it to the Amiga, but I never got around to it. I don't
think it'd be the same, though, on anything but another PET with glaring
white screen.
Hummm... sounds familiar. I really have to find that once the exam
shackles are off.
What's the serial number on that machine? I have a feeling it's a lot
older than this PET. Both of my PETs have quite ordinary-looking ROMs.
(The one with the mini keyboard has the 1.0 BASIC ROMs, with the '***
COMMODORE BASIC ***' message and the other one has upgrade ROMs.)
Um... hold it... how are the 4116's arranged? You probably said, but of
course I can't go back into my mailbox to read that while I'm replying to
this one (I knew there was a reason I should my system to do this
locally!). If they're 16K by 4, then that certainly WOULD be more than
8K. :)
The Osborne is a good reference, but there are more
indepth books, such
as Programming the PET/CBM and PET Revealed.
If only I could find such things. I suspect that if I took a trip to
Toronto I'd have much better luck in all of my searches for old computer
hardware, software, and books, but the chances of finding PET stuff in
particular would go up a hundred fold. (What with TPUG, the Toronto PET
Users Group, etc.)
I have a feeling that computer ownership wasn't nearly as common in
Montreal in the early days as it was in most other major North American
cities, but my impressions could be wrong. Certainly people in my
particular area had them, but mostly just various flavours of the Apple
][. The Apple seemed to be some sort of status symbol.
Pity about the stores, I
too have noticed that, and if the owners of said store don't have any
clue about computers they usually opt not to take any computer books
(they probably got burned with a bunch of punch-card computer text books
years back...)
I only just recently learned to ignore those books myself. I have quite a
few totally useless books that I picked up only because they had some nice
pictures of old iron in them, or whatever.
When I say useless, I mean really useless. Books used as introductory
computer texts, with no specific information in them at all. I do still
pick up books on, for example, assembly language programming of the PDP-11
and that kind of thing, because those books are cool. (Besides, I actually
referred to one of those old books recently while studying for my computer
architecture exam that I had on Saturday, because I couldn't figure out
what was going on in the textbook for that class :) )
Interesting.
I performed the piggyback RAM hack on my Amiga 1000 (back
when it was worth real money) and that seems to still be holding up.
No this was not an expansion job, this was a direct piggy back of
chips, no bending out pins here, like I said it was a pretty stupid
thing, that never stopped him. BTW: Who here
thinks I'm crazy for wanting to run an "old-time BBS" off a
VIC-20? Who here thinks it's impossible? :)
Heck I have been and still am sysop a Commodore 64 BBS for ten years
now. If you want some BASIC BBS programs to start with (written for 64,
but I'm sure can be easily modified for VIC) I know I have some archived
here...somewhere. (music
program)in BASIC, based on the Cursor #4 tape's cover program. I
found copies of these
things in my brother's cassette collection (I was still in elementary
school at the time the PETs were in use).
Hey brother, could you spare a copy for a friend in need? <wink wink,
nudge, nugde>
I'll even supply you with a tape-to-disk program for the 64 that will
make the transfer a snap! Too bad I
couldn't find the cassette with the
professional music software on it (I forget what it's called) that lets
you compose the music on the staff on the screen, and that scrolls the
music as it plays. It's really impressive for an 8K machine!
I remember an ad about one that AB computers was selling I can't
remember it's name either. (maestro maybe?) ...the old 8K
here with the miniature multicoloured
keyboard (love that thing!)
Sure is nice, I got mine (original PET) from a friend including ALOT of
the original documentation, an extra tape drive (Commodore was
butchering SANYO tape recorders to begin with), some newsletters (that
later turned into popular magazines) and tapes, a splendid addition! I
worry about it though, I'm not sure whether it has ROMs or EPROMS,
whatever they are they are the original (you know those thin white DIP
packages.) Assuming all
these chips are the same, this was a 16K RAM board. This'd
be nice to get running.
I would have thought it to be more. :/ (on possibility of it being a Visible Memory Board)
Wow, that's incredible. Not only did I not think that PETs that old could
do high-res graphics in any way, but to learn that one could do so on the
KIM-1! I'm flabberghasted. ;)
The KIM is something I'd really like to find somewhere. I have this
terrible fear, though, of coming across one in some electronic surplus
shop and not recognizing it. :) There's a place I occasionally go to
that sells all kinds of populated boards from who-knows-what, and
something like a KIM-1 wouldn't be easy to separate from all that junk.
BTW, I'd love a copy of that ad. Send it to:
Doug Spence
85 Devon Road
Baie d'Urfe, Que.
H9X 2X3
CANADA
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Oooh... I wish. :) I didn't think you could
even get such a thing for a
2001, I thought graphics boards were the domain of the 8032 and like
systems. No idea why I'd think there'd be such limitations on one PET and
not on another, though. :)
Actually one of my PETs has one (I used it in high school), the graphics
could overlay the PET character screen too! Unfortunately the PET had a
mother board replacement and the jumpers are now wrong, and I'm without
docs, so it is not fully functional. Pitty I got a great Space War done
like Star Trek game for it. From an ad I still do have, the MTU Visible
Mmory Board was deveoped for the KIM-1 and then adapted for the PET, so
it's been around for a while. Same for the sound board, it mentions Hal
Chamberlin developing it for the KIM originally too (want a copy of the
ad for collection sake?)