MSD SD-2 Super Disk Drive

           I recently added a MSD SD-2 Super Disk Drive to my Commodore collection, and was thrilled to own a piece of MSD history. The device comes complete with an MSD IEEE-C64 connector. This connector lets you connect any IEEE device to the C64. IEEE-488 interface was typical to Commodore PET and early CBM computers from the late 70s and early 80s. The MSD-2 also has serial cable inputs that lets you connect to any Vic-20 or C64/128 computer using a standard serial cable.
     The MSD Super Disk Drives were the first third-party peripherals designed for compatibility with the Commodore 64. What makes this drive so unique is that it contained two onboard drives that used the Commodore DOS duplicate command used on Commodore PET computers that would allow you to copy an entire disk from one drive to the other in less than two minutes, and format a disk in 18 seconds. This was a substantially faster time than the 1541 of the day. The MSD SD-2 came standard using device 8 and 9, but could be changed with a simple change in the jumper cable located inside the cover. MSD made sturdy, quality Commodore compatible products that were quite popular in the early to mid 1980s. The MSD SD-2 was listed in RUN magazine in January 1985 at $449.95.
     The MSD SD-2 was, and still is, an excellent source for quickly copying disks for use and dispersement. There are some limitations with the drive that keeps some copy protected programs from loading due to the difference in DOS code and memory mapping. If you happen to come across one of these you will be one of the few that claim to have ownership of one. Mine currently has an error code that signifies that there is something wrong with the drive mechanism, so this will be a fun repair project at one of our next Commodore meetings in either Portland, Oregon @ www.pdxcug.org, or Tacoma Washington @ UPCHUG meeting.  Link to the MSD SD-2 user manual. Link to MSD-2 Wiki writeup. Here is a link to the CMD unofficial homepage for more Commodore rare peripherals.

University Place Commodore Home Users Group (UPCHUG)

     A few of us got together to discuss our various projects when Greg and Steve of PDXCUG.org dropped by. Unfortunately, we scheduled it for a weekday morning, so a lot of people had to work instead of attending, but we still heard about some fascinating projects and ideas from the five who did make it. We also discussed ideas for promoting the arrangement of regular monthly meetings in the Seattle-Tacoma area, which unfortunately has not been a reality in the past year or two.

     The University Place Commodore Home Users Group (UPCHUG) dates back to at least the late 90's, and was created for like minded Commodore and Amiga enthusiasts in the greater Tacoma metro area.  They currently have a UPCHUG Yahoo User Group that keeps track of the meetings and messages by its members. Their current webpage is located at http://www.upchug.com/. Future meetings will be scheduled in advance, and will be published on the UPCHUG Yahoo User Group forum.  Please note the user group calendar for upcoming events and meetings. Please refer to the calendar for updates and changes. Note: No meetings are currently scheduled past the 28th of January 2011.

     Contact any member of the posted Yahoo Group for further details. 

Commodore Vic-20 demo: Vici Iterum MMII

For those out there that doubt what 5KB of graphics memory, and a 1 MHz processor can do on a Commodore Vic-20 you need to watch this demo. The Commodore Vic-20 was announced by Commodore in 1980 and was also called the VC-20 in Germany, and the Vic-1001 in Japan. The CPU used the MOS 6502 processor, and memory is expandable up to 64KB. Over 300 software titles were available on Cartridge, and 500+ titles on tape. Following the PET generation, the Commodore Vic-20 used a serial interface to daisy chain disk drives and a user port for RS-232 type connections. The graphics capabilities of the VIC chip (6560/6561) were limited but flexible. At startup the screen showed 176 x 184 pixels, with a fixed-colour border to the edges of the screen; since an NTSC or PAL screen has a 4:3 width-to-height ratio, each VIC pixel was much wider than it was high. The screen normally showed 22 columns and 23 rows of 8-by-8-pixel characters; it was possible to increase these dimensions but the characters would soon run out the sides of the monitor. Like on the PET, 256 different characters could be displayed at a time, normally taken from one of the two character generators in ROM (one for upper-case letters and simple graphics, the other for mixed-case—non-English characters were not provided). In the usual display mode, each character position could have its foreground colour chosen individually, and the background and screen border colours were set globally. A character could be made to appear in another mode where each pixel was chosen from 4 different colours: the character's foreground colour, the screen background, the screen border and an "auxiliary" colour; but this mode was rarely used since it made the pixels twice as wide as they normally were. 
          The Commodore Vic-20 is a remarkable and easy to use computer the was the preprocessor to the famous Commodore 64. Enjoy this video created by Pasi Ojala and music by Anders Carlsson http://www.cs.tut.fi/~albert/Pu-239/v...

CommodoreServer.com - LOAD games from Internet .D64 files to your Commod...

Oregon and Washington are on the move

I had the pleasure of attending one of the best Commodore clubs out there. The Portland Commodore Users Group PDX extended a warm welcome to us as we traveled from Orting, Wa.   We enjoyed an amazing evening learning about the Comet64 Internet Modem, which connects a real Commodore 64 to the Internet. It can connect to any Internet server, but in its default configuration, it connects to CommodoreServer.com using virtual disk drive (V-1541) software to access your own D64 and PRG files. Newer software allows for speed up to 38.4K, blowing away speeds of a real 1541 disk drive, putting it close to Jiffy-DOS speed. There is also software that can download D64s and copy them on to floppy disks (and vice-versa) so you can archive your disk collection and share them with friends easily. And now, with VICE 2.2, you can access CommodoreServer without the need for special hardware works on the C64 emulator Vice 2.2 download.   
        A presentation was given on the new gaming service for the CommodoreServer where a new game soon to be released was demonstrated. This unique online gaming service also gives you the ability to chat on the server while gaming. It was way cool to watch. We also listened to Earl Evans from RetroBits Podcast give a presentation on Buddy Assembler for the Commodore 128 with it's unique ability to program in both Basic and Assembly Language. 
        Following Earl's presentation we were shown The Turbomaster Accelerator for the C64 that cranks up the C64's processing power to 4MHz. Karate Champ and several other programs were all tested, and without a doubt it speed up the programs. The Atari Team gave us a presentation of early development and production of Atari games for all the early consoles, including the Commodore 64. It was exciting to meet them. We had tons of questions about some of the best in early Atari gaming.
         The founders of Portland Commodore Users Group PDX have worked for years putting together a group that would gather other like minded Commodore enthusiasts to continue using and demonstrating one of the best selling and most popular computers of all time, the Commodore 64. Their intentions are sincere and genuine, with only the best ideas to help and work with other users out there. I look forward to learning chip assembly and programming at one of the future meetings. I highly recommend the group and their mission to anyone in the Washington and Oregon area. They are open to new ideas, so if you have an interest send them a line on their website http://pdxcug.org.

New Year of Commodore Goodness

Happy New Year to everyone! I had the pleasure of attending a Commodore event last night and had an awesome time. I learned all kinds of new and interesting things about retro computing and some of the cutting edge devices I have ever seen in the 8 bit computing era. The coolest one was the Vectrex. This thing is by far one of the neatest gaming devices I have ever seen. The Vectrex is a vector display-based video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. It was licensed and distributed first by General Consumer ElectricMilton Bradley Company after their purchase of GCE. It was released in November 1982 at a retail price of $199 ($440 compensated for inflation^[1]); as Milton Bradley took over international marketing the price dropped to $150 and then $100 shortly before the video game crash of 1983. 

^{I got to play Pole Position, and Berzerk on this console and it was truly worth the play. It feels like you are back in an 80s mini arcade. I also meet an actual Commodore digital synth musician named Andreus @ www.greightbit.com. This gentleman was amazing. He takes both Nintendo GameBoys and Commodore 64 and turns them into musical instruments that he uses to create low-end 8-Bit synth beats. He gave me a sample of some of his GameBoy music on a portable amplifier he had, and I have to say I was impressed. The AllConsolesGamer shared with me some of his latest YouTube videos and adventures with the latest on Bayou Billy for the NES. I recommend subscribing to his channel. He is quite entertaining and gives great reviews on the best in video gaming.}
 

Have a Merry Commodore Christmas

When I was 8 years old I received my first Commodore 64 for Christmas complete with a 1530 Datasette player, Frogger II Threedeep, Jumpman Junior, and Congo Bongo cartridges. This was one of the best Christmases I ever had. I spent days in my bedroom playing games, and attempting to write short Basic programs my uncle had taught me on an early Apple Mac. It wasn't too long after that I was loading games on my 1530 and anxiously waiting for the flashing lights of the game loads to complete. It is still so neat to see that after all these years the C=64 is thriving. Enjoy this short demo that can be downloaded here. Merry Christmas!