art on the CD takes care of the interactive
groove and includes a visually attractive computer game, music tools & files and provides background info about the artists and their tracks. more releases - also on vinyl - are planned for the year 2001 together with our label partners from domicile (www.domizil.ch).


*************************************
NON FUNCTIONAL GOODIES
*************************************

Commodore Free: How many times have you wanted to buy a brand new none working product you can get working yourself? Well if you fancy saving a few quid and are handy with a soldering iron then this could be a good site to look at any way listed below are the none functioning products and a description about
what you are purchasing and why they are for sale.

store.go4retro.com/non-functional-goodies/

PRODUCT:

* uIEC/SD
* 64NIC+
* ZoomFloppy
* EasyFlash 3
* 2364 ROM-el
* 23128 ROM-el
* uIEC/IDE
* XPander-3
* XPander-3 VIC

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

We're sure you've clicked on this link, wondering why a company would openly advertise broken items for sale. Have we lost our sanity? Are we trying to determine the naivety of potential customers? Do we wish to inflict hours of frustration on classic computing enthusiasts?

Hmm, we won't discount those theories. However, our primary reason is much
more mundane. Honestly, some of the items we receive from manufacturing do not work. In the beginning, when time was more plentiful, we diagnosed the issues with each non-working item and fixed them. But, as the product list expands, and time is needed for more valuable tasks, the box of non-working items waiting for diagnosis grows larger.

Something must be done. Since "crowdsourcing" is all the rage these days,
we're going to crowd source this task. The effort goes like this:

1. There's a small "entrance fee" to this effort. We've listed all of our
non-working items on this page at greatly reduced costs. This is done for
two reasons. It allows us to recoup a bit of the cost to manufacture these
products, and it also ensures we target people genuinely interested. So, to
"join", you simply buy one of more of the items.

2. We mark the item as non-working, and ship it to you.

3. You figure out what is wrong with it. We'll provide schematics, firmware,
etc., but we're not doing the debugging. We have no idea what ails these
boards. Break out the scope and logic analyser and have at it. Note that we
make no promises the unit is repairable. It's the gamble you're taking. So,
if you buy one of these, assume the money is gone forever, and if the unit
can be repaired, you can think of it as finding free money!

4. When the issue is identified, you fix it. We can't promise replacement
parts, but if we have it sitting on the shelf and can send it, we'll try to
do so. Don't count on it, though.

5. When the issue is resolved, you have a working unit. Enjoy. We'll support
firmware upgrades and usage questions on these units just like any other.
However, we're not supporting the unit misbehaving or replacing the unit
if it fails at some point.

6. We don't mind you selling it to someone else, but you have to let the buyer
know the constraints as well. Fair is fair. Remember, we're marking the
units, so we'll know if it comes back to us.

(OK, so it's not exactly crowdsourcing, but that's our story, and we're sticking to it!)

Yes, the system could be abused, but our customers are not like that. Right?
In any case, we'll keep at it until it fails to work, or we run out of stuff (which will never happen permanently, as there's always duds in each batch). Spare us the commentary on finding better manufacturers who can assure 100% working stock. We're pretty sure that's not possible, but even if someone else could do better, they can't do it at the prices we currently pay for manufacturing. The trade-off is fine. Even if we never sell a single broken unit, we're still satisfied with our manufacturing partner. They provide
good quality at a great price, and we can pass that on to our customers.

So, if you love the smell of vaporized flux in the morning, leap for joy when seeing bus cycles displayed on your scope, and can convert logic analyser graphs of serial data into actual data elements, this store item may be of interest. If you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket and you have copious amounts of free time and great quantities of patience, click on that "buy now" button and await your borked treasure. However, if you need to
search the web for truth tables for NAND gates (or even what a NAND gate is), can't understand the X10 switch on your scope probe, or burnt yourself in the last 12 months on your soldering iron, these are not the products you are looking for.

NOTES

The XPander-3 VIC technically works, but it has the following issues:

* The switches to enable/disable power and IO signals are too close to the
22/44 pin connectors. Thus, cartridges with their shells will not fit.
Relocating the switches under the PCB will address the issue.

* The 2 unconnected cartridge port lines were run to each expansion port. But,
some newer VIC-20s and some cartridges ties those lines to various voltages
or use them in special ways. Thus, they should be disconnected at each
expansion port connector to prevent any possible damage to the VIC-20. We
won't take responsibility for frying a VIC-20, so we're selling the current
units as "broken.


*************************************
C64 NEWS
*************************************

*************************************
KICKASS CRUNCHER PLUGINS
*************************************

Information from the Readme file says

**KickAss Cruncher Plugins**

makes it possible to crunch (pack) 6502 assembler code and other data compile-time with the MOS 65xx assembler **[Kick Assembler] (www.theweb.dk/KickAssembler )**. This is done by the means of Kick
Assembler's plugin support, in specific *Modifiers*. The current version has support for two of the most popular crunchers for the Commodore 64, *[Byt eBoozer](csdb.dk/release/?id=109317)* and *[Exomizer](hem.bredband.net/m agli143/exo/ )*.

DOWNLOAD

You can find the latest version right here on GitHub:

github.com/p-a/kickass-cruncher-plugins/releases


*************************************
DR. EVIL LABS
*************************************

From: "Kent Sullivan
To: <commodorefree@commodorefree.com>
Subject: Great article on CMD in
issue 72!
Date: Fri, Aug 9, 2013 18:26

Hi,

I was one of the principals in Dr. Evil Labs. Not sure if you had heard that
we have been blogging about the company's history on commodoreserver.com:

www.commodoreserver.com/BlogView.asp?BID=22E95790589E42CF8BAA46C249B0FDE1

The most recent entries are for the SID Symphony Stereo Cartridge. I will be updated the part 2 entry soon with more documents - scans of vintage product reviews and pictures of the different cartridge versions. Earlier entries (accessible using the calendar on the right side of the page) cover the beginning of the company, Commodore 64/128 Kermit, and the Imagery! adventure game system. Future posts will look at the SwiftLink-232 and the sale to CMD.

--Kent

COMMODORE FREE: For anyone wishing to read the blog its available from here

www.commodoreserver.com/BlogView.asp?BID=22E95790589E42CF8BAA46C249B0FDE1

HISTORY OF DR EVILS LABORATORY

This blog recounts the history of Dr. Evil Laboratories, the creator, manufacturer, and retail sales of peripherals and software for the Commodore 64, including the Imagery! adventure game system, the SID Symphony Stereo cartridge, and the Swiftlink-232 cartridge.


*************************************
CODEBASE 64 SCANNING THE KEYBOARD
*************************************

To view the full article and the Code go to this link

codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:scanning_the_keyboard_the_correct_and_non_ kernal_way

SCANNING THE KEYBOARD THE CORRECT AND NON-KERNAL WAY

This routine is for the English Keyboard.

The routine can easily be extended

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.01 (GNU/Linux-i386)
* Origin: Dragon's Lair (39:901/280)