o fierce, we all now know what
went on inside Commodore, after the c64 and then the Amiga 500 it never relay got back on track.

- - - - - - - - - -

Q. Why still use Commodore?

Ok let me say this that... I am not a true Commodore fan per say, we used the Commodore pets at collage and I wanted one of these and still do, as mine recently bit the dust and went to silicon heaven, the VIC is very cool and so is the C64 I have a couple of Commodore 16 machines but Commodore were way off track when they released these machines, although to be fair it's a very competent system, the Amiga 500 was great so was the 1200 but the Amiga 600
(I do won one) what was the thinking in this, and, well you could go on about all the failed systems and the fact the Amiga 4000 didn't have a DPS or the triple A chipset, also some of the niggles with the C64 like the really slow disk access times and the various bugs and glitches.

The thing is, all these items brings back happy memories and you don't get these feeling with new systems, even now when I moved my Geos setup, it took 3 days to get it all working, as the SCPU refused to power on and the Ramlink wouldn't show any memory, I wouldn't have bought everything they released.

But I am a VIC and C64 fan I love these machines over everything else.

- - - - - - - - - -

Q. Just as we finish up then what are your fondest Commodore memories?

Wow that's a good question, Well I have to say the first time I saw the Vic 20 playing Blitz, I still have my original Vic and the Blitz game and yes they do still work, Hmmm in no particular order then and just as things come to mind well.

Loading screens and loading music.

I thought this was truly amazing the first titles I saw the tape drive stop then the screen went blank and then music would play and the tape started again, then slowly an image appeared on screen wow how can this be, it's doing 2 things at once, heck it still impresses me now I know how it's all done!

Oh also with the loading screens I love watching things like the nova load as the timer goes down and also where you here the machine whistle and scream as its loading a lot of Jeff minter releases would do this, heck I still load games off tape yep I know I am sad!

Sid music. Way to many tunes to list, but you must have recorded them onto
tape to play in your dads car like I used to, or even carry around on a Walkman, some of these were/ARE just amazing pieces of coding and musicianship.

Geos and word processing and being able to print from a C64 to a postscript file or printer!

The Christmas my C64 arrived

The Amiga 500 at my birthday

Drt`s

spending hours on Drt`s music system,

heck the list goes on, even now like meeting fellow commodore users, being interviewed for a magazine I produce myself ha ha let's leave this now I am going all nostalgic.

- - - - - - - - - -

Q. Finally then do you have any comments you would like to add?

Well of course thanks for reading, but what I do need is text for the
magazine, share something with other, if that's technical or a review or a memory they are all welcome contact me as all the content seems to come from myself apart from news items I get emailed, it's getting harder to find interesting text to add to the magazine.


*************************************
REVIEW: MULTICART 64
By Commodore Free
*************************************

I recently received a Multicart64 from Charles Gutman of 8-Bit Designs, and thought I would share with you the experiences both of the ordering process
and of the device itself. The device has these 63 built in these programs on a single ROM

Alien Sidestep, Astroblitz, Attack of the Mutant Camels, C64 Diagnostic, Calc Result, CCS Mon, Centipede, Checkers, Close Encounters, Cosmic Life, Dance Fantasy, Diagnostic C64, Dot Gobbler, Dot Gobbler 2, Facemaker, Falconian Invaders, Financial Advisor, Fraction Fever, Frog Master, Frogger, Graf64, Gridrunner, Hop Along Counting, Jaw Breaker, Juke Box, Kids on Keys, Kindercomp, Laser Zone, Magic Mon, Mario's Brewery, Memory Manor, Minnesota Fats Pool Challenger, Moondust, Mr Cool, Mt TNT, Number Nabber Shape Grabber, Omega Race, Pac Man, Pipes, Pitfall, Princes and Frog, Retro Ball, Save New York, Sea Speller, Song Maker, Space Action, Space Ricoshay, Spitball, Stix, Super Smash, Tank Wars, The Fourth Sarcophagus, The Mutant Spiders, The Pit, Threshold, Trashman, TSI Cycles, TSI Maze Man, Turbo Maze, Tyler's Dungeon, Ultrex Quadro Maze, Up and Addem, and Up for Grabs.

As for the quality of the programmes; well it's fair to say they are varied some are quite poor others less so; also I think some of the programs were released on disk only so you will of course need a disk drive to save any work (once all the play testing is over) as for the copyright to these applications I can't comment, however the process of ordering the device went a little
like this.

There are 3 options to choose from

MULTICART OPTIONS & PRICES

* A) DIRECT to board $34
* B) EPROM SOCKET $36
* C) ALL SOCKETED $38
* D) DIRECT TO BOARD WITH CASING $40

I chose option A firstly its cheaper and second I couldn't see myself changing the Rom at any point in the future so now I needed to contact Charles:

You can contact Charles by email at charlesgutman(at)gmail.com. and Payments are to be made by postal money order or by PayPal, I chose PayPal as its quick and traceable, just in case something went wrong mid transit, but I have purchased a number of items from Charles, they have all arrived as described been of good quality and were very speedily delivered with good emails telling me about the whole process .

Charles says that International orders are to be made by PayPal only. And he doesn't want credit cards through PayPal, just direct bank transfers.

Of course for the observant amongst our readers you will notice that The Multicart 64 is based on Fotios' FB-Jumbocart1, the prototype of which was
seen at the Commodore Vegas Expo in 2007. Fotios and Charles have worked on this together project together to get the device out to the market.

Although Charles seems to be the butt end of some in commodore jokes, from my virtual meetings with him he seems honourable and a nice guy. So Once I had ordered and received a confirmation from Charles to say the item was despatched, it was just a case of waiting a few days for my postman to arrive, the package was delivered in about 7 days to the U.K. and I didn't suffer any extra charges from the customs men, so I have to assume Charles had taken care of these details when packaging the item, it was neatly packed in a Jiffy bag with the customs form/label attached.

I opened the package, I just ordered the circuit board and so I received just the circuit board, not too much of a problem as cases are readily available,
in a boring afternoon I could order one and create a nice front for the
device, also I wouldn't have to do any cutting out of the case as the device has no switches or extruding parts, so maybe it's more like 10 minutes than an afternoons work, I suppose it depends on if you are paid by the hour or by the part!

I did however find a problem, I was hoping the device had some form of rest switch; maybe an external switch (although putting the cartridge into a case would have taken more work) you see as the cartridge is inserted and the c64 and powered on, you are presented with a menu to select the program, you
select which program you want to load, then the application runs and you have no other option but to power off your c64 and power it back on; so you can run something else, this I feel needs addressing, otherwise the cartridge is mass produced and is professionally manufactured.

I seemed to have an issue with this cartridge in 2 of my commodore 64
machines, you see the joystick and I tried 2 just in case didn't seem to want to move left, moving right and firing were ok, no problem but I couldn't move left except for some rare random moments, I wondered if this was a PAL machine problem or some sort of reset issue o

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* Origin: Dragon's Lair (39:901/280)