Contact Ray at rcarlsen(at)tds.net

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MINI-REVIEW OF PROTOTYPE #2

Quality. Durability. Ruggedness. Craftsmanship. These words all
describe the Ray Carlsen universal power supply for the
C64/128/VIC-20CR/Plus4. Though I've been testing prototype #2 for a few months, it has never let me down.

When I received it in the mail a few months ago, I was immediately
impressed by its construction. It had a metal, vented case with striking
black and white paint. It used a thick insulation over its heavy gauge
output cable. It sat on 4 sturdy rubber feet. Inside, there was plenty of
air space for the components - a new, modern 5VDC unit putting out 5 amps,
a new, modern 9VAC unit putting out 1 amp, and the Ray Carlsen Computer
Saver which cuts out the 5V line should it go over 5.40 volts. Everything
was neatly, firmly screwed down to the metal case. There was no messy mass
of wires, just an orderly placement of the wires. On the outside of the
case was one LED which showed the power supply had power.

The power supply had the looks, but did it deliver the goods? A big YES!
I've had it running for hours, and it barely emitted any heat through the
vents on the case. In fact, the Commodore computer to which it was
attached felt much warmer. Whether on a VIC-20CR or a C64 or a flat C128,
it never failed. It endured the SuperCPU, a notoriously power-hungry
device. Thus, it should easily cope with the 1541 Ultimate cartridge and
even good, old Super Snapshot - both which need a little more oomph in the power department. Screen interference on the CRT monitor? None!

Ray hand-built it, testing and tweaking it until it met his critical
standards. He showed me some oscilloscope screenshots of 5V it outputs --
just clean power. He also showed me the oscilloscope screenshots of a new power supply from a different company -- spikes all over the place... no
clean power at all. In fact, that company's p.s. had such bad regulation
that it varied from 4.9V to 5.3V.

Now the production model of the Ray Carlsen power supply has been released. Each power supply is hand-built and tested by him. The production model
uses a slightly bigger, metal, vented case than the prototype, because his supplier had the other one on back order. The production model has an
improved internal Computer Saver.

Reluctantly, I will return prototype #2 to Ray when I see him in the
summer. However, I will then get the production model! I'm thinking about getting one for the C64/VIC-20CR and one for the flat C128. Then I'll be
set for life. :)




*************************************
CONTIKI NETWORKING WITH THE C64
By Commodore Free
*************************************

I was quite surprised that a user on a recent mailing group has great
confusion in setting up Contiki with his home network. I emailed the user
and tried to help, although he seemed rather more inclined for me to go to
his house and just set it up for him to work. It was as though he had
bought the equipment but had little understanding of what it could do or
even basic network knowledge to setup the device. He also said he didn't
want to learn, just have the device setup so he could "surf the web" with Contiki.

Although I sent countless instructions, even down to the point of "click
this enter this", "type this" - I am still not sure he understood or cared
- all he wanted was someone to set the thing up for him.

I wondered how many other people are struggling. Hence the article, as an email to a couple of my friends reviled they had given up too, deeming the whole process too complex. So let's see if we can shed some background knowledge about networking and how to set up Contiki.

So, a little history about Retro replay and the Retro replay network card (RRNET) Retro Replay, which was basically designed as a clone of a well
known freezer cartridge. You press a button and get a menu on-screen, you
can freeze the memory and then save it to disk or tape. The device had
some header pins and this is where the RR net card fits onto. This means
now your C64 has a network card and can plug into your router. It's not wireless! It plugs in with a network cable.

Now assuming you have a pc connected to the internet you can start a "dos
box"

On XP click start then run and then type cmd and press enter

Windows 7 is similar click the windows globe and in the box type cmd then
press enter

Windows 8 from the tile menu start typing cmd then click the box for
command prompt

In this box type ipconfig /all

This will show

Your IP address, router address, and network mask, amongst other items,
should look like this:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix. :
LAN
Description . . . . . . . . . . . :
Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit
Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
3C-A9-F4-69-13-8C
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . :
Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . :
Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :
fe80::f116:ad89:dd58:c415%12
(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :
192.168.1.134(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . :
255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . :
21 May 2014 07:58:59
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . :
22 May 2014 12:13:15
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
192.168.1.254
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . :
192.168.1.254
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . :
305965556
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . :
00-01-00-01-19-F7-F4-01-F0-1F-AF-
49-0D-CB
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . :
192.168.1.254
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . :
Enabled

LET'S RUN THROUGH SOME OF THESE OPTIONS

I am on windows 7 other versions may show less options but the options we "need" will be the same.

We can see the physical address; this is what the hardware manufacturer
sets for our card, and it's unique to the card; you can ignore this. We
see that the address was DHCP ENABLED - that is our IP address handed to us from the router. This would normally be the default. Again, each device
on your home network need a unique IP address, shown here as an IP4
address. For our work, we can ignore anything that says IPV6

The network mask shows what network the clients are on. For us it's just important to note the number and ensure we enter the same one!

The default gateway is how we would access the Internet (our gateway out).
In our case this is also the router. The only other setting we need is the
DNS server address. Contiki will only take one address, but that's OK.

So from our Ipconfig listing we can start to fill in the Contiki setup.
Print out this list or make a note of the following items :

* Router IP Address (normally this is
the same as)
* Default gateway
* Subnet mask
* DNS server

You will need these to configure Contiki.

We now need to download Contiki operating system.

There are multiple versions as the software was upgraded and evolved over


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