Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Amiga Canada Iphone Music Operating Systems Software Games

Catch Up Via Video With World of Commodore 2012 51

Leif_Bloomquist writes "Videos of the presentations from the recent World of Commodore, held December 1st 2012 in Toronto, have been published on YouTube. The presentations range from new product announcements to remakes of classic Commodore games for iPhone, from animation and music performances to coding tutorials and discussions for retro platforms. The revived World of Commodore is held annually on the first weekend of December by the Toronto PET Users Group."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Catch Up Via Video With World of Commodore 2012

Comments Filter:
  • ib4 the amiga arrives

  • How much do they want for it?
  • I will attend... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ashenkase ( 2008188 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:19PM (#42483799)
    If there is a live Killer Poke [wikipedia.org] demonstration.
    • I fondly remember a simple c64 program I wrote that is the equivalent of giving your computer acid.

      Bear with me, this pseudo code is rough since its been over 20 years.

      10 i=0;
      20 randomize timer
      30 a=Random 1 to maximum first poke value.
      40 b=Random 1 to maximum second poke value.
      50 Poke a,b
      60 Print i
      70 Goto 10


      Screen would split in sections sometimes, letters would melt, sounds would come out of the speakers, sometimes stuff printed.

      Even if you supplied the random seed, you got different effects
        • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

          so it will go from 0 to 1 and exit?

          leet 8 bit basic skills there hehe

          forgive me I am in the middle of writing an apple II basic game for a compo and have not so crazy stuff like

          9045 SH = FT: GOSUB 9015: HCOLOR = 0: XDRAW 100 AT 220,97
          9046 FOR I = 1 TO LEN(BO$(PA)): XDRAW ASC(MID$(BO$(PA),I,1)) - 31
          9047 XDRAW 99: NEXT: RETURN

          • by bedouin ( 248624 )

            Sigh. Graphics were so much easier to program on the Apple ][.

            • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

              eh yes and no, that little blurb (for the most part) prints bitmapped fonts from ascii strings, which for a "non standard" thing is not too hard, but on the other end of it blanking redrawing the entire screen is too slow, so resource management becomes tricky

              least the commies had a video chip to handle all the dirty work for you, just tell it where to look and let it run

      • RANDOMIZE TIMER was a statement on the old Microsoft GW-BASIC. There was never such a statement on the BASIC 2.0 of the C64.

        The proper way to seed the pseudo-RNG on the C64 was to fire up the SID's 3rd oscillator, set it to a noise waveform and a somewhat high frequency, and PEEK the one register that would output the state of the oscillator to RND, after negating it.

        You could also use the CIA #1 or #2 TOD registers, if you started the TOD clock manually, or use the C64's software timer, accessible from th

    • If there is a live Killer Poke [wikipedia.org] demonstration.

      That's good, but I'd prefer to see a demonstration of the Halt and Catch Fire instruction. [wikipedia.org]

    • Back when I had a ZX-81 I regularly visited the home computer department of our local warehouse in the early eighties to take a look at better machines. One of the screens on some Atari said "Do not press a key". I pressed a key, of course, and the Atari imitated a very loud burglar alarm siren. You couldn't even stop it by pushing the reset button. :-)

      Anyway, back to the topic. The wikipedia page on "killer pokes" doesn't mention the TI 99/4A but I remember the rumor that it could easily be destroyed by so

  • Every time someone mentions commodore, someone somewhere will install UAE or start searching ebay for vintage commodores

  • Now I just need to find a conversion utility for all my BASIC ASCII PET poke routines to get some REALLY strange 1980 junior high program ideas out there. I seem to remember that even polling for keyboard input was different on the C64.

  • by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @12:09AM (#42485293)

    If you've never written a serial data-transfer routine in Assembly that transfers said data from a floppy drive at the absolute maximum possible theoretical speed, down to the clock cycle, by using both the clock and data lines for data, and leveraging the happy coincidence that the 1541 drive had its own 6502 CPU that ran at the same speed the computer does (once you blank the screen)... I highly recommend it.

    No handshaking at all. Just Assembly loops and the data sitting on the pins for precisely the necessary clock cycle duration for the two loops running on the two CPUs on separate devices connected only by serial. Good times.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      No handshaking at all. Just Assembly loops and the data sitting on the pins for precisely the necessary clock cycle duration for the two loops running on the two CPUs on separate devices connected only by serial. Good times.

      Sounds exciting, especially if the data is something important. :^) Wouldn't clock drift cause problems after a while? (My understanding is that there is no such thing as a perfect clock; so even if the 6502 cpu and the floppy drive's cpu were nominally running at the same speed, in actuality one would be slightly faster than the other, and the difference might vary slightly with temperature, etc)

      • by Empiric ( 675968 )

        Well, as for "important data", some variant of this technique became the standard for most all of the disk-backup and "fast load" utilities of the time, so I think one could fairly say the scope of the data transferred by this means became eventually "all of it". ;)

        It didn't hurt that process that the built-in firmware of the 1541 was horrifically slow out-of-the-box, and though it's been a long time, I'd broad-brush this method as around 500 times faster than "stock".

        On clock drift, was never my experience

  • Giana Sisters [kickstarter.com]. You can get it for Windows on Steam.

    There is also a fan based remake [gianas-return.de] which works on Linux etc.

  • by fantomas ( 94850 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:37AM (#42486245)

    Curious as to why there is still a fan scene. Is it like a classic auto scene, where everybody is keen to show off their well kept old machine, or is it the fun of writing code on a limited old machine and seeing how far it can be pushed? I'd be interested to hear about the different motivations people have for participating in the scene. I am guessing there aren't too many people in the scene who do it because they believe the world would be a better / more efficient place if we all moved over to using C64's for our computing needs?

    • Look in the past to take inspiration for the future, I guess.
      The Apple may be more popular historically for being the first modern computer as it was the first to copy the Xerox GUI(and the fact they dominate the market nowadays helps too as the history is written by the winners), but if you ask me Amiga/Commodore had a much bigger impact in computing technology, in particular media and graphics. Hardware acceleration, true-color displays, hi-definition sound(including speech) and video playback, all almos
      • Agreed... The Amiga was a decade ahead of its time. If Commodore had only been able to market the machine to a wider audience, *it* would have set the standard, and advanced personal computing by a decade. Graphics, sound, OS, even the processor were all superior.
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @08:02AM (#42487005)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Curious as to why there is still a fan scene. Is it like a classic auto scene, where everybody is keen to show off their well kept old machine, or is it the fun of writing code on a limited old machine and seeing how far it can be pushed? I'd be interested to hear about the different motivations people have for participating in the scene. I am guessing there aren't too many people in the scene who do it because they believe the world would be a better / more efficient place if we all moved over to using C64

  • Looks like it was a good lineup of talks.

    • The Pet Synth demo is really nice - brings back memories... POKEing locations 59464, 59466, 59467 endlessly, and scrambling to turn down the amplifier when a sound program crashed.

  • Just last week I made a blog post about how I created several 5000x5000 wallpaper montages of old Commodore game ads. Includes code. http://cosmicrealms.com/blog/2012/12/31/c64-magazine-game-wallpaper-generator/ [cosmicrealms.com]

  • Hello!!! everybody, Fashion,low price,the good shoping place, click in. ===== ( http://www.sheptrade.com/ [sheptrade.com] ) ===== Discount Air Jordan (1-24) shoes $35, Air max shoes (TN LTD BW 90 180) $36, Nike/shox (R4, NZ, OZ, TL1, TL2, TL3) $35, Handbags ( Coach Lv fendi D&G) $36, T-shirts (polo, ed hardy, lacoste) $20, Jean (True Religion, ed hardy, coogi)$35, Sunglasses ( Oakey, coach,Armaini )$16, Watches(Rolex BREITLING IWC) New era cap $12, Discount (NFL MLB NBA NHL) jerseys, free shipping, Accept credit card p

The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong -- until the next person quits or is fired.

Working...