azog | April 22, 2013
I wanted to experiment with the Commodore 64 cartridge slot, but not having a “proper” edge connector, or proto board, I broke down and drew up a simple board that I sent off to BatchPCB. What you can’t see here (and neither can I, because I drew the traces too narrow at 6 mils) is [...]
azog | February 11, 2013
I haven’t done any “real” project stuff lately, just messing around with vintage systems. So I got the urge, and decided to do something simple. Been wanting to build an Atari Punk Console for a while, so I sat down and breadboarded one up, using a pair of 555′s rather than a 556 (because I [...]
azog | February 10, 2013
Nothing stupendous. Just common sense. Since I added a fan to my C64, I figured why not add one to my 1541? Not much room inside the thing, so I had to mount it externally, but you work with what you have… It’s just a repurposed fan, probably from an old CPU cooler. 12vdc, dunno [...]
azog | December 31, 2012
So what you’re looking at here are two Atari 2600 games, Pac-Man and E.T. By themselves, probably rather nondescript games, but if you’re familiar with video game history, these two games are often cited as the most vivid reasons for the great video game crash in the early 80s. While the statement may have a [...]
azog | December 16, 2012
I would not consider an SX-64 to be exactly “rare”, but it would be more of the “uncommon” type of system. And apparently “desirable”. When listed on eBay, they usually start at $100 or more. I don’t really know how many sell at that price. So when I had opportunity to acquire an SX-6 in [...]
azog | October 9, 2012
I was exploring the possibility of making the graphics keyboard of a PET 4032 a bit more usable, by replacing the special characters in the upper row with numbers, as in a “typical” keyboard. My ROM edits worked in VICE, so MikeS on the VC forums offered to burn me a ROM with my image. [...]
azog | October 1, 2012
In a previous post, I talked a bit about the Commodore Flyer. There are a number of Ethernet devices available for Commodores, such as the 64NIC or the RR-Net, but these are all memory I/O based. The Flyer instead uses Commodore device channels to communicate with the network. For me, this seems to open up [...]
azog | October 1, 2012
The Flyer Internet Modem is a very cool new device that is still in active development. If you are familiar with the Comet64, the concept is very similar, altho the implementation is quite different. This is an Ethernet interface for your 8-bit Commodore using either the PET’s IEEE buss or the IEC serial buss on [...]
azog | July 20, 2012
While I still have my Commodore 64 disassembled after replacing the PLA, I figured I’d do two quick hacks. First, is a standard reset switch. You can find docs on this in many places, but the best solution is to use pin 1 and pin 3 of the user port. Seems there were already two [...]
azog | June 23, 2012
* Part one * Part two When the Falcon first shipped, the earlier ones were equipped with 60mb drives. When I received mine, it had an 80mb drive. I recall reading that this was due to a change in their production line, but the 80mb models were going to cost the same as the originally [...]