Someone you should be following on Google Plus if you're an Amiga fan

Someone you should be following on Google Plus if you're an Amiga fan

Simo Koivukoski is involved with the Vampire FPGA accelerators and has a lot of great posts on them including testing them on a multitude of different computers.
https://plus.google.com/+SimoKoivukoski/posts

Unofficial CD32 Release - Psygnosis : The Complete Amiga Works from Amiga Jay

http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/11/unofficial-cd32-release-psygnosis.html?m=1

ICAROS, a blazing fast blast from the Amiga past Attention Amiga fans. If you…

https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherGaul/posts/bpJcVLbEZD5

This is well worth watching. It's not in English so you'll need to enable captions.

This is well worth watching. It's not in English so you'll need to enable captions.

The product itself is exciting enough but his attitude and vision are even more impressive.

#Amiga
https://youtu.be/tNjuulAWntc

Battered But Not Beaten Commodore C64 Survives Over 25 Years Balancing Drive Shafts In Auto Repair Shop

http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten-commodore-c64-survives-over-25-years-balancing-drive-shafts-in-auto-repair-shop

Is that a Commodore 64 in your pocket or are you just happy to see one?

Is that a Commodore 64 in your pocket or are you just happy to see one?

The MEMWA2 is the latest iteration of a pretty impressive project to create a pocket sized Commodore 64 substitute.

The main site can be found here:
http://www.staringlizard.com/2015/12/03/memwa-ii/
http://makezine.com/2016/09/20/this-commodore-64-emulator-comes-in-a-tiny-package/

A little blast from the past

A little blast from the past
http://boingboing.net/2016/09/06/psygnosis-amiga-game-generator.html

Modern Commodore 64 programming tutorials now online

Modern Commodore 64 programming tutorials now online

FTA:
The easiest way to start programming Commodore 64

Life is too short to read twenty-year-old books.
Learn BASIC and 6502 Assembly with bite-sized video tutorials today!


http://64bites.com/

Crowd funding campaign to build a new Commodore 64 desktop and handheld

Crowd funding campaign to build a new Commodore 64 desktop and handheld

This looks very interesting!

FTA:
... This re-imagined version of the original comes from Retro Games, a company in the UK that wants to bring it back in two forms, as a desktop and a handheld.

The desktop version will still come packed in a beige keyboard, but one that's less bulky than before. It will also have some updated amenities, such as HDMI output, USB ports, mini-USB power socket, an audio jack, SD card slot, and a cartridge slot. You can expect updated guts as well, though Retro Games didn't provide any specifics there....


http://www.pcgamer.com/crowdfunding-effort-seeks-to-resurrect-commodore-64-for-retro-gaming/

An amazing project to recreate the 6502. You can see each part of the CPU in operation.

An amazing project to recreate the 6502. You can see each part of the CPU in operation.

Video by Make:here:
https://youtu.be/73h4cjTeX44
http://monster6502.com/

The Guide to Amiga Compatible Programming

The Guide to Amiga Compatible Programming

This is a set of resources for Amiga programmers.

#Amiga  
https://github.com/inrms/guidetoamigacompatibleprogramming

Amiga assembly programming crash course

Amiga assembly programming crash course

This is a great tutorial on Amiga assembly programming that will walk you all the way through to a cool finished demo.
https://reaktor.com/blog/crash-course-to-amiga-assembly-programming/

Shareware Plus has expanded their Commodore 64 & 128 hardware offerings

Shareware Plus has expanded their Commodore 64 & 128 hardware offerings

If you haven't looked at their blog lately, they've added a lot of new hardware to expand and enhance your beloved Commodore 8bit machine. I have purchased their LumaFix Plus device and am very happy with it so I can recommend them as a company.

Amiga graphics card project

Amiga graphics card project

This is exactly the kind of project The Commodore Community Consortium exists to promote and enable.

Originally shared by Tony Sidaway

MNT VA2000, an Amiga 2000 Graphics Card (Zorro II).

Lukas F. Hartmann learned enough about the Zorro II bus, Verilog, and surface mount soldering techniques to design and build this modern graphics card prototype which brings high performance graphics to those cheap and cheerful Amiga 2000 systems you can still pick up on eBay.


https://github.com/mntmn/amiga2000-gfxcard/blob/master/README.md

I hope you guys in the CCC are all following along with this great series on Ars Technica about the history of the...

I hope you guys in the CCC are all following along with this great series on Ars Technica about the history of the Amiga. 

#Commodore   #Amiga   #ComputingHistory  

Originally shared by Christopher Gaul

The History of the Amiga - Part 9

I posted on this series when it started, but I wanted to post an update for those that missed it.

The Amiga computers were some of the most innovative pieces of computer technology of their time. When it was introduced, the Amiga made the PC's and Apple's of the day look like stone age toys.
 Many of the innovations in computing we take for granted today were first brought to life on the Amiga, or were perfected there. Whatever devices and brands you use today, you owe something of their functionality to the Amiga.
 As for the Video Toaster, it brought in a revelation in broadcast computer graphics. It not only dominated the industry, but created the market. A huge number of TV stations, marketing companies, music videos, and television shows relied on Amiga's and Video Toasters for their livelihood. Shows like Babylon 5 would have been impossible without the Amiga / Video Toaster combo.  Musician Todd Rundgren became so enamoured with the combo that he bought a stack of Amiga's with Video Toasters. He saw them as a tool to unlock a whole new area of his art. Giving him unlimited ability to express the visuals he wanted to use to complete the message of his music. Taking the music video from recordings of people singing and dancing to multimedia trips into the mind of the musician.

Here is Todd Rundgren's "Change Myself" video. Created by Todd himself entirely with Amiga's using NewTek's Lightwave 3D software and their Video Toaster package.
https://youtu.be/7mH8PaWbi1E

https://youtu.be/CSQs2boo4Sk

For more videos on the Video Toaster
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=video+toaster

Ars Technica's full History of the Amiga series
http://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/

#Amiga   #Innovation   #VideoToaster   #NewTek  
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-video-toaster/

Creating a catalog of NEW 3D printable parts and designs

Creating a catalog of NEW 3D printable parts and designs

Before reading this post, read the linked post first...
https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherGaul/posts/FavKmtJjDAF

Done reading that? Good. Now, lets expand the idea to include new parts and designs.
Let's start with simple modifications to original parts to make them better, sturdier, or more useful today.
For example, how about an Amiga 500 trapdoor cover with integrated vent holes and mounts for a tiny cooling fan?
Or an Amiga drive bay face-plate with mounts and slots for other uses. Like an SD reader, or USB port, or switches and LED pairs. 
How about a 1084 monitor control door with a sturdier hinge!
How about cases for various devices and expansions that don't have them or have inadequate ones? 

The next step is to have 3D modelers and printers collaborate with hardware hackers and designers to create cases, mounts, etc. for their designs to help bring more complete, polished, and protected products to the community.

3D printed retro parts sharing

3D printed retro parts sharing

One of the problems with being a retro hobbiest, no matter what hobby, is the shortage of spare parts. Especially small or simple parts that were never in good supply when the product was new.
Today we are lucky enough to have a solution for replacing some of these parts. 3D Printing. Right now many plastic parts can be easily replicated and replaced with a 3D printed version. It's already being done. However, I'd like to see this community greatly expand on that idea.
Here's what I propose.
First, we create a listing or catalog of commonly needed parts for the various Commodore/Amiga computers.
Second, we find if any 3D models suitable for 3D priniting already exist for any of those models and include that resource in the catalog.
Third, we solicit volunteers with the skills and willingness to create new 3D models, by hand or from scans, of other parts in the catalog.
Fourth, we ask for volunteers to collaborate with those modellers by supplying (loaning) the parts in question for modelling and or 3D scanning.
Fifth, we get those models printed (by other volunteers or printing houses) and tested.
Sixth, we make those models available to everyone, with an open source license.

If there is an issue of cost or labour for some of these steps, we create bounties and solicit donations to pay for them.

Please note the addition under "ATTENTION" in the "About this community" section.

Please note the addition under "ATTENTION" in the "About this community" section. 

If you invite anyone to join, and you are encouraged to do so, then please make them aware that the community is by request for the reason that we want to invite all with a passion for moving the Commodore Community forward into the future while weeding out the highly negative elements that have caused so much damage and stifled so much creativity and new thinking in other Commodore forums and communities.
This is intended to be a fresh start where anyone and everyone with ideas and enthusiasm can come and collaborate with others to make their ideas happen, and to share those ideas so that they can inspire yet more new ideas and projects.

Commodore 64 Cartridge competition

Commodore 64 Cartridge competition

For all you C= fans out there, this should be interesting stuff.
But Commodore Community Consortium members should jump on it as this is exactly the kind of thing that the CCC exists to promote. The collaborative development of new hardware and software, and the solving of technical issues with old hardware, including expansions and upgrades.
http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2016/04/rgcd-c64-cartridge-development.html

While this is an interesting story, it's not generally relevant to the purpose of this community.

While this is an interesting story, it's not generally relevant to the purpose of this community. Except for the fact that the development tool discussed is linked to and available on github. Check it out.

Originally shared by mos6502

This week, macross 6502, from LucasFilm in the mid-80's, "an assembler for people who hate assembly language," by way of Habitat, an early Massive Multiplayer Online game for the C64 - designed to support 10,000 remote C64s, dialled in over Commodore’s Q-Link service and orchestrated by a Stratus server. Our featured link tells of the preservation of Habitat led by the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, and the tools used to write the game...
...
The original game design documents can be found at
https://themade.org/posts/732
but let's dig into those tools. Michael Steil posted a good technical description on his blog at
http://web.archive.org/web/20160131174610/http://www.pagetable.com/?p=848
which links to the current github incarnation.

Also there you'll find Chip Morningstar offering this backstory:
"Macross was my first job assignment at Lucasfilm. They urgently wanted to replace the existing assembler they had been using. That one was written in Lisp — you wrote 6502 code in S-expressions, which looked amazingly weird. It was awesomely powerful, because you could use all of Lisp for a macro language, but it was also awesomely slow. It took about 45 minutes on our VAX 750 to assemble a 16K ROM cartridge game, mainly because doing this took 2 megabytes of RAM but the machine only had 512 kilobytes, so it page swapped horribly. My mission was to create a more conventional looking (and performing) assembler without sacrificing much of the macro programming power they had gotten addicted to, hence Macross."

(If you're wondering why you hadn't heard of Habitat, well, firstly the name was changed to Club Caribe on release, and secondly it wasn't very successful.)
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/bringing-habitat-back-to-life.html

Attention! Attention!

Attention! Attention!
All you c64 freaks, sceners, retro-lovers and general users out there...

Make sure to check THIS out, dudes!!! :-D

It's a must buy! Trust me!!! :-)
Just pre-order your own now!! <3
http://sidfx.kick-ass.dk/

My Commodore SX-64 before and after pictures.

My Commodore SX-64 before and after pictures.