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19 Commodore World

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1. Frame Ground generally isn t used and should not be connected to other grounds Cw amp RU ACK ISSUES For years RUN Magazine provided Commodore Users with a great source of information and now CMD has given you Commodore World Don tlet this valuable information slip away fill in the voids in your library now RUN Magazine Back Issues Any 3 issues for 12 00 any 6 for 18 00 or any 12 for only 24 00 RMJAN89 January 1989 RMJUN90 June July 1990 RMFEB89 February 1989 RMDEC90 December 1990 RMMAY89 May 1989 RMJAN91 Jan Feb 1991 RMJUN89 June 1989 RMJUN91 JuneJuly 1991 RMJUL89 July 1989 RMJAN92 Jan Feb 1992 RMAUG89 August 1989 RMMAR92 March April 1992 RMSEP89 September 1989 RMMAY92 May June 1992 RMOCT89 October 1989 RMJUL92 July August 1992 RMSP89 Special Issue 1989 RMSEP92 Sep October 1992 RMJAN90 January 1990 RMNOV92 Nov December 1992 RMMAY90 May 1990 Shipping 3 6 issues U S 3 00 Canada 5 00 Foreign 15 00 12 raus U S 5 00 Canada 7 00 Foreign 20 00 Commodore World Back Issues 4 95 each or any 3 for only 12 00 CW1 Commodore World Issue 1 CW9 Commodore World Issue 9 CW2 Commodore World Issue 2 CW10 Commodore World Issue 10 CW3 Commodore World Issue CW11 Commodore World Issue 11 CW4 Commodore World Issue 4 CW12 Commodore World Issue 12 CW5 Commodore World Issue 5 CW13 Commodore World Issue 13 CW6 Commodore World Issue 6 CW14 Commodore World Issue 14 CW7 Commodore Wo
2. SuperCPU Special Function Ti writes follow the timing specification shown as SCHU Phase 2 1 0 Reads Writes Any store or load cycle to 1 0 causes the SuperCPU Phase 2 line to go high until the data can be written or read The store or load must occur at least 70 ns priorto the dot clock high transition that signals the computer s Phase 2 line to go high in order to have the I O access occur during the current 1 MHz cycle If the access is to standard 1 0 the SuperCPU Phase 2 will transition low about 105 ns after the rising edge of the dot clock cycle that signals the host computer s Phase 2 togo low This timing of the SuperCPU s Phase 2 line also applies to cache full mirrored writes to RAM memory location 000001 and reads 000 01 00DF21 00FF00 Furthermore this timing is used to read from ROM cartridges installed in the 008000 009FFF or 00A000 00BFFF memory areas An 8 cycle spacing of standard 1 0 access from provides best throughput In addition to standard LO reads and writes the Long I O Write timing specification that applies to locations 00DF01 000 21 and 00FF00 The long write has the same input deadline as all other special timing functions but holds the SuperCPU Phase 2 line high 24 ns past the start of the fourth dot clock cycle after the computer s Phase 2 is signaled to go low This timing was created to satisfy requirements of Commodore REU DMA operations kam Th
3. 15 00 soot to 519 99 sers caL Tagen CALL WS Boii The President Is Missing 10 00 Video Digitizer The Three Stooges 10 00 20 000 529 99 3575 CALL CALL 1750 S700 CALL Tie Bresk Tennis 31000 00 to 59 99 CALL 521 00 900 CALL MIDEA 5 100 eoo IR BEC oe M e Aler 00 to 145 75 CALL CALL Dgrmaster 34 95 Wien in tho World is Carmen SanDiego een o TUS ES SID Symphony Stereo Cartridgo 44 95 Where in Time is Carmen SanDiego 3900 150 00 to 3299 99 9100 CALL CALL 2000 CALL s2500 CALL Sonus 64 or 128 Sequencer MIDI Interface Cables 99 00 Whore in Europe is Carmen SanDiogo 3900 e T Caged Arist or AlgorytimicComposor 15 00 Wings ot Gree z 1 00 3000010579999 cane CALL 3800 09 and up saoo CALL CALL 58007 850 o Em E All Major Credit Cards Accepted Mastercard Visa Discover American Express Other shipping methods available Call for details POLICIES CMD accepts Major Credit Cards Money Orders COD and Personal Checks Penna ger Creative Micro Designs Inc EE Ce Reus P O Box 646 Info 413 525 0023 merchandise credit only within 30 days with prior authorization Credits are less shipping EasiLongmeadow MAQO1028 11 1413 Ser NA Pending Me otia los arde Ni reca charge ente or rods c opened software All prices and specifications are subject to change witho
4. 64 Abacus ioo p P E 64 Computor Remanufactured w JD amp PS 119 00 honran Hl Abacus izoo resume crash recovery streaming to GeoRAM d EE Computer New linatoa P3 0515900 buffer Ymodem batch Ymodem g intemal C64 memory 64 Computer Remanutactured w SX 55 Computer E E en 220 REENEN geen esoe at bute New text capture features Capture texton SR Se Bar Steet Weer 1200 Xmodem CRC Punter Kermit WXmodem ine and store in any device High speed i vue Ri tured w us 128 0 Computer eene was New BS 329 00 128 Abacus 2500 Supports High Speed Interfaces like Vereen directly into memory and Zoe PowerSupply New 1 7 Amp 32900 Chartpak 64 Abacus 517 00 Turcos for speeds up to 230Kbps retain buffer contents with battery power C 64 64C RepairablePS New 1 7 Amp 39 00 Chartpak 128 Abacus 2500 x backed RAM devices such as RAMLink 64 64 Heavy Duty Reparable PS New 434 59 00 Data Manager 64 Timeworks 1600 Supports ANSI color graphies VT102 and a H ReparatiePower Supply Now 43 Amp 35509 Dome Accounting S DD 4900 vrso in 80 col Plus Commodore color Enhancedfulfeatured Texteditor ean now 1280 intemal Power Supply New 4 5 Amp ait v co f SN Ponar ew T Anp 28 00 Port vi 128 B0 col VOCI 29 00 graphies and ANSI color All emulation load save files from the buffer and has CBM 1541 Disk Drvo Remanufactured wsD
5. 889 00 Jane 128 Wor Processor E 1200 modules now load from one window an integrated script compiler 1541 11 Disk Drive Remanufactured wiJ0 109 00 Personal Portolo Manager Abacus 4 ouo diac 1571 Disk Drive Remanufacturod w JD 119 00 Pocket Winter 1 64 Dig x 3500 Now Just eier a EX2 1 3 Port Cartndge Port Expander 39 00 Pocket Wnter 2 64 128 D 65 00 Simple BBS mode daln downloading CMD EX3 3 Port Cartridge Port Expander 34 00 Pocket Wnter 3 64 or 128 Dig 70 00 29 95 II Print Cable OCI 8329 00 34 00 Pocket Plannar 2 or Pocket Fior 2 501 35 00 S Supports realtime clocks in CMD devices CMD Soga styleGamopad for C 64 128 2495 Pnnishop Companion 1500 5 25 5 ais new users mes CMD SmartMouse 1351 Compatible Mouse 49 95 RUN Productivity Pak II or lil Specity 15 00 IconTroller Mini Keyboard Joystick limited qty 19 00 RUN Super Starter Pak 1541 or 1581 Inkwoll Light Pen Model 170C 7500 RUN Works Monitor Cables CALL SEC Chock Rogistor 128 apen MW 350 Prntor interlace 8 Buller 4800 86000 SuperScript 64 Precision Panasonic 1150 9 pin Printor 169 00 SuperScript 128 Procision Panasonic KXP 2023 24 pin Printer 522900 Suberbase 64 Version 301 Proc Increase Speed Up to 1500 while Superbaso 128 Vorsion 301 Prec 9 SwiftCale Timoworks retaining 100 compat Big Blue Reader V4 10 SOGWAP
6. their masterpiec COMMODORE WORLD HD Series SCSUHard Disk Driva si m EE Re a 0 RAMLInK Poweneacked HAM E ova t erm lee ch GALE RAMLink Base Model OMB No 149 00 ic HD 1000 1 2 GB Special Edition Sg RAM es EES CH version 9 6 HD 2000 2 GB Sp cial Edition 669 00 RAMLink wAMB RAMCard Special 229 00 CORMIER ESL CUCM RAMLink w 16M6 RAMCard Specia 349 00 Joi icaf lon ANCar RTC Opti Mamot KI 75100091900 Join the Telecommunications Revolution Fb Pu Timo Clock Opin Aerar Ki 520005290 SE 15 the Information Super Highway TODAY of 10 High Density Disks 1 E dikantor ial R Box of 10 Enhanced Density Disks 32 MB 29 00 Languages amp Compilers ara eanna a __ Miscellaneous Hardware BASIC Compier Abacus 51700 Det 64 enhanced scrolling w REU and BASIC 128 Compiler Abacus 525 00 Now supports UUencode and UUdecode AO coa COM 1702 002 4O olue 30 00 andcowersfiesondskorinabufforalso 25 or 28 1 C 128 VDC 80 col mode 3 Way User Por Expandar 30 00 Be Ee 3908 ASCII gt and PETSCIIto Unix Use any memory device as a buffer Aprotek User Fort Extension Cable 1909 Cobol 64 Abacus 1700 Protocal support Zmodem upidownload including 17xx REU RAMLink partition 64 Computor Remanufactured WJD amp PS 99 00
7. RAMLink 3699 or RAMLink 4MB 409 Shipping amp Handling Cont US 15 AK HI PR 40 Canada 25 Foreicn CALL NEWS FLASH 14 4 28 8 MODEMS NOW OBSOLETE The quest for faster internet access has made 33 6K modems the new standard with 57 6K modems not far behind SwiftLink and other first generation interfaces simply can t keep up putting your Commodore in the slow lane on the Information Superhighway The all new Turbo232 has been Creative Micro Designed to keep pace with the explosion in telecommunications technology High Speed Support Turbo232 keeps up with today s fastest modems offering speeds up to 230Kbps P e Turo o9 32 Easy to use Turbo232 simply HIGH SPEED MODEM 1 plugs into the expansion port and connects to almost any external Hayes compatible RS 232 modem SwiftLink Compatible Turbo232 has been designed to work with programs written for SwiftLink Easy Configuration Turbo232 has easy to configure jumpers for users with special requirements BOCAMODEM LB SR TM AA HS OH SD RD TA CD Modems 300 1200 2400 9600 14 4K 28 8K ws 33 6K and 57 6K Baud Rates 150 219 84 269 16 300 600 1200 2400 3600 4800 7200 9600 14 4K 19 2K 57 6K 115 2k E ESEE be used Jumpers Page DF DE Interrupts NMI as a null modem interface for IRQ DSR Enable Disable fast data tran
8. print 640 dots per line 80 dpi over 8 inches When using a Commodore compatible printer 60 dpi you can only fit 480 dots on a line So with most applications you generally need to move the margins inward while using a 60 dpi Conmodore compatible printer mode this is COMMODORE WORLD no longer the case when you start using an 80 dpi printing mode because this is exactly what GEOS was designed for i Also in ASCII mode you ll need to use a different printer driver 1 suggest using the Epson FX 80 driver if all you have are the drivers that are supplied directly with GEOS The Epson8pin3pass driver is an excellent alternative if you have access to it you ll find it in many PD collections online or on the GEODRIVERSI disk from CMD With Perfect Print LQ the default driver is perfectly suited to this print mode on the NX 1000C and this provides the very best quality output you ll get from GEOS Dear CW Like your CMD advertisement says FD series is fast HD is faster RAMLink is fastest atloading GEOS and applications Isit possible for the GEOS System Disk to be installed on a chip like JiffyDOS which could be switched on or off It would certainly be more convenient and allow the user to make his her own configurations Putting GEOS on ROM is a bit of a sticky business for a couple of reasons First CMD would need to get permission from Geoworks in order to do this at all though that
9. 1541 41 1 1571 1581 Mastor Typo Cartridge Mean Streets Mini Putt Minit Man Monday Night Football Monopoly Move Maker Mult Division Grades 3 8 Murder by the Dozen Out Run Pac Man Pathwords Personal Publisher Geos 1 2 Pinball Construction Kit Police Cadet Powerplay Hockey USA vs USSR Predator Prosidential Campaign Print Powor Pro Boxing Q Boppor Qix Dack om Rastan Realm of Impossibility Renegade Risk Roadwars RoboCop Scrabble Sorvo and Volley Sky Fox Snow Strike Sorry Space Adventures Speedball Spelling Grado 8 Starbase Defense Stalionfall Super Huey Switt Paint Take Down Test Drive Tetris Zodiac The Last Ninja The Artist The Home Banker Tho Home Manager Tho Manager Thud Ridge Timo Bound Timo to Dio Total Eclipse Top 20 Solid Gold War in Middle Earth Wheel of Fortune Word Writer Zenji Zodiac Zork Abacus Anatomy of the 1541 Abacus C128 Basic Trng Guide Abacus C128 C A D Abacus Ideas for use on C64 Abacus Science amp Eng 64 Abacus Tricks and Tips C 64 Basic Explorer Basic for Beginners Data Manager 2 Delta Drawing Cartridge Expeditions Edu Floxidraw Flight Simulator II Disk Map Graphics Mastor Panorama 64 Jystk Drawing Paperback Writer Paperback Planner Paperback Filer Printed Word amp Cale Swift Calc Delta Drawing Edu cpi p Weem 1850 CBM Mouse 1541 Dis
10. CW Classified Advertising c o Creative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 East Longmeadow MA 01028 0646 Is your Commodore World subscription close to a running out Here s an easy way to check look at the mailing label on the front of your copy You ll find your subscription number and the expiration issue number For example Don t wait until it s too late 3 Home rand Rapid Jim s subscription will run out with Issue 19 as indicated by the EXP19 in his subscription code Jim would be wise to re subscribe early to avoid missing a single issue of Commodore World COMMODORE WORLD 40 ADVERTISERS INDEX Commodore Country Commodore World Computer Bargain Store Creative Micro Designs Genie J P Products by Mail Loadstar 5 33 40 33 15 20 21 26 27 33 40 Inside Front Cover Meeting 64 128 Users Through The Mail Paxtron Raymond Computer Sunrise Software Tech Star Vintage Computers CAAD Service Center AFFORDABLE FAST DEPENDABLE Call Today 1 800 638 3263 Our Team of Technicians are Among the Most Qualified in the Industry Why Settle for Anything Less Than the Best We repair the following equipment Commodore C 64 64C SX 64 C 128 and C128 D computers 1541 1541C 1571 and 1581 Disk Drives plus CMD Devices JiffyDOS Installations a specialty All repairs warranted for 30 days Minimum charge 35 00 plus parts and return shipping You must con
11. Coolhand for all his many contributions in 1996 for the editing hours for the many Thursday night NTSC Demo Conference hours forhisconstant inspiration to continue writing for and about the Demo Scene and last but not least for his tireless dedication to keeping this Demo Scene alive and kicking Year in Review 1996 will long be remembered for the first of its kind demo competition known as the 4k Demo Competition Whilenot everyone thought of it as a success it brought the scene together in a fun way resultedin 17releases and generally brought Issue 19 the Commodore Scene to life hope we ll see a similar competition in 1997 Last year should also go downin history due to the first ever world wide coverage of the demo scene here in Commodore World magazine It is a pleasure to be able to write about the Commodore medium that I ve loved for so many years I hope that this column which I ve just recently been told will be aregularfeature of Commodore World Magazine has introduced many Commodore users to the unique world of Commodore Demos In my opinion no other Commodore medium captures the amazing power of this little brown box s music graphics and programming capabilities like the Commodore Demo 1996 will also be remembered for the introduction of Creative Micro Design s Super CPU The SuperCPU i sset to all facets of the Commodore Community not just the Demo Scene In 1997 I ho
12. Deluxe Paint Il or Deluxe Kit Also includes free Amiga Troubleshooting Guide 57 98 value 90 day warranty tested and ready to go Fantastic price 5119 95 Options 501 1 2 meg expansion memory board installed add 10 00 With 3 1 O S ROM add 48 50 PAL unit with 220V power supply add 29 00 iga C puter Spec A3000 Computer unassembled 439 50 Includes 16 MHz motherboard with 2 RAM new power supply now 880K floppy drive daughter board mouse full A3000 service manual user manual all cabling 90 day warranty Contact us about our additional A3000 options WE RE ON THE INTERNET COME VISIT OUR HOME PAGE AT www paxtron com ORDERS 800 595 5534 800 815 3241 888 PAXTRON 28 Grove Street Paxtron Spring Valley NY 10977 CORPORATION Info 914 578 6522 FAX 914 578 6550 E Mail for orders amp correspondence Paxtroncorp rcknet com Hours SAM 5 PM EST We gladly accept Add 6 00 for UPS Charges Ea ka February March1997 7 COMMODORE WORLD COMMODORE TRIVIA by Jim Brain Welcome to another edition of Commodore Trivia As many of you may know these trivia questions and answers have been donated by me to the Commodore community at Unlike other articles in Commodore World these trivia questions have been placed in the public domain 1 ask only that the trivia questions remain intact and unchanged and that my name and address app
13. Earp it s just too tough todie CBM tried to killit four or five times but high demand always forced them to put it back into production until the day they mis managed to kill themselves Meanwhile we have seen 16 bit and 32 bit computers come and go in popularity Now the Pentium chip is all the addressing at 100 megahertz while our beloved 8 bitter still strolls along at 1 or 2 megahertz unless you are the lucky owner ofa SuperCPU In spite of all this Commodore enthusiasts are still hanging tough Or are the Let s be honest Our ranks seem thinner than lowing 64 bit they were Many Commodore groups that were active five yea which sold our products for years no longer rs ago are now history Companies Author s Note Mark Fellows created JiffyDOS and began to market itin 1986 as Fellows Inc The following year he joined with Charles A Christianson to found Creative Micro Designs Inc CMD in order to expand and to produce new products Commodore once referred to Commodore Business Machines Inc CBM Since they went bankrupt the word Commodore as used in this article never refers 1o the Commodore business It always refers to the Commodore 64 and 128 in their various forms or to the community of Commodore enthusiasts throughout America and around the world CAD is a trademark of Creative Micro Designs Inc Issue 19 supply us Repair parts are becoming more and more difficult
14. INTERNAL 529 1 EE 1541 1 1581 new stock cou 9500 Computer amp Drive Repairs Reset Switches 1571 USED BUT THOROUGHLY TESTED s20 Keyboard Cleaning Device Select Switches ad USED BUT THOROUGHLY TESTED s20 CALL FOR RETURN AUTHORIZATION BEFORE SENDING ANY ITEM N IconTroller by Suncom MEW gt NEW CBM MotherBoards One of the most sought after input devices ever conceived for the C 64 and g C 128 599 C 128 this miniature joystick C 64C REV E Fits 64c w mounts 54999 mounts easily and conveniently 1541 SHORT BOARD 539 to the edge of your keybi 1541 11 WITH LED CABLE 539 without interfering The IconTroller has a pass thru port for a mouse or other joystick port device and is EN ideal for any joystick driven game or program Without much Prices do notinclude shipping charges and are subjectto dou hisis ihe st stockof mew controle yoursnow d only 19 Further questions Dial 413 525 0023 9 5 EST You may now reach CMD on the Internet at CMD s WtssiTE WWW CMDWEB COM EMAIL TECH cMD suPPORTOCMDWEB COM OR SALES CMD SALES cMDWEB COM Carrier Detect Not long after I d begun exploring the world of telecomms I was participating in a recipe group one our favorite recipes in a special area on the BBS I d learned how to transfer files but I hadn t had experience at sharing text files with those using other computer platforms I tho
15. Is Missing The Three Stooges V2 1001 Things to do w C 64 Amtech 71 w out PS Parts Only BP Pro Joystick Commodore 64 Fun amp Games Commodore 64 Games Computer Aided Design 128 Computes 1st Book C64 Games Dictionary of Computer Terms How to Program your C 64 Acrojat Airborne Ranger Alion Alge blaster Algebra Apollo 18 Arcado It Ardok the Barbarian Artic Fox Baker St Detective Battletech Bits Piecos amp Cluos Black Gold Blue Angels Bubblo Bobble Bubblo Ghost Captain Commando Challenge Cauldron Cave Fighter Cave of the Word Wizard Cert lib for Cert Maker Championship Golf Clowning Around Concentration Death Bringer Defender of the Crown Dream House Early Learning Friends F 15 Strike Eagle Fast Tracks Folony Foud Frogger Fun House Galaxy GFL Championship Football Gauntlet Ghostbusters Grand Prix Circuit Guerilla Hangman Roulette Hardball Heartland Highland Games High Roller Hitchiker s Guide to the Galaxy Hole in One Jeopardy Jeopardy Junior Edition Jordan vs Bird Karate Chop Kings of the Beach xc 4mm m Seu d a aue Sp ERT DI CMD Warehouse Sale Surplus Inventory Must Go by June 30 1997 Kung Fu II Sticks of Death Land Sea amp Air Adventures Lazarian Cartridge Lords of Conquest Main Frame Manual C128D C 64 64 C Manual
16. amp 250 in top score field on your search form The possibilities are limitless The items you search for can be utilized in many ways You can choose to create Text or geoMerge scraps of all your forms or just the rched for GeoFile also has terrific ones you si Search amp Replace and printing options Integrating geoFile Thisisthereason I stilluse GEOS the integrated nature of all the applications GeoLabel gave me reason to set up an addressbook file with geoFil ains fields for Christma Cards Family Newsletters and the Computer Club When it is time to do a mailing for any of these items I just search the database and create a Merge Scrap of the searched for items This Merge Scrap can then be easily loaded into geoLabel and I have great looking labels in no time flat Lots of Font selection Graphic where want it and no need for hundreds of label files with one address in each Each user will have a different reason to use geoFile from cataloging records yes vinyl ones this timo tocrops plantedin that field by the old barn to documenting how many Steven King novels you own Once you start using a database you will wonder how you got along without one The next time you pick up your phone book and look up a number remember that you are usinga database Youare probably pretty good at it too GeoFile with its dynamic personality a thorough search capabilities is computeri
17. button which doubles the speed at which the pointer moves across the screen All three are The advantages of JiflyDOS are the increased compatibility theability to disabletheturboonthe fly and the extended commandsetand power with modern hardware The disadvantages are that it does not provide any sort of reset capability nor a machine language monitor or freezer These are still the domain ofthe cartridges Because JiflyDOS leaves your cartridge port fre cartridge simultaneously with JiffyDOS although occasionally you ll discover that the two systems will compete This typically shows up with certain wedge commands w you can often use a h one of the systems does not support or with special newer devices like the FD 2000 You may need to temporarily disable your cartridge for certain operations JiffyDOS is built into the SuperCPU cartridge port unit but this only gives you JiffyDOS when the unit is enabled When disabled as is sometimes necessary to run certain softwa which fails even when the 5 but turboisoff thema installed in it as well if you wish to have it in al circumstances Ifnot then youonly need JiflyDOS as provided in the SuperCPU and can use a cartridge in other situations So if you re tired of the frustration of understanding Commodore disk operations or Need Input It Doesn t Get Any Better Than This For years Commodore set the standard with the 1351 mouse Sure it was
18. continue to distributewhileothers closeout is simple What they cannot purchase from their suppliers they produce This is especially true in the area of Commodore compatible hardware Take a moment to consider what our Commodore world was like when CBM left us that is when they stopped developing new products for our 64 s Then think about what we have now For instance when CBM left us I had 1351 mouse with a roller that was never quite round It Was so sus ptible to dirt and grime that I had to clean it continually Now I use a three button mouse from CMD that is so smart it can tell time It works great and keeps clean When CBM left us we had a RAM expansion with amaximum storage capacity of 512 Kilobytes or halfa Megabyte MB Today by using RAMLink we can have up to 16 MB When CBM left our fastest modem was 2400 bps bauds per second ow several sources g that CMD s offering provide modems exceed is the Turbo232 cartridge which combined with the SuperCPU allows transmission rates of 0 000 bps When CBM left us the largest capacity drive was the 1581 a 3 1 2 disk drive It stores 800K orabout 0 8 MB COMMODORE WORLD Unfortunately CBM didn t make many of them so there weren t enough to go around CMD responded by producing the FD 2000 with a capacity of 1 6 MB This drive doubles the ity available on the 1581 much as the 1571 doubled the capacity of the
19. explanation of a couple of kernal routines that are used for loading desk accessories Perhaps the manual that is supplied with GeoProgrammer covers it best since it provides some example source code But there are many little details that you as programmer will discover as you attempt to write your first Desk Accessory DA One of the biggest problems you ll face is how to use a dialogue box DB from within a DA This about drove me crazy the first time I tried to do it I got frustrated and just created my own icons instead But there was one feature that I just simply could not access without a DB The DBGETFILES function This function is only available from within a DB Actually I could get a DB to work from a DA The DA would seem to load and run just fine and even the DB would pop up as expected But just as soon as I would exit the DA to return to the application the system would crash Let s figure out why Little Applications The main idea behind a DA is to expand the functionality of any application that wishes to support a DA A DA is nothing more than an application in reality It is the way that GEOS handles them that really makes them different from an application When an application is running aside from the operating system it is the main controller of the computer When a DA gets loaded the application remains in the computer except for the area of memory where the DA resides That area of memory
20. for this deskTop too may need to beon disk What it boils down to is that ROM version is generally less configurable Asmany usersknow GEOS tendylo crawlwithout RAM expansion Yet there s only one expansion port on Commodore computer and both the cartridge and RAM expander need it A ROM could be put directly into a Commodore REU there s an empty socket for this purpose but that leaves out users with other RAM devices like GEORAM or BBGRAM These users will also need a cartridge port expander to use both devices together So in many cases GEOS on ROM is also less convenient As I mentioned before there is a better solution and that is RAMLink Using geoMakeBoot to install GEOS directly on RAMLink provides booting of GEOS that is actually faster than ROM because the extra files like CONFIGURE and the deskTop that have to be loaded can also come from RAMLink and at a speed much faster than any other drive RAMLink also lets you use alternatives to deskTop and to configure the booting of the system as you see fit Yes it s way more expensive than GEOS on a cartridge alone but RAMLink also serves as the RAM expander RAMLink has other virtues it s expandable is very usable outside of GEOS and is also fully configurable for autobooting both for the 64 and 128 So combined with geoMakeBoot 1 think it s the best GEOS cartridge possible Issue 19 ES of ex ingi jeld Mauric L I ra
21. has been heard time and time again but it has to be said again within this tribute to 1996 Commodore is Alive the Internet amp the IRC 4e 64 Conference Night are living proof Well that pretty much wraps up 1996 Personally I d like to thank all the demo artisans for making 1996 a truly awesome demo year Hmmm perhaps historians will mark 1996 up Probably not but in my book that s how it will best be remembered 1996 has set quite a high precedence for 1997 Somehow although I know it will be tough I hope 1997 manages to outdo 1996 le of C Demo Thursday sonscidntsc The Year ofthe Commodore Demo Etch A Style by Style Etch A Style was released in September Due to the high number of releases we are a little behind ch A the times as far as new demo reviews go The Demos of 1996 1996 NTSC Demo Releases Millenium Alive Beyond Force First Suraklin Style Party Trap Homport Roy Batty Bone Stripper Millennium Animusic Pack Ascraeus Bone Stripper Return MXR Fungus NTSC Carcass Not Done Suraklin Fixed Carnivorous Toasted Brain Cells Suraklin Etch A Style SatanClaws Victims Suraklin Experience 3 Fatum NTSC Death Lords of Chaos DLOC Fixed Drip Omni Snowllake Dreamland Temple of Boom Electron Tidal Forces Tribe Therapy NTSC Fixed Eternal Wix Bouncer V5 0A Elwix Oxyron X 96 Graphics Winners NTSC From the Ashes FTA Dawnfall Fixed Template M
22. is preserved and then restored upon exiting the DA The method which the area is preserved varies depending on the system In GEOS 64 up through V2 0 the area of memory is saved to a disk file on the current drive In GEOS 128 up through V2 0 itis instead moved into bank 0 the bac n area This saving ofa DA to disk on the 64 means that the disk needs enough free space to accomodate the amount of memory that will be preserved Also the disk cannot be write protected It would be equal to the size of the DA itself On the 128 if the application is using the back ram for itself it must deal with that issue also Since DA can be loaded while an application is running GEOS must also preserve some other aspects of the computer s memory Critical variables and other locations are saved prior to loading the DA and then restored upon exit There are a total of 378 bytes in all which must be preserved These are all saved to an area known as dlgBoxRamBuf which resides at 851f GEOS uses two routines to handle the saving and restoring of these 378 bytes SaveState and RstrState They are internal routines used COMMODORE WORLD 28 MIXING DESK ACCESSORIES amp DIALOGUE BOXES by GEOS only and cannot be called directly by an application A DB is in some ways similar to a DA The state of the machine is also saved and restored before and after a DB is used The main difference is that a DB is intended t
23. not coincidentally it s the best overall A DOS wedge was standard and had the nice feature that it verified all erase type operations format and ratch with an Are You Sure question in case you were making a mistake The disk drive access is significantly increased Action Replay offers the most complete freezer available Recent readers of this column will have heard me extol the virtues of the freezer but suffice it to say here that freezers allow you to save off a game at any point explore the code of a program as it runs and much more Action Replay is among the many cartridges which offers a machine language monitor There arealso built in disk utilities such as filea copiers The AR will boot a 128 directly into 64 mode It is somewhat compatible with JiffyDOS see later in thea for more on JiffyDOS but sometimes the two conflict One of the most notable features of the Action Replay was its ability to save programs in a custom Warp25 format which boasted the ability to be loaded on any 64 usingan Action Replay ora custom loader program you could include on the disk at up to 25 times the normal speed These programs tended to be larger than standard files however soarenotrecommended forall purposes Finally the Action Replay has a reset button which can February March1997 come in very handy if your machine doesn t have onealready Usinga reset button is faster and less wear on your machin
24. of this utility The established 1541 and 1541 11 1571 and 1581 drives are a given but geoMakeBoot surpasses the Maverick utility by its ability to support the CMD RamDrives and Hard Drives Given its own partition GEOS can now boot in a fraction of the time without using any floppy disks at all Another important feature geoMakeBoot is very user friendly Several brief steps will have your backup boot disk ready to go calling into question its latest C 64 128 EverythingforCommodore Computers Selle Trade Repair Buy 1420 County Rd 914 Burleson TX 76028 817 295 7658 RETURN IT FOR REPLACEMENT OR STORE CREDIT ONLY SORRY NO REFUNDS 64 1541 Repair 40 C64 We carry a full line of hard ware software amp maga zines both new amp used in cluding European items Our flat rate repairs in clude both parts amp labor Call for details your unwanted items 817 447 6974 Voice FAX line ALL STORE ITEMS HANE A39 DAY WARRANTY IF FOR SOME REASON YOU ARE DISSATISFIED IN YOUR You MAY We carry a full line of First power up your system and format the disk that you wish to boot from If you own a hard drive or RAMLink just choose an existing 1581 partition no need to format Sorry 1764 and 1750 RAM expanders don t count as they lack a backup power supply The second step is to copy the GEOS GEOS 128 file from geoMakeBoot to the newly formatted disk or pa
25. position in the industry and content to continue 2 were ate their current direction for the foreseeable future If the bad news is that CMD may indeed be a company on the move the good news is that they plantotakeusrightalong with them It promises to bean extraordinary ride Now that the SuperCPU s are flying out the door what might CMD be planning for an encore Read all about it in part 2 Commodore s Major Developer COMM LINK is the newsletter for HACC Hub Area Commodore Club Contact them through Rita Smith 743 Jewel Ave Yuba City CA 95991 PLUCKY is the Louisville Users of Commodore of Kentucky Inc P O Box 9551 Louisville KY 40209 0551 E Mail them at 3050 G iglou com Hard drives exceeding 2GB must be specially ordered from CMD P O Box 646 East Longmeadow MA 01028 or you can call 1 800 638 3263 Permission is given to any Commodore publication to reproduce this article in its original form Any changes must be okayed by the author Write to K Dale Sidebottom 1001 Estate Circle Georgetown IN 47122 9002 call 812 951 3588 or E mail luckykds otherside com Issue 19 n lt DESEN DEE EEN ER 64 Terminal CBM 1660 300 baud modem Datasette 1530 Chomp Computer Olympics Computer Space Adventures Easy Guide to Your C 64 Easy Script User Guide Instant Activities for C 64 PET Fun and Games The President
26. press releases and messages on the Internet COM division that 8 and 16 bit computer concerning the sale of Am echnologies the ES rhe presently has the rights to the Commodore US firm Gateway 2000 has placed a bid on buying this division as part of ESCOM s bankruptcy liquidation and the bid has been accepted Final in the matter however is dependant on the German courts so the sale is not final at this point Gateway 2000 a large manufacturer of Intel PC s that use a Microsoft operating system says that they will continue to develop and manufacture Amiga products if the sale is approved Upgrade Chips Miscellaneous 6510 6526 6567 6569 6522 8502 128 0 Keyboard NEW 19 95 8562 8563 8564 8721 8722 325302 64 Keyboard 14 95 Monitor Cables Call 390059 251968 8 95 901225 901226 901227 906114PLA 6 95 251715 251913 WD1772 10 95 314972 03 C128 ROM Upgrade 24 95 Motherboards 1541 1571 Alignm 515 95 1084S Motherboard w Flyback 69 95 1084S Power Supply Board Refurb 29 95 C 64 Cabinet Top Bottom 12 95 Commodore Joystick Capt Grant 2 95 256 x 1 41256 53 39 1541 NEW Alps Assembly 12 95 1541 Serial Cable 54 95 1541 Refurb Alps Assembly 8 95 Video Cable 2 85 95 1541 NEW Newt Assembly 12 95 Verbatim 5 25 55 00 Disks 10 1 99 4541 11 14 95 Amiga 500 Rev 3 PCD NEW 49 95 1571 NEW 16 50 C 64 Refu
27. still a remarkably good figure Naturally your own programs will vary from this marl them and how often you perform other depending on how you write accesses that can cause slowdowns such as 1 O access or frequent writes to mirrored memory Other SuperCPU Timing Issues With the proverbial can of worms now open let s consider the other timing aspects of the SuperCPU The SuperCPU Special Function Timing Chart will be our guide as we discuss 37 the ous functions Please note that the signal relationships on the chart have been calculated using the NTSC dot clock frequency but the times indicated are identical on PAL systems Access to Static RAM is always one cycle for reads Writes also take one cycle except under certain conditions What can slow down a write is mirroring where data is being written through to the RAM in the host computer Mirroring is performed in order to make sure that the VIC chip which reads sereen and color data from the computer s own RAM has proper data for the display Since it isn t possible to detect in real time ctly where in memory the VIC will be looking for data the SuperCPU s default is to mirror all writes to Bank 00 RAM A mirrored write doesn t automatically mean a speed penalty however since the SuperCPU employs a one byte cache buffer for write throughs Refer to the Mirrored Memory Cache Latch timing You ll see that the
28. than a line number with a colon Simple yet effective You should use dummy lines both before and after remark lines in your program as well as to separate sections this will be automatic if you put remarks at the beginning of each segment Another good use of colons is to indent loops Here s an e mpl REM LOOP TO POKE ING ited ina given loop which can help a lot during debugging Notice something else Ifthe same line were written by someone who didn t care about readability it might look something like this Using colons this way makes it easy to see just what lines are e about this code there s only one programming sentence per lir Alone this line doesn t seem too bad but start stringing a lot of lines like ated a chore for yourself when it comes to is going on this together and you ve c tracking down where something specif Test Complex Routines in Advance While it isn t often I find myselfin unfamiliar territory with BASIC I do still run into the need for a routine that I haven t coded in quite some time When it comes to these situa prototyping the routine first That is to say I create the routine in high line numbers as if it were a stand alone program and then RUN it closely monitoring the results Let s look at an example of this in action Imagine that I want to write a routine that creates eight decks of cards which will later be shuffled and 1 want to sto
29. thick let me simply say that our subscribers need never question our commitment to Commodore World Meanwhile some 6 by continual d SuperCPU remember reading an article by Pete Baker first published in COMM LINK He had sent in a 50 deposit in January toward the purchase of a 64 accelerator expected in April He was still waiting in June He described his frustration of waiting for months without a satisfactory explanation from CMD The thing is CMD is about the last company providing any hardware to the 64 128 user so we want to support their efforts by buying their stuff I can say that I ve tried to do so only to be put off by CMD for my trouble 1 empathize with him because I know many users were getting upset s on the release of the Commodore enthusiasts questioned why a 64 accelerator first targeted for February was not shipped until August This can test anyone s patience But l alsofeela great deal ofempathy for CMD February March1997 Imagine the whole Commodore world holding its breath waiting for YOU to make good on a promise The pressure would be ENORMOUS And this isn t just any promise either This one requires you to resolve some of the most difficult technological challenges that anybody in ever mastered I remember speaking about this to Ch back in 1992 when I was preparing an article for geoVISION magazine asked him then CMD turbo cartridge He answer
30. used to change from C128 mode to C64 mode on aC 13C What were the four integrated programs included in the infamous 341 software in the Plus 4 13D Which Commodore serial printer s had a small switch that allowed it to be addressed as either device 4 or device 5 13E How many addressable registers does the Commodore VIC IH IC have 13F On a Commodore PET machine what output appears on the screen after typing in SAVE Issue 19 COMMODORE TRIVIA 17 ANSWERS 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 10A 10B 100 10D 10E 23keys The keypad has roomfor 24 but onespotistaken by puts the system into single step mode Interestingly some pictures have the switch on the upper left some on the upper right GO Go Executes an instruction and displays the address of next ST Stop Stops execution of program and return control to monitor RS Reset AD Address Address entry mode DA Data Data entry mode PC Program Counter Displays and restores program counter to in PCL and PCH Increment Increments theaddress without changing the entry mode The KIM 4 1 guess I should have stipulated that this is a bitmap ASCH just has a few limitations Anyway the correct bytes to send are 255 193 193 255 You got these by assigning each bit in a column a value and adding 128 to the result for each column Characterre
31. wouldn t prove too difficult Next portions of GEOS would need to be patched so that GEOS would operate from ROM this is a little more difficult though not insurmountable hat said let me add that CMD has previously considered doing this In fact Geoworks actually proposed the idea to CMD before they took over distributing the product Geoworks was curious about having CMD create the hardware for them in that particular cas Why it never came to be can probably be pinned on the combination of the development costs and the higher cost of the medium a ROM cartridge that the user would have to pay for In addition there s actually a better solution While hooting the main files from ROM would be exceptionally fast GEOS still needs to check 4 for certain items on disks before the boot process is completed Imagine for a moment that you had GEOS on ROM and bought a new device that required replacing the default CONFIGURE file If CONFIGURE were in ROM as well you just wouldn t be able to add new hardware to your system this way So CONFIGURE and other autoexec files need to be on disk Given this which device should be searched for CONFIGURE Before you answer that let me warn you no matter which device you check or even if you check them all in a specific order someone will want it done fferently here are other similar scenarios with GEOS such as users who want to use an alternative to the deskTop To allow
32. 0 C Printer Centronics Printer Printer Interface O C64 Prog s Rel Guide 1526 MPS 801 803 Fleet System 4 Flight Simulator Il D H Setzer Koala Pad Pad Only Loadstar 155 1 15 Word Writer 6 5 Amtech RFS12C 71 clone w PS lt Edumate Light Pen w Disk Enhancer 2000 w PS 41 Clone Epson FX 85 Laser 190E Epson 9 Pin MPS 1000 w out Tractor Print Shop Star SG 10C or NX 10 10 Sylvia Porter s Personal Finance 64 128 Sylvia Porter s Personal Finance 128 Toy Shop Paper Model Maker Where in the USA is Carmen SanDiego Xotoc Supor Graphics B sse geen lt 50 525 DSDD Disks 519 00 lt 25 5 25 DSDD Disks in Storage Case 12 00 1670 modem 1200 baud 14 00 Boca 14 4 modem wi SL 129 00 FSD 2 Drive 1541 w PS 50 00 Hearsay 1000 Complete 40 00 controller by Suncom 519 95 Koala Pad Complete 50 00 40 00 Okimate 20 40 00 Star NX 1000 65 00 Supra 2400 modem w SL 59 00 SwiftLink 232 Cartridge 29 00 Syquost 270 MB Int Removable Drive w Cartridgo new 225 00 TaxPorfoct 28 weus 549 00 lt Vic Switch Mulitplexor 575 00 Y D m E lt lt 0 Okimate 10 os x a Y Minimum total order 20 00 No product will be held awaiting check MO We suggest payment by major Credit Card MC Visa Disc Amex Allitems have boon tested and are quarranteed to work upon delivory unloss marked as parts only CMD wi
33. 1541 drivi By far the most dramatic difference between thenand nowisthemaximum accessible memory on a single drive We have reviewed the 1581 drive and its 800K 0 8 MB capacity That wasall we had Since then sev memory cap ral hard drives have been adapted for the Commodore but CMD went even further They created an innovation called CMD native mode partitions which can vary in size from 256 blocks 64KB to 16MB A 254 of Commodore can recognize as many these partitions Now imagine formatting your hard drive so that you can create 254 native mode partitions each of which is 16MB in size Your Commodore 64 128 can now access up to 4 4 gigabytes GB on a single drive If you are like me you are asking What s a gigabyte mply put a gigabyte is approximately a billionbytesofmemory Forinstance my LUCKY computer club is justly proud of its library which has about 1300 1541 disks Yet our library contains less than one fourth of a gigabyte of data We could increase it by a factor of twenty and it could still fit onto one Commodore compatible hard drive Comparing again the old to the new CBM s 1581 left us witha maximum drivecapacity equal to ive 1541 disks Through CMD native mode partitions ona hard drive we can now store up to 4 4 gigabytes which is equal to the combined 500 1541 disks Now that is what 1 storage of 27 call growth Sofarwe have only dis
34. 3900 TWS 64 w Speller Busy Bee CMD Utilities 24 95 TWS 128 w Spelier Busy Bee JiffyMON 64 ML Monitor 19 95 TWS Modules HD RL lilustrator The Compression Kit 94 Mad Man 39 00 Teleconimeanlenttors Aprolok MiniModom C 24 C ready 2400 baud 69 00 Collette Utities Handy Geos Utilities 19 95 Aprolok Com Modom Adapter for ext modem 19 00 Dosk Pack Plus 52900 Aprotok Com Modem Adapter Cab 995 D nsch Groatost His NewToos2 Sump Labell6 530 00 BOCA 34 33 6K bps FaxModem 510900 FONTPACK Plus 2500 BOCA 33 6 FaxModom w Turbo232 amp Cabio 199 00 gatoWay 64 or 128 Spocity Vorsion 29 95 Commodoro 1670 Modom 1200 baud 1495 QooBASIC 520 00 Turbo232 Cartridgo Up to 115K baud 53095 Eden 5100054500 Modem 25 or Null Modom 9 0 or 9 9 95 COMMODORE Drive ROMs Note Computer Serial Number Required For G64 64C Orders geoFAX 39 95 geoFile 64 128 40 00 45 00 ons ages 10 14 15 ze eis gs OSA Aontas w Factors Eater aes 1014 8800 VV C3 EXC E geoProgrammer 45 00 Saisie 1300 THE NEWS MAGAZINE FOR C 64 amp 128 USERS jeoPublish 40 00 Chompl 1000 EOS 64 v2 0 i 44 00 Dav nine tite o Prahiatoric Mian 1909 For more than two years Commodore World has been keeping 206450 4509 Day in ne Ule of Prohistonc ee 0 Escape Routo 1900 the C 64 128 market alive with up to date information from some 22 0010 GEOS 219
35. 9 Expeditons Educational agos 8 15 1500 of the brightest minds in the Commodore community From Portoct Print LO for GEOS Luser iko output 49 95 prom cuir 21909 beginner to expert CW has something for everyone Columns RUN pos ii ipsc SH Hardball 1000 regularly cover Programming what s new reviews games Ja H Heavenbound 19 95 to SE 31398 GEOS telecom projects and such more Kong d Jordan ve Bid 1000 everyone telling you what you can t do with a Commodore ant Anatomy of the II o 4 En Lazer Duel 1495 see what the latest innovations can do for you ions of the Univer 6128 Computer Aided Dosign 126 BASIC Training Guide 51500 Subscribe for only 29 95 and Tips Sm GEOS Programmors Rotoronco Guido a RET Canada 35 95 EC Countries 45 95 Other Foreign 57 95 iraphics Book for the C 64 Rings of Medusa 16 00 Hitchhikers Guida to GEOS inni ideas or Use on Your Cot Eus DIETE 1009 Shipping and Handling Charges ideas for Uso on Your C hoot Em Up Pack Gangster Tmme 195 Mapping oe Sha or Dio 1300 Continental United Sates AK MIPR Seege Ross ETH Spelling Boo Educational ages 8 13 15 00 UPS 2nd Next UPS 2nd r Parcel Arial or Fanaa The Glass Computor Educational ages 12 1500 Order Subtotal Ground Day Day DayAi Pos Ul id The Market Place Educational ages 8 14
36. D00 while bit 2 of DD02 controls the direction of data on this line Since all of the actual 1 0 lines have already been used by the data and STROBE lines the BUSY signal has been connected to the FLAG2 line This latter connection will tell us when BUSY goes low by setting bit 4 of SDDOD CIA 2 s Interrupt Control Register The following code is a general implementation ofa driver based on the information provided above accessed 50001 FROM FB Issue 19 XLATE BYTE XDONE OUTPUT BYTE OUT Figure 2 Centronics Connector 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 28 933 M 05 36 Table 1 geoCable Wiring Connections Centronics bont User Port Centronics Port User Port Pin Funclion Pin Desc Pin Function Pin Desc 1 STB M PA 19 GND A GND 2 0 PBO 20 GND A GND 3 DATA 1 D PB 21 GND A GND 4 DATA E 2 22 GND A GND 5 3 F 23 GND A GNO 6 DATA 4 H 4 GND A GND 7 DATAS J PBS 25 GNO A GND 8 DATA 6 K PB6 26 GND A GND 9 7 L 87 27 GND A GND 10 28 GNO nic 11 BUSY B FLAG2 29 GND A GND 12 PO 30 GND 13 SELECT 31 PRIME nic 14 ne 32 ERROR 15 na nc 33 GND A GND 16 GND A GND 34 nic 17 GND nic 35 nic 18 5 nic 36 na nic
37. EHICLES TAROT Artwork of old and now autos excellent geoPaint drawings of thel arot card set 001305 Disk 03 CLIP ART Includes converted MacPaint files that have never before been wailable in Commodore format 001405 Disk 04 OTTOWA PRIME CLIPS Artwork f tho main landmarks of Ottowa plus high quali public domain clip art 001505 Disk 05 FONTS Moro than 30 fonts trom pa of LOADSTAR plus articlos in geaWrite format on creating fonts Also two ready mado veaders for use with your own documonts one a picture of a mail truck the other reading FROM HE DESK OF 0016D5 Disk 06 Disk 07 and Disk 08 gooPaint and Photo Album Wes with the great clip artwork featured on past LOADSTARS includes GeoCurmudgeon Anamalia and I Australian nimals Valentine art and many moro 001705 001805 001905 Disk 09 GOODYKOONTZ FILES Jaspor IGoodykoontz born in Indiana in 1855 produced Goodykoontz s Perpotual Calendar and Goneral Reference Manual A Book for the Millions This disk includes scans from the book of a wide arra subjects Gosturos and Attitudos Poultry raniology and moro 002005 Disk 10 OLD WEST Scannod Artwork tromf Dick Estos FAD Soltware mostly woodcut styl arl of the old west gold rush days and pionaor conos 002105 Disitiulla Care Jennifer Neely works ith a wide variety of ubject matter and imatorials Disk contains some of her favoritos scanned into geoP
38. GeoLabel sat COMMODORE WORLD by Bruce Thomas while I used another program that had very limited font and graphic options forcing me to bels as individual files on disk When I got an Epson compatible printer the first thing I did was try geo abel Eureka Great labels the easy GEOS way Now needed a way to storemy information GeoFilecameto the rescue Terms and a Useful Example GeoFileis what like to dynamic database it doesn t restrict you to your initial layout I of the previously mentioned fear of databases comes from the effort required to set up the records and fields initially No no Not vinyl records or grain fields Records as in groups of information pertaining to a particular subject Fields as in pieces ofinformation in each record Fora database to be useful everything must be organized in a logical manner Each entry in the database is a record Each piece of each record is a field Each record in the database has the same number of fields in it even if some of the fields are blank To makea database useable it has to be organized in a logical manner making searches for information a relatively easy task a look at a very large database that almosteveryonehasused thephonebook When Let s tal the phonebook was set up the phone company had to decide on certain parameters just as you would setting up your database How many columns on a page How many
39. I text files I found myself spending far more time reformatting the text than should be necessary and I knew there had to be an easier way to deal with these files Because text files are a large part of my computing experience as a writer I ve learned how to prepare text files to send to other platform computer users and have it arrive there intact I ve also learned how to make use of other platform text files without spending hours reformatting it These are two separate but inter related subjects First we ll tackle the basic differences in text files then talk about sending files to other computer platforms and last how to convert files we ve downloaded so they re formatted nicely for our own use What s The Difference Although ASCII is the standard used on other computer platforms there s a variation of standards as to the end of line markers and these affect how the text is formatted This a hold over from the days when computers were connected to printer terminals instead of monitors and was based on what the printer hardware required for the end of line character are over but the end of line differences between computers remains If you ve ever downloaded a text file created on a UNIX or Amiga ed that the text is readable but it looks pretty rough as all the lines appear to run together with these systems use a linefeed as their end of line marker when our C64 128 programs don t find any carriage re
40. Lawhorh Sic eden 3 00 i USA P Box 8053 CANADA and MEXICO 4 50 New Albany IN 47151 FOREIGN 5 50 my Ss X PAN D dein Denny im kim search for the YOUR SYSTEM evil Ghost 2 SLOT CARTRIDGE PORT EXPANDERS in The EX2 1 and EX3 Cartridge Port Expanders bring new DENNY S expandability to you Commodore 64 or 128 Combine the QUEST use of compatible cartridges Disable cartridges notin use Change the address your computer finds a cartridge at Avoid the constant changing of cartridges that puts extra wear on your cartridge port The EX3 offers 3 vertical expansion slots while the EX2 1 provides 2 vertical slots ONLY 9 99 and 1 horizontal slot Both units offer 7 switchable signals per slot address mapping on slot 2 and a reset button Check or money order U S funds Coy Dy EI e Le DE F EE E only please Add 3 s h outside 0 5 Coming soon DENNY S WORLD To order or for more information SUNRISE SOFTWARE P O BOX 1883 MASSAPEQUA NY 11758 Dp 39 00 Pus SH Creative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 East Longmeadow MA 01028 February March1997 27 COMMODORE WORLD GE PROGRAMMIST By Maurice Randall Have you ever tried to find documentation on how to write a Desk Accessory Look all you want the info is very slim indeed Neither the GEOS Programmer s Reference Guide nor the Hitchhiker s Guide to GEOS cover it The most they talk about itis in the
41. MHz in this particular case We could also modify the program so s one operation ceumulator to that the store instruction places the value into Static RAM instead of Dy 5003000 and save an additional cycle This would kick the effective speed up to 14 7 MHz It s also important to note that most of our lossin throughput came when our code began executing in a new row This doesn t happen iic say at often since rows are at least 2 KB wide Consider a whole 2 KB segment of contiguous code executing from DRAM with all external reads and writes going to Static RAM Under those circumstances you might achieve a throughput of 9 9 MHz not considering refresh or occasional jumps and branch Refresh Yes DRAM needs to be refreshed to maintain its contents and at these speeds it can no longer be hidden as it commonly is over February March1997 Clock Stretching While many of the operations within the SuperCPU occur at a normal 20 MHz rate some operations may take longer than the single cycle in which they should usually occur on 1 MHz Commodore computer Under these circumstances the high half of the clock signal is stretched to meet the requirements of the operation In the example below we show the System Timing Base 40 MHz and how the System Clock itself would look while executing instructions at full speed Normal Operations The bottom example shows what happens during an op
42. Miscellaneous ou HD 3105 clw4MB 479 95 x Monitors Bookss10 815 Primer netaces 4995 Rol Timo Clock Optona Add 24 95 5 20 Fastload Cartridge 5 FD 2000 249 95 e Manuals 7 Super Grafix Jr 3995 1750 Superclono REU 512K 169 95 gre Accessories Ask For Anything We May Have It J P PBM Products By Mail Sond Funds 15 USA Exchange 3x 00515 N Snonidan Mal PO 15 day Warranty On Relurishod 619 445 8432 Downsview Ont Canada M3L 180 low 4 6 weeks for delivory Ta Canada 7 GST Ontario 8 PST 1996 Catalogue Disk 64 Format 2 Vintage Computers 520 Silverbrook Drive El Cajon CA 92019 Shipping 0 25 4 26 99 10 100 199 8 200 499 7 5 v 500 USA 15 FREE CATALOG A MAGAZINE FOR USERS OF THE C64 128 The Commodore appears poised to rise from the ashes like the Phoenix of j 1 old With the SuperCPU and CMD s venture toward new computer With Tons of Commodore Stuff magazine is needed to give Commodore owners an expert source that is up close and personal Phoenix 64 is designed for the beginning user who wants to advance for Write to FREE CATALOG the advanced user who wants to be om the cutting edge and for the Parsec Inc Commodore observer who wants to witness it all Order now for the PO Box 111 CW premier issue of Phoenix 64 No subscriptions Make checks payable to Salem MA 01970 0111 Roger
43. OS Wedgeistypically accessed using the symbol Typed by itself the tell you the status of your disk driv symbol will When the COMMODORE WORLD iriety of drive is inactive and the drive a flashin drive 5s light is not you should be told that all is OK Ifthe slight doesflash which isthe standard way toindicatean error the command typed by itself returns the error status with a two digit code and a short text explanation Without a DOS wedge retrieving this error code requires a short BASIC program which you would have to type in any time you wanted to see theerrormessage youcan tloadsucha program from disk because doing that load would cancel the errormessage You can then look up the error me anual if you need further explanation of what the error signifies The wedge does more than just return the error status however Anything typed after the issentto the disk driveasa command just as anything between the quotation marks is in our in your drive s referen earlier example So to delete a file called testfile using a wedge you simply type and the drive will execute your instructions As aves a great deal of typing and y out you can see thi is more convenient if you need to c multiple deletions in a sitting Another bonus of the DOS wedge is the ability to see a disk drive directory without erasing a program you might currently have i
44. Please begin my subscription to Commodore World as soon as possible Subscriber Information Payment Information Name _ _ _ Bill me later one y Add City Count Number jnature COMMODORE AND COMPUTER INDUSTRY NEWS Now Shipping geoFAX 2 0 Maurice Randall recently announced that GEOFax version 2 0 is finished and available The following release was supplied Even though geoFAX is a relatively new program there is already a more powerful upgrade available All current owners of geoFAX version 1 are entitled to a free upgrade directly from the author i de you must send in your geoFAX registration If you have lost the registration then simply send in your original disk Maurice Randall In order to receive the upgra V2 0 Highlights Built in file copier renamer and deleter Improved geoFAX to geoPaint utility Improved fax send receive performance New phone directory More configurable Improved printer drivers with HP and Canon support Onsereen fax viewer geoFAX V2 0 pricing remains at hipping and handling and requires GEOS 64 or 128 Turbo232 or SwiftLink cartridge and a Class 2 or 2 0 modem with at least 16K of internal RAM A SuperCPU is highly recommended for improved performance and faster printing Internet Book For Commodore The Internet is a big place and it s not always easy to find all the in s and out sabout taking advantage ofits features when che
45. Suraklin is also relatively new to the Scene He has released four independent demos during 1996 and is also the newest member of the Millenium group Suraklin alented in the field of graphics and coding but most importantly he s ambitious All four of these individuals possess a passion for coding which for demo enthusiasts equals the promise of a number of releases both by the individuals of Millenium and Millenium as a group Best Demo The Best 1996 Demoawardeasil byElectron Electron sonlycurrenth is Dokken a mega talent within today s demo scene Unfortunately Eternal was Electron s only 1996 release However after viewing Eternal 1 can easily see why it s their only release of the year Dokken created every single pixel and sound contained within this incredible multi page demo Eternal contains incredible graphics hot music and awesome routines Coupled with the fact that this was all the creation of one single individual it well deserves the Best Demo of 1996 award Dokken is now enjoying a much needed rest but I hope that 1997 sees another amazing masterpiece from this mega talented artisan y goesoutto Eternal tivemember Best Demo Group of 1996 The Best 1996 Demo Group award is a tie between Style and Forces of Evil Style is well known constant within the scene They continually bring new quality releases to the Commodore Community Along with their demo releases th
46. The ACE operating system file names given above has a utility named tr that can translate files and control the end of line character The commands are in the format of filename The x and y in the above command can be replaced by any of the following m MS DOS u UNIX a ASC CR p PETASCII So to convert an MS DOS text file to PETASCII we would use the command tr m2p pet tx sy Using BASIC To Change the End of Line Format You can use a short BASIC program to change how the end of each line is formatted The following program changes UNIX text files to MS DOS format It looks for linefeed c chr 10 and adds a carriage return chrS Replace the file names unix txt and dos txt with the file names you require t open St if aSzchr 10 thena chr 10 ch r 13 30 print a print 3 a next then the program will replace linefeeds with carriage returns Wrap Up It has been a long time since I uploaded a text file with embarrassing formatting as I ve learned that it s an easier process if always stick with using ASCII format for my text file way without having to look at the contents of the file I know I can pass it on to others even those who use other computer platforms and the file will come out ok I see ASCII as an equalizer because as long as the file is in ASCII anyone on any computer can read it COMMODORE WORLD Just For Starters
47. a num Issue 19 4 February March 1997 THE NEWS MAGAZINE FOR COMMODORE 64 amp 128 USERS Plus SuperRAM The SuperCPU 64 gets a new playmate 7 W WII IM Pablo Domain an OTORGA niin Wechnicalisupponuroniine experts f ming WAN Genie NY Wu Voice Assistance 1 800 638 9636 How to log on Terminal Program Configuration 2 Dial 1 800 638 8369 300 1200 2400 baud Upon connect type HHHHH Terminal Emulation ASCII or VT100 At prompt U type Half Duplex Local Echo ON 8N1 8 data bits 1 stop bit NO Parity mi Wt Answer questions and follow the on line instructions to complete initial sign on C O N ISSUE 19 FEBRUARY MARCH 1997 COMMODORE Festurscs 10 eoFite A Dynamic Parter For GEOS Users by Bruce Thomas Get to know how geoFile may fill your simple database requirements E NEWS MAQAZINE FOR COMMODORE 64 128 USERS 12 MAIN DISTRIBUTOR by K Dale Sidebottom st in a three part series on how one writer views CMD s role 22 DEMOS by Sherry Freedline Genera MANAGER Learn how WDC s super processor differs from what you re used 10 26 CirANING Our THE GEOS CLOSET by Gaelyne R Gasson Charles R Christianson Get some hot tips on drawing new members to your group D Poos Doug Cotton 16 GRAPHIC INTERPRETATION by Paul Sullivan ADVERTISING Sates Making GEOS boot disks isn t hard if you have the r
48. ach Somewhat No Notes 1 Using either Fastload or JiffyDOS commands fails but regular commands seem to work The system boots but completely ignores Fastload The system crashes immediately a result of the incompatible memory maps used by the AR and SuperCPU At times the system may ignore the fact that the Final Cartridge is active The system boots but disk loads fail are fed up with slow loading times you d do well to investigate these options more fully You may find products out there older versions or different models that we haven t covered here butthebasicprinciplesare moreorlessuniversal Look for the solution that suits your needs Issue 19 UPGRADE YOUR COMMODORE I e BEE Hardware e Sio Hannes Computer Monitors Drives Other ew APR ccessories DE TNR i701 514995 mu 58095 Gei 9495 C24 2400 Baud 64 128 74 95 Specializing in Pre Owned Commodore 1702 149 95 41 wDips 104 95 64C 114 95 User Switch 30 95 1802 17495 15414 811995 128 17495 Convort A Com 529 95 HARDWARE 8020 199 95 1571 159 95 1280 522495 Now CMD LMS Accossories 1902 224 1581 17495 SX64 534995 weus 902A 249 95 MSD 2 814995 1660 2495 JE SOFTWARE 1084 294 95 1001SFD 129 95 1670 3995 Jour 52 95 Agaitonal JIyDOS Drive ROM 534 95 Books Manuacs 95 1530 Datasetto 53495 RAMLink Bs 209 95 c wO 274 95
49. agic Zone 2 Template Tutorial PSW Wevealed Hatework Forces of Evil Inferior Years RPG Not Dead CAT Subliminal Strive CAT97 Sunset Trail Digital Magic Stephen Judd Redrum Polygonamy SET Storm February March1997 19 Style is unique because it s more than just a demonstratior fully interactive Etch A Style is of course a Commodore 64 version of the infamous Etch A Sketch to s better because you never have to However worry about it breaking and having all that powder released all over your house Asthe program states Etch A Style started out as an experiment but turned out to bea fun demo forall involved even the viewers The demo s music is by Deathlok the setand sketch padare the resultof PK the sketchesweredrawn by PK The Wiz Decomp and Elwix and the Etch A Style code comes from the mind of Thedemobegins with thefamiliarEtch A Sketeh toy displayed on the screen accompanied by the music of Deathlok Viewers are treated to a variety of Etch A Sketch drawin ted by the cast and crew of Style You actually get to watch as the masterp re drawn on the Etch A Sketch screen Some of the drawings are truly incredible Personally I ve always found it rather difficult to compose a drawing with an Etch A Sketch However as you can see for yourself PK makes it look quite easy char Once you ve enjoyed the Style Etch A Style creations you can begin
50. aint format Sido 2 is a collection of scanned rtwork of animals trom oars Valentine s St Patrick s Day Halloween Thanksgiving and Christmas 002305 Disk 13 PEOPLE FACES Scenes of people and faces from FRO Software 002405 Disk 14 CLASSICS Dick s choice of he bost of the collection 002505 other prehistoric beasts as weil artwork from FRD 002605 Disk 16 SPORTS MISC Dozens o sports lated clips 002705 Disk 17 OFFICE AND SCHOOL Clips to 10 used at work and around tho house 002805 Disk 18 MUSIC amp MORE SCHOOL CLIPS 002905 Disk 19 SEASONAL AND HOLIDAYS clip for any occasion 003005 Disk 20 SEASONAL AND HOLIDAYS for any occasion 003105 SS INCH DISKS Tho 9 5 disks are roughly equivalent fo Two and a hall 5 25 disks Disk 1 Equals disks 1 2 4B 000903 2 Equals disks 3 6 7A 001003 Disk 3 Equals disks 5 8 7B 001103 Disk 4 Equals 9 10 11 0012D3 Disk 5 Equals 12 13 11B 001303 Disk 6 Equivalent of Disks 14 15and some bonus files not on 5 25 disks 001403 Disk 7 Sports Office and school Musi 401503 Disk 8 Music Holiday and Seasonal 01603 For your convenience GeoViewer is included on each volume GEOS 2 0 is suggested ires The Compleat Maurice copiato ot 6 card gamos writon by Maurico Jones tho acknowledged master ol card game simulations for tho C 64 128 Thero s oven a brand new never bef
51. b 0 49 505 44 506 507 508 1 N 15 SPACES 1 1 mb 58 4 mb 2 8 mb 61 35 168 ot 0500 oto500 75 19000500 90 500 COMMODORE WORLD 36 input star input starting page s input ending bank 3 sub460 input ending page 3 480 return 12403 gosub51 pl 119420 pv pl pl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 18 first available expansion memory location This location is the first byte in a row 020000 800 40 with no remainder and also the first byte of the first column of that row always the case at the start of any new row though we can do the math 020000 04 8000 with no remainder At this location you have the following code 020000 A9 03 020002 8F 00 03 02 LDA 503 STA 020300 Let s assume you jump to this code from another Bank or row and it begins executing SUPERRAMFAKE cont goto500 custom values DN ente end addre ting bank sb ui gosub4 p ui gosub4 SPACES eb puis ui SPACES ep ui 1 mid h i 1 thenui ore dummy values fori lto4 pvzasc mid 1 1 1 gosub518 heint pl b 65 256 rem hi addr rem bank rem rts Issue 19 Normally the LDA immediate would require 2 cycles to complete 1 cycle to load the instruction and 1 cycle to fetch the immediate byte into the accumulator But in this case it 5 cycles to fet
52. began programming in MS DOS for financial reasons he never lost his love for Commodore w Roger Lawhorn is a 14 Recently when I demonstrated my SuperCPU for him he wanted to begin Commodore programming immediately He soon sold his 486 computer so he could purchase a SuperCPU and a used CMD HardDrive As a programmer he can see all kinds of new possibilities We still need to remember that the people at CMD are people and therefore not perfect Yes they could have done a better job of explaining to us why there were so many delays on the SuperCPU But Pete Baker will be the first to tell you that it was definitely worth the wait Let s also give credit where credit is due We know our Commodores are too tough to die CMD appears to have the savvy to share that vision as well as the wisdom to capitalize on it For the last nine years they have intelligently sought to fill the gaps and plug the holes in the good ship Commodore and weshould thank them You should also recognize that with the completion of the SuperCPU CMD has really come of age You ll never get the modest folks of East Longmeadow to admit it but they have proven themselves capable of doing anything that they absolutely resolutely set their minds to accomplishing What can we expect in the future If my perceptionsofCMDin 19 verhaps you will allow metoshare my perceptions for 1996 Isee a company that is generally pleased with their
53. by Jason Compton S PUTTING DISK DRIVE ENHANCERS TO WORK Askany Commodore user pastor present about their floppy drive and you can be sure you ll hear a derisive comment The 1541 in particular is a very slow creature Stories and legends abound as to why it is the way but what s important to know is that there are a variety of things you can do about it You can add equipment to your machine to make access faster and friendlier Themostbasic diskdriveenhancementis called the DOS Wedge A software only version of this tool is provided on most 1541 and 1571 demo Its task is to give you easy access to the DOS Disk Operating System on your floppy Under normal circumstances sending a command to your dis drive to do things such as formatting a disk or your floppy disks which shipped with the original drive deleting a file requires that you enter a sina program in BASIC The most typical syntax is In the space between the quotes you can enter any of the number of commands that can be sent to the drive What is happening is that you re opening communication with your disk drive which by default is drive 8 but this can be changedifyouareusingmultiple drives sending it the command between the quotes and then closing the communication This is not the most convenient way todo things A DOS Wedge takes and makes DOS this unnecessary overhead away commands much easier The D
54. cache is cleared during the low phase of COMMODORE WORLD the first dot clock cycle following the computer s Phase 2 signal going low The latch stays low for 25 ns and the cache is then ready for another byte to be written through Any byte must be in the cache at least 70 ns prior to the dot clock high transition that signals the computer s Phase 2 line to go high any later than this and the cache mechanism has to wait until the Phase 2 clock cycles around again In either case the operation of the cache is transparent to program timing as long as no additional mirrored writes occur while the cache latch status is high This leads us to consider what happens if the cache is already full when a mirrored write occurs The result is a clock stretch for the SuperCPU Phase 2 clock which will stay high until the cache is cleared Once this has occurred the waiting byte can be put into the and the SuperCPU returns to normal 20 MHzoperation Spacing writes to mirrored memory as well as using the optimization modes to reduce mirroring will help maximize program efficiency With one mirrored store every 19th cycle you ll get maximum throughput ofone cache write per 1 MHz cycle provided there are no other special functions that slow things down The next area we ll lookat is 1 0 access which covers reads and writes to 00D000 00DF with I O switched in and also includes a few miscellaneous locations Most 1 0 reads and
55. cations that ha en the money and run Based on customer complaints Commodore World has been trying to locate the publisher Tom Gosser for comment The phone number supplied by Mr Gosser is now reported to be out of service Issue 19 Commodore World deeply regrets any loss our subscribers may have taken in subscribing to CPU and has given much consideration to changing our policy on allowing advertising by other publications within our pages However we feel it would be even more ofa dis service to the Commodore community if we were not to give other publishers an opportunity to make their publication known and it s impossible to know in advance whether an advertiser will fulfill its obligation We fully consider purchases in warn our readers to e not familiar with do wish to once with any company or individual th CMD Set to Release SuperRAM Card for SuperCPU 64 Creative Micro Designs Inc hasannounced that it will begin production of the SuperRAM card for the SuperCPU 64 the first week of May The card holds up to 16 MB of RAM which can be directly accessed as program memory by the SuperCPU 64 and will be sold both atelyand in bundles with the SuperCPU in various memory configurations CMD rds sold to noted that a user installable ROM upgrade will accompany SuperCPU 64 owners It was also announced that a GEOS driver was exected to ship with the card that would allow the extra RAM to be used as hig
56. ch the instruction from a new row in expansion RAM then 1 more cycle to fetch the immediate byte The latter took only 1 cycle because the row and column were already charged and would require 4 5 cycles the controller knows this lf you re wondering how an operation can take an uneven number of cycles you need to take look at the sidebar on Clock Stretching Now the next instruction STA is fetched in 1 cycle and the three address bytes are all fetched at 1 cycle for each When the second byte of the address the 03 at 020004 is fetched we cross over into a new column Normally this would require an extra cycle due to column address access timing requirements however the controller outputs the next column address when the processor reads from 020003 by assuming that the next access will be in the following memory location By always guessing that the next access will be sequential the DRAM controller saves time when this proves to be the Back to the example ther left to perform store the memory This usually takes 1 cycle but the location where it is to be stored is in a distant column of the same row so it takes 2 cycles This setofinstructions would normally take 7 cycles in SRAM but in expansion RAM it requires 10 5 cycles This may seem slow at first but when contrasted with a stock 64 running at 1 MHz we re still operating over 13 times faster the throughput is approximately 13 4
57. characters allowed for sumames How many for first names How many in the address field The phone number being the easiest to determine Name Addressand Phone Numberare each fieldsina person s record in the phone book 10 h record must also be presented in thesame order This is decided by your choice of the sort fieldandis very important In the phone book we use the surname as the sort field We know our friends by name so that is the logical choice to sort by In your database you can choose whichever field is appropriate depending on the information you are storing How useful would your phone book be ifthe phone number was the sort field What ifeach entry in the phone book was in a different order How would we find anyone Being able to retrieve information from your database is critical If you can t find a particular entry the database isn t worth anything Look at the top of each page in the phone book and you have narrowed your search to what is between the headers The same applies to databases I think I see fewer furrowed brows and less worried looks Creating our first Database File Just like the phone company we have to make some decisions prior to setting up ourdatab or do we Say we are going to store names and addresses of friends and family With most es we must decide how many fields weare hen we have to decide how many e databa going to need characters in each field why did I g
58. cking it outforthefirst time There s a lot of Commodore specific information available on the Internet but you have to know how to get to the information and that can be a Catch 2 How do I get on the Internet What term programs can Iuse W heck is FTP Can I browse the World Wide Web with my C64 The Internet Jor Commodore Users covers Hardware Bas erminaland Modem Basics Finding an Internet Provider Getting Online and Signing Up UNIX Shell Account Basics Email Text Editors Newsgroups Telnet Rlogin FTP Archie World Wide Web Gopher Internet Relay Chat IRC Offline Mail Reading Sending and Receiving Email to access otherInternet serv nd more The book also contains a comprehensive les Mail Lists Using Glossary Commodore Terminal Program Key t and Internet Resource List Author Gaelyne Gasson formerly Gaelyne once editor of 4 Alive has been writing about Commodore computers and quivalents a Products COMMODORE WORLD modeming for several years with columns and features in Commodore World and BBS Magazine She has also written about Commodore computing for other publications such as C Hacking Commodore Network and Loadstar After answering countless letters helping others learn the ropes of telecommunications she has written this book specifically for Commodore users who want to take advantage of the Internet The Internet For Commodore Users is to be packa
59. cussed hardware Check outa CMDad from 1991 or 1 nd you ll find little software is offered Today their advertisements read like Who s Who in Commodore Software They have worked diligently to bring all the commercially viable software the really good stuff under one roof For instance GEOS users are grateful that CMD could negotiate with Berkeley to keep GEOS alive Thus a company which was once principally hardwa now offers the best Commodore softwa How about communications CMD publishes Commodore World which is the only national glossy print magazine we have They also have taken over the job of SYSOP on GEnie Last but not least they offer support for those who need their computer equipment repaired COMMODORE WORLD They may cost a little more but they know as much about the inside of your Commodore any company in America When all else fails send it to CMD Someone will likely conclude that this article was written to endorse CMD If that opinion encourages anyone to increase their patronage well and good but it misses the point Since I became a Commodore user in 1982 I have never seen our community take such body blows it has suffered in the last several years We have seen Commodore ma shouldn t We suffered the death ofa parent CBM We watched the heirs Escom AG of Germany distain the the 8 bit technology which we hold so dearly and they hold so ca
60. ddrossos worldwide All subscription payments must be provided in U S Dollars Mall subscriptions to CW Subscriptions Croative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 East Longmeadow MA 01028 0646 Entire contents copyright 1997 by Creative Micro Inc unless otherwise noted No part of this publication may be printod or othorwiso roproduced by means without prior written consent from the publisher All programs published in this publication are for the personal use ol the reader and may not bo copied or n any way distributed Alltights reserved Programming examples and routinos in this issue which are prosontod for educational purposes may bo used in tho creation of programs by tho purchasor of this magazine provided for tho routinos is cloarly prosented in either the program documontation or tho program eet See Our Croativo Micro Designs Inc assumes no responsibility for orrors or omissions in editorial program listings or advertising CHECKSUM Content Creative Micro Designs Inc assumes no liability for advertisers claims or reliability Utility POSTMASTER Send address changes to CW Addross On Page 39 Changes c o Creative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 East Longmeadow MA 01028 0646 AOM THE COMMODORE WORLD WeEATHERING THE StoRM ust a few weeks ago the employees of Creative Micro Designs and Commodore World were treated to one of New England s harshest spring s
61. designing your very own Etch A Sketch masterpieces If you have any problemsusingtheinterface help isonlyaspacebar pressaway By pressing thespacebar you llactivate thehelptextscroller Picturesaredrawn by pressing the right and left cursor keys the Commodore key and the shift keys Two features make the Commodore Etch A Style version better than the original Etch A Sketch the ability to save your drawings and the ability to replay the drawing of your picture Come to think ofit there s yet a third uniquefeaturenotfoundon theoriginal theability ing the U key You can even clear your picture entirely from the screen by pressing the C he C key is bound to evoke a few chuckles as your Commodore 64 shakes your Etch A Style drawing pad toclearitsscreen Onceyou rehappy with your finished picture you can save it to disk ater retrieval to undo undesirable lines by pre for ved pictures can later be loaded and enjoyed in the same manner as the original creations of Style Style has left no stone unturned with it s Etch Style creation Once you ve seen the group s creations a few times you may not wish to view every time you load the demo You can head straight to thedrawing pad simply by pressing the Run Stop key The text contained within the program is suitable for viewers of all ages Etch A Style is a demo sure to be enjoyed by young and old alike Thanks for the fun Style D
62. disk The Compleat Crossword every pue pubes in Puzzle Page In ono hopa Eserini mure it uos Barata DR eet e program to prosont the E Ms EE wnen itt aed vo nel Ye Pr Eer Es solved and which you haven t yet Each 1541 disk contains 110 puzzlos 1581 Disk 002003 820 Disk 1 1541 4003005 Da gt 2 1541 100375 10 V NEW c 193 Product The Compleat Lee sot Lee O Clinton s best serious programs for the C 128 80 column mode Finance auto expense kitchen helper gonealogy resume writing mutual funds One 1541 disk 003205 One 1581 disk 001703 10 00 We NEW Word Search Super Star Search 1 200 orignal wou search puzzles by Stoven Thomas and Art Dudley presented by John Seratino s modern point jand click program One 1541 disk 001105 One 1581 disk Val 520 00 NEW Story disk The Compleat Prosequest 95 NEWI A 1541 disk wit all ofthe ontros in the 1995 short story writing contost on it including the throe grand winners One 1541 disk 003505 One 1581 disk 001903 5 00 Soli 32201 LOADSTAR T Shirts unios edition Fruit Of Tho Loom T shirts LOADSTAR s nomosis Knees Cahoon stands up to rogular washing and drying Where else can you tind Commodore apparel 50 Cotton Polyoster 15 00 each With en chipping Small 960025 Medium 960125 Largo 960225 X Large 960925 XX L 960425 Tools Tutorials The Compleat rammer Bost solle Over Two megabytes of jo crammed and stuffed onto eight 5 25 inch dis
63. e meter Since TAN requir gument in parentheses this line will ise a SYNTAX ERROR You can have a similar problem with the logical operator OR Here s an example sign anda AD p o its X FORA Here BASIC FOR NEXT loop and again you ll get a SYNTAX ERROR You can fix these problems in one of two w ither use aspace to separate leading variables from logical operators or parenthesize 1 generally use the latter for two reasons someone reading the code might leave a space out to save room and parentheses help to clarify the logic of a particular statement Bypassing BASIC Quirks There are other quirks in BASIC that can cause you unforeseen problems and some of them can be a bear to track down if you re not on top of debugging techniques Take converting strings to PETASCII values as an example This is normally done with the ASC keyword and the proper way to do it is to add a null string CHRS 0 to the string you re converting Here s how You ve probably seen this done in many programs but some of you may have wondered why it is done The reason behind it is that BASIC won t properly convert an empty string to a null value 0 it needs help So as long as you use the method above you won t need to worry about getting an ILLEGAL QUANTITY ERROR at least not with that particular conversion While I can see that I m running out of room here there s no shortage of BASIC
64. e final special I O timing specification only applies to writing to the CIA chips 00DC00 S00DDFF a standard 1 0 write is performed but the next processor cycle usually a fetch of the next opcode is stretched into the next computer Phase 2 cycle and ends where a long 1 0 write would end It cessary to use this timing to n impossible to read back from a CIA during the two 1 MHz cycles following the write The reason Because the CIA I O lines are terminated with resistors causing them to react slowly when going high Reading too soon can generate erratic results Last ofall there is one final inconsistency in timing that isn t indicated on the chart This applies to accessing the special SuperCPU RAM placed in the 1 0 area Access to this RAM takes two 20 MHz cycles instead of one because the SuperCPU needs to first decode that this area isn t actual 1 0 before it can perform the load or store function requested Conclusion There are many factors to consider if your program is to achieve optimal throughput Reducing mirroring spreading special accesses and optimizing routines that really need it will give you the most speed for your effort without making the process excessively difficult and time consuming Host Computer s Dot Clock UUU UUUU Host Computer s Phase 2 Clock Mirrored Memory Cache Latch SCPU Phase 2 VO Read Write must bo going low by this
65. e just written is operating correctly before you make it a part February March1997 31 of your entire program In most cases then you will have eliminated most k down coding errors before they become difficult to t Using Parentheses Before we move on there like to point out to you Looking at the math routines you ll notice I used alot of parentheses to sep L better than not having them when you might need them but aren t sure To prove this point take the S4 1 2 4 calculation into consideration If this instead read 41 2 4 the result of this calculation would be wrong The reason for this lies in the way BASIC prioritizes mathematical operations unless otherwise forced by parenthesis multiplication takes precedence over addition So instead of getting 5 1 times 2 4 you d get S plus 1 2 4 which isn t the same You ll also note in the card routine that used parentheses to enclose math operations on either side of a logical operator OR in this case Doing this by habit takes care of some parsing problems that could show up with AND and OR Take a look at this line for example another tip associated with this routine that I d e things This is good orat le X TANDA While the statement is trying to AND the variable T with the variable A to get the result X BASIC reads from left to right and sees TAN after the equal umes that the program is trying to get the NT ofsom
66. e relationship between CMD and the Commodore community particularly in light ofrecent revolutionary developments After Thad articles called CMD to ask their advice With so many user newsletters finished a series of thr in the land who might be willing to publish these in order that might reach the widest audience I We was amazed to hear them say COMMODORE WORLD K Dale Sidebottom Commodore users seem to fall into two groups those who love the Commodore as CBM left it and those who probably would have left it if not for CMD K D S Why the surprise I have always felt that CW tended to be rather technical while this series clearly targets the heart more than the head Yes these articles contain useful information but more important to me is the introduction of new ideas Meanwhile want toassure you that CMD has had no direct influence on this discourse If you listen closely you will hear the spirit of stubborn That will be your best validation of its authenticity al thanks to CW for bringing this series to you Most ofall I want to thank you for being there It is your support really that makes all the excitment possible and for that 1 independence throughout these pas Iwant togive spe am grateful Thanks for listening 12 ommodore s istributor Part 1 My Commodore reminds me of Tombstone Arizona in the days of Wyatt
67. e than having to physically turn it off and on again Final Cartridge3 The Final Cartridgeisa powerful one but is quirky in its own ways It sports the most novel feature of any of the ROM enhancements namelyaGUlenvironment where you have access to a notepad program disk utilities and a few other tools It s no GEOS butit sentirely built in to the cartridge But most people will be using the FC in BASIC where it displays the aforementioned quirks Like the others it has a DOS wedge but instead of the typical command the Final Cartridge s wedgecommandis DOS For example ourearlier delete example would be tridges or when usinga nal Cartridge Other conventions are also rejected Instead of the familiar for You can add a variety of equipment to your machine to make your floppy access faster and friendlier program loading the command is DLOAD and similarly DSAVE for turbo disk saving The Final Cartridge isn t a total waste however It has a freezer although not oneas powerfulasthe Action Replay s Its printer support for screen dumps however is quite powerful and its machine language monitorallowseasy searchingforsprites and custom fonts if you re interested in those sorts of things Like the Action Replay the Final Cartridge shows you the addresses programis being loaded into which is ve for programmers andit too boasts a All in all a powerful cartridg look if yo
68. ear somewhere so users can contact me The trivia is also used Jim Brain Brain Innovations Inc 10710 Bruhn Ave Bennington NE 68007 j brain ieee org fora contest I run on the Internet contact me at the included address for more information Because curiosity has the best of me I always card detailing where the welcome a note or po trivia goes I also welcome new questions provided they come with the answers Enjoy COMMODORE TRIVIA 18 QUESTIONS 120 What is the model number of the assembler monitor for the KIM 1 121 How many LEDs are on the KIM 1 H What is the model number of the REC chip used in the REU 8123 At least two versions of the above chip exist What is the main physical difference between the versions 124 Why couldn t regular Atari tm style joysteks be used with the Commodore Plus 4 series 125 What was the firstjoystick model Commodore produced that would function with the Plus 4 computer line 126 How many computer models are included in the Plus 4 line 127 In a normal Commodore disk drive Directory Entry what relative offset denotes the start of the program name 128 How many tracks in a 1541 or 4040 are normally available for use as storage How many bytes comprise a single disk drive directory entry 12A Whatisthe model numberof the Commodore dual drivewithatotal capacity per unit of MB 12B On the drive denoted in 124
69. ed that current es all had compatibility problems CMD would never create such a an accelerator Commodore h about the possibility of unless it could be made largely compatible with existing hardware and software He left me with the impression that such a task would be next to impossible and that it was unlikely they would ever pursue it Fast forward four years and look around The impossible is about to happen CMD is so very close and yet so far Too often we have seen people leave their Commodores because they could no longer accept the uncertainties These uncertainties must end As Charlie explained to me in July the SuperCPU s were out on the dock ready to be shipped on three different occasions only to be pulled back in for further modification All ordered SuperCPU swere at that moment sitting in the warehouse ready to go Almost Only one thing was missing Mark Fellows CMD s other founder was barricaded in his labratory laboring hour after endless hour to perfect the ROM chip or brain needed to complete it Now that the SuperCPU is an accomplished fact the crisisis overand we can all breathea sigh of relief My SuperCPU is plugged into my 64 and GEOS glides like greased lightning It seems like God s in his heaven all s right with the world at least until next time Today I find it hard to believe that for nearly half its existence I hardly heard
70. er they are my personal opinions and not that of my employer s how many times have you heard that in 19967 On with the awards soon be forgotten Best New Demo Group The Hot New 1996 Demo Group award easily goes out to Millenium consisting of Roy Batt Waveform Fungus Suraklin Ambition talent and Commodore Loyalty arethree virtues that easily come to mind after viewing Millennium their Mega Demo introduction tothe Scene Roy Batty Waveform and Suraklin are no strangers to the scen Most of you will easily remember Roy Batty for Tears E95 possibly the most memorable of all demos tobe released within 1995 Roy Batty isalso well known for his contributions to Loadstar Magazinein the form of music and graphics Roy is one of the most multi talented Demo Sceners around Histalentsbringtogethertheskillsof three different individ i coding and new membe music graphics and most upis Waveform previously known for his Waveness releases Waveform is the master behind the ingenious vectorcodeof Millennium His coding is unique innovativ artistic Eungusis best known for his coding skills He sa relativenewbieto thescene lending thisnew group and even quite COMMODORE WORLD by Sherry Precdline Q 1996 THE BEST OF THE BE withhisCommodoreknowledge dedication and ambition He sofftoa runnin id definitely worthy of membership in Millennium
71. erage users to create useful programs quickly often find myselfin a situation where have a file that needs some special formatting character translations or other modifications that can t be done quickly with a word processor or by any other means I have handy When these situations crop up I turn to my trusty Commodore and the built in BASIC While I may find it easy to jump into these little projects I m certain that a lot of other users do not simply because they haven t learned the tricks that make coding effective for tackling everyday situations In last issue s installment of BASIC Instincts David Pankhurst covered some nice programming techniques for avoiding problems in your code However there are a number of simpler issues better aimed at beginning BASIC programmers that were not addre nd I dlike to take this opportunity to point some of these out And sin geting beginners let s at the very beginning Be the Program Before you write even one line of code be clear about your objective Know what you expect your program to do and think about what information your program will need to accomplish the task It isn t necess flowcharts for small programs but ifit helps do it It s important that you mentally break the program down into manageable segments before you start coding because if you do this effectively you ll code effectively ary to create Program for Readabilit
72. eration that requires 3 5 20 MHz clock cycles to complete The low part of the cycle has a duration of 25 nanoseconds or half of the duration of a 20 MHz cycle the high portion of the cycle is stretched giving it a duration of 150 nanoseconds The total duration of this cycle is 175 nanoseconds or 3 5 times the 50 nanosecond period of a standard 20 MHz cycle You may note that this causes what may appear to be a phase inversion thatis to say the clock signal is now low during a period in which it originally would have been high and vice versa This factor is of no importance however and only becomes an issue when synchronization with the host computer s clock becomes necessary When that occurs clock stretching is used as required to bring the SuperCPU clock into phase with the host computer s clock System Timing Base 40 MHz UUU LI La ns Normal Operations 20 MHz 17808 Clock Stretched Operation at 1 Mlz Refresh occurs once approximately every 10 microseconds about 200 cycles and can cause a 1 cycle DRAM memory operation to take up to 8 5 cycles to complete We could see up to 11 refreshes while executing a 2 KB segment of code so if take this into consideration our throughput drops to about 19 2 MHz Now if we also consider a branch or jump every 20 bytes that s actually quite a high average we get an overall throughput of around 18 3 MHz
73. et a computer if 1 have to count the length of names and addresses These are reasons people don t like static databases Once you set your fields and sizes they may as well be set in stone GeoFile being a dynamic database is much easier to work with Issue 19 Boot GEOS andactivate geoFile Choose Create New Document and enter AddressBook as name Now you will be presented with the Form Page and you can setup your fields the easy GEOS way pointandclick You don t have to decide how many fields or how many characters at this time For starters we will create fields for last name first name address city state prov country and zip postalcode Set the last name field as your sort field see Chapter 4 of the manual for creating and naming fields and setting the sort field You will notice that you can place the fields anywhere on thesereen each record can be as big as an 8 5 by 11 inch page of paper hold up to 64 fieldsin each record and up to 3000 records in each file You could store everything you know about each of your friends and acquaintances here and not run out of room Fields can also be designated as text number or comment by highlighting the field and choosing the type menu in Form Design mode Entering your Friends amp Family When your form is laid out the way you want time to enter some information Choose Dat Entry under the Options me
74. ey also provide us with new demo tools and NTS fixed demos from the PAL world Style is definitely dedicated to their goal of prolonging the Demo ScenewithintheNTSCenvironment Withouttheir NTSC fixing skills the NTSC ci zens would never 18 havebeenableto enjoy the privilege of viewing four PAL releases in 1996 of Evil more commonly known as FOE is also deserving of this award due to the number d quality of their demo releases in 1996 FOE are always innovative and entertaining Iso famous for their Coder s World demo tutorials which help promote the demo scene by introducing the world to the art of demo coding Unfortunately Coder s World is no longer in production I ll always remember FOE as the group which first introduced meto the infamous plasma typepagefoundinalotofthe 1996 demos Thanks FOE rel Best 1996 Demo Scene Supporter The Best 1996 Demo Supporter Award goes out tothestalfof Driven The Driven crew regularly supplies the Scene both NTSC and PAL with all the news ofthe Demo World Thisis certainly no easy task An amazing number of individuals regularly contributearticles graphics and music to Driven s electronic zine While the regular contributors deserve a huge thank you it s Elwix and Coolhand who make the whole magazine a reality by editing the articles and converting all the text graphics and music into an enjoyable Demo Magazine I d especially like to thank
75. g a Centronics port printer Figure 1 has STB line low for minimum of 1 microsecond T2 while the data is valid Data should be valid for 5 microseconds both before T1 and after T1 the low state of the the printer forces the BUSY signal high and maintains it in this state until ready for more data When BUSY retruns to a low state it also forces the ACKNOWLEDGE ACK line low for a maximum of 5 microseconds T4 There is no specification on how long BUSY can stay high this will vary on different printers and will also change on many printers as the internal buffer RAM becomes full Implementing a Driver To implement a driver we need only apply the specification while considering the signals available to us via the geoCable as shown in Figure 1 Centronics Port Signal Timing DATA pres STB COMMODORE WORLD 32 DRIVING THE GEOCABLE the geoCable Wiring Connections in Table 1 Due to the limited 1 0 lines available on the User Port a minimal hardware specification has been used This connects only the data lines BUSY signal and STROBE line to the computer as well as the various signal grounds The data lines connect to Port B of CIA 2 The port itself is at location DDO1 while the direction of the port signals are set in location DD03 The STROBE line is connected to the only other 1 0 port line available on the User Port Port A bit 2 This line can be ed as bit 2 of location SD
76. ged with a special version of Novaterm v9 6 Lite by Nick Rossi and is being published by VideoCam Services owned by Rod and Gaelyne The Internet for Commodore C64 128 Users ISBN 0 646 31615 X 36 95 Australian presently about US 29 95 plus shipping 5 00 AU to International Express 15 00 AU US 12 00 50 AU U8 9 00 Economy Airmail 8 00 AU L Orders can be accepted through postal mail Email phone or from the World Wide Web at http hal9000 net au moranec bookord html VideoCam Services can accept payment via cheque MasterCard Visa Bankcard and American Express cards If ordering from outside Australia your card will be billed in Australian dollars If ordering from USA and paying by cheque please make the cheque payableto VideoCam Services in theamount of 29 95 plus shipping use the US amount We re sorry but money orders of any kind can not be accepted son anywhere in VideoCam Services 90 Hilliers Rd Reynella SA 5161 gaelyne hal9000 net au Caloke No Longer in Operation aloke Industries a supplier of public domain software for the Commodore market who has often advertised in Commodore World s sified ads has recently ceased operation No further details were available at press time cla CPU Joins Deadbeat Publication List Commodore Power User a publication which recently advertised in Commodore World has apparently joined the long list of Commodore publi
77. h speed RAM disk with GEOS applications CMD indicated that transfer speeds of 2 MB per ion about double the second should be easily attained in such an applic speed of DMA transfers using a Commodore REU Initial prices for the card are slated at 79 00 no RAM 94 00 1 MB 119 00 4 MB 149 00 8 MB and 199 00 16 MB SuperCPU 64 SuperRAM bundle pricesare initially set for 259 00 no RAM 274 00 1 MB 0 4MB 00 8 MB and 379 00 16 MB CMD cautioned that prices are subject to fluctuate based on RAM prices Further technical details about the SuperRAM card can be foundin thisissue sinstallment of 816 BEAT In other news from CMD work continues on the SuperCPU 128 The RAM circuitry for this card is now complete as is the daughtercard which is installed in the computer s MMU socket the MMU in turn is placed on the daughtercard In addition about half of the Super128 RAM card has been physically laid out The remaining work left is in completing the 128 MMUemulation logic forthe Super128 CPLD gout thedaughtercard finishing the layout of the Super128 RAM card and testing the final design While CMD feels these stages won t take a lot longer they caution ized and approved it still requires about 6 to 8 that once everything is fi weeks to get the final product into production from that point Commodore amp Amiga Moving to Gateway 2000 There s been a recent flood of
78. he only times when the end of line format need be changed beforehand is if the is meant to stay online to be read as a text file not in a message online Changing the end of line EOL format is covered later in this article Issue 19 There are many ways to change a PETASCII file to ASCII format I find it easiest to save the file as ASCII using whatever program I ve used to create the text The Write Stoff and PaperClip II are two word processors that are capable of saving files as ASCII and there are many others For geoWrite files you can use a GEOS utility named WronglsWrite wrong is wr cvt to convert the file to ASCII or PETASCII Bear in mind that any special text formatting such as fonts or bold won t be converted with the file Novaterm users can use menu options within the term program to translate files before uploading them Converting a File While Sending Dialogue128 and Novaterm both have options that allow you to translate text files during a file transfer I shy away from using these because 1 have faulty memory and tend to forget that I ve turned this feature on Because this feature will translate ANYTHING you download this is a sure way to have botched downloads for binary type files programs graphics etc Buffer Uploads Many term programs offer the option of sending text or text files from the buffer and this is useful for times when you compose a message offline and want to importitin
79. how large could a sing e sequential file b 120 At least two version of the Commodore 64C keyboard exist What is the difference between them Extra Credit Why 12D On the Commodore REU with RamDos what area of memory is swapped out when using an 12E Commodore manufactured two different versions of the 1541 IH drive What is the difference between them 12F How many colors could the Commodore 1520 plotter plot in COMMODORE WORLD 130 The Commodore Plus 4 was referred to as the Machine 131 Although the Commodore 16 and 116 were functionally equivalent what two physical characteristics distinguished one from another H How many pins are on the Commodore plus 4 expansion port connector 133 On which side of the Commodore 65 as it is facing you did Commodore place the power switch on 134 How many keys are on a standard Commodore 128 keyboard 135 What color are the drive LEDs on the SX64 driv 136 TrueorFalse The Commodore 64and VIC 20 keyboardsareinterchangeable 137 0na 1526 MPS 802 printer how many redefinable characters were available for use per line of text 138 To set up redefinable character on the MPS 802 secondary address must be opened 6 printer what 139 How many pinsare in each Furo DIN plug used on the Plus 4 C16 joysticks 13A Howmany pinsareona regular Commodore VIC 20 C64 joystick connector 13B What BASIC command is
80. id this is because I knew from the beginning that 1 would also be using these loops to generate memory locations for storing the cards Generating those locations will be easier when the loops begin with a zero Since I chose this method the program needs to add one to each variable Jeulates the suit and card numbers To check out how can store these values to memory in sequence I add the following line asit 20018 PRINT49 0 52 S 13 V remove the comma and semicolon from the end of line 20020 When the program is RUN it prints each memory location and what would be placed into it I watch the numbers carefully using the CTRL key to slow down the process The numbers are right so I can now remove lines 20018 and 20040 then edit line 20020 to read 20020 4 OR V 1 The routine is pretty much complete and 1 can renumber the lines by editing the current numbers and pressing RETURNI and delete th lines by entering the just the line numbers themselves to move the routine to where I want it in my main program Naturally I ll add a comment and some dummy lines to setitapart Instead of moving the routine could also justaseasil e left it where it was added aline witha RETURN statement at the end and used it as a subroutine The important thing to glean from prototyping individual routines whether it be in BASIC or any other language is that you know that the routine you v
81. ight tool Charles A Christianson 18 DEMOMANIA by Sherry Freedline Take a tour of the best demo offerings from 1996 Ries 22 Carrier DETECT by Gaelyne R Gasson Online ASCII confusion getting to you Look for clarification here Graphic Aer 24 Just For STARTERS by Jason Compton Alternatives for getting more speed from your disk drive Doug Cotton SCH 28 GEOPROGRAMMIST by Maurice Randall More fun with programming under GEOS EiecreoNic Pre Press amp PRINTING 30 BASIC Instincts by Doug Cotton Mansir Holden Some BASIC tips for speedy development e 32 ASSEMBLY LINE by Doug Cotton Dealing with a geoCable becomes an easy thing to do 34 816 BEAT by Doug Cotton The new SuperRAM card plus in depth timing info on the SuperCPU 64 Cover Design by Doug Cotton Commodore and the respective Commodore product names aro trademarks or registered trademarks of Escom GmbH Commodore World is no way affiliated with Escom GmbH ownor of tha Commodore logo and technology Commodore PIEPAATMENTS World is publishod 8 times annually by Creative Micro Designs inc 15 Benton Drivo East Longmeadow MA 01028 0646 2 Fron tHe Eorron D The Horizon Second Class Postago Paid at East Longmeadow MA Annual subscription rate is 05529 95 for U S addrossos US 35 95 4 BackTaux 40 Cassino tor Canada or Moxico 05 45 95 for all EC Countries and Trivia 40 Apverriser s INDEX US 57 95 to all othor a
82. in every line and that you ve pressed RETURN after every line you ve typed If you make errors when typing in Checksum a test run of Checksum willtell you which line is incorrect This safety feature works only in the Checksum program itself and does not apply to any otherlistingsin the magazine Whenever you find a typing error in any program listing fix it press RETURN to enter the change save the program again and try another run Repeat this process as often as necessary Important tip Don t get discouraged if the program won t run Be patient Be thorough It will work eventually You ll know your Checksum is ready when you see the line TO TOGGLE ON Entering Programs Using CHECKSUM When you re ready to type in your first listing from the magazine load and run Checksum Makea note ofthe number thatis displayed on the screen 49152 for the C 64 3328 for the C 128 To activate and deactivate Checksum type SYS followed by that number then press RETURN Younced to have Checksum active whenever you re typing in a listing Checksum must be deactivated however when you run the new program The next step is typing in new program listing as it appears in the magazine As you begin you ll notice that to the left of the start of each line is a number Don t type this number in It s simply the Checksum value Stop typing at the end of the program line and press RETURN If you ve typed the line correctly the nu
83. ing the memory The memory cells themselves in Dynamic memories are organized into an array of rows Expansion RAM Speed Characteristics at 20 MHz Sequential Read within Row 1 Cycle Non seq Read within Column 1 Cycle Non seq Read new Column in Row 2 Cycles Read from new Row 3 5 Cycles Write within Row 1 Write in new Row 3 Cycles Read during Refresh up to 8 5 Cycles Write during Refresh up to 8 Cycles Rows are 2K 4K or 8K Bytes depending on the SIMM see SIMM Chan Columns are groups of four bytes each supported 72 pin SIMMs see SIMM Chart Refresh occurs approximately every 10 microseconds At 1 MHz all times are 1 cycle synchronized to the computer s Phase 2 clock refresh is hidden COMMODORE WORLD and columns On memory modules such as the SIMMs used by the SuperRAM card these rows and columns are combined in a way that allows all the bits in a byte or a word to be precharged and accessed as a group Ifyoulookat the SIMM Chart in this article you ll notice that we included the number of addressable bits for rows and columns as well as the number of bytes within a specific row Let s look at the 1 MB SIMM to understand how this information describes the SIMM There are 9 bits used to address rows and another 9 bits for columns Since 2 9 512 we can deduce that there are 5125512 array SUPERRAMDETECT crosspoints which gives us 262 144 un
84. inue typing in your program saving often and checking each checksum value with the one in the magazine until you ve finished the listing Phew So now you re to run your program right Not quite First save it Second deactivate Checksum by typing SYS followed by 49152 for the C 64 or 3328 for the C 128 Now youcan run Don t be discouraged ifyou still get an error It happens Use Checksum faithfully Be patient Be thorough It will work eventually CHECKSUM off toggle ys sa if print you ha rem do n COMMODORE WORLD CLASSIFIED ADS C Hacking in Print 6 00 Nc Jim Brain 10710 of Breed Registered Dogs Champions in UPP oe Need Inkroll for Royal Lettermaster printer o i 914 679 6101 E Wanted Reference Card or copy of to Commodore game Dragonworld by Tellarium rdon B Gillespi 9 Wanted Map and hints or copy of to Commodore game Dragonworld by Tellarium Gordon Gillespie 818 9915 GEOS Publication The a the graphic by ial to M ironment oper rCPU Thirt JEOS CMD s COMMODORE WORLD Classified Advertising Commodore Worldsubscribers may place non commercial classified advertising in Commodore World at a cost of 10 00 per issue Your advertisement may contain up to 150 characters including spaces Send your advertisement with paymentto
85. ique addresses Divide that by 1024 1K and you ll get 256 so there are 256K addresses on this SIMM Since each address has 32 bits of data or 36 on a parity SIMM there are 4 256K or one Megabyte 1 048 576 Bytes of 8 or 9 bit memory locations Still with me Okay we can also deduce from the SIMM is that each row contains 2 KB 800 bytes of 8 or 9 bit data since there are 512 columns of 4 bytes each per row Nowlet slookat how the SuperRAM memory controller handles thin ime fora moment that you have a routine situated at 020000 the mn get ri 585030 S ch 40 ne 50 v 60 70 BO 100 rem get ram size 110 peek 53884 120 sb peek 53885 130 ep peek 53886 al v 1 40the rem 140 eb peek 53887 rem 142 ifsb sp Qthen200 145 150 eb 256 ep sb 256 160 170 prin 180 print 190 end 192 200 256 byt starting s 146 163 126 213 91 54 ui 240 431 60 ation tart page start bank nd page end bank 35 sp ui 101 433 gosub46Q ep ui 68 440 return 253 450 140 132 256 141 ram expansion supe rramfa 86 1 40 Sp 0 sb 0 ep 144 0123456789abcde 148 20 100 print HOME 3 CRSR DI SPACES O mb print 15 15 int 15 300 sp 310 s 320 330 340 38 490 500 rem 45 501 110 504 GB 0 e
86. ity some future system extensions or user programs may steal some ofthe RAM before your application is started As a result it would be wise to create your program code and or data segments in a mannerthat allows them to be relocated CMD is presently working toward standards and tools that will make writing and utilizing relocatable code less painful but it will make 35 the transition easier if 6502 65816 programmers start getting familiar with the techniques now To assist you in testing routines that detect RAM expansion we ve included the program SUPERRAMFAKE with this article You may use this program to trick your SuperCPU into believing that it has RAM expansion available as well as the proper OS version required to support it Speed Considerations As you may already know Dynamic RAM DRAM isn t as as Static RAM SRAM but it is far less expensive and available in larger capacities This explains why DRAM was chosen for expansion memory Taking the speed into consideration CMD employed special circuitry into the SuperRAM card s DRAM controller to help the DRAM keep up Understanding how this controller thinks is the key to optimizing the speed of expansion RAM accesses on the SuperCPU DRAM unlike SRAM must be pre charged before valid data can be read from a specific address DRAM also requires periodic refresh in order to maintain its contents These are the factors that add time to access
87. k Drive Parts Only 1541 71 Drive Alignment 1571 Service Manual Atomino Ballistix Bank Street Writer Blood Monoy Businoss Card Maker Button amp Badge Makor CadPak 64 Calc amp Graph Calenders and Stationary Computes Kids amp the C128 Computes C 64 128 Collection Computes ML for Beginners 128 Computes Prog s Guide 128 Currah Speech 64 Dr T s Midi Libr 4 OP Dr T s Midi Librn CZ Rider Dr T s Midi Librn DX Heaven Epyx Fastload Cartridge FSD 2 no PS For Parts Only GeoBASIC Hesware Graphics Basic Hesware Heskit64 Prg Util Murder by the Dozen Main Frame Menaco Navy Seal News Maker 128 Newsroom Pals Around Town Sesame St Pirates Rings of Medusa Skate or Die Super 81 Utilities Epyx Fastload Cartridge The Olficial Guide C 128 SAMs AA DEET EE lt t In t tt ta te WI Warp Speed Cart Who Framed Roger Rabbit Your Commodore 128 aD 2 2 Weem me lt 1351 CBM Mouse lt 1571 Drive Head Assembly ADAD Hilsfar ADAD Curse Azure Bone lt Aprotok Minimodem C 1200 e BardsTale II Destiny Knight BCD 5 25 1541 Clone A CadPak 128 t Fleet System 2 A Jane 128 A Mach 128 Cartridge 4 Ultima lV February March1997 15 Voice Command Modulo by Eng Leseno used new Game t Productivity 64 A Productivity 128 lt Misc H ware Drive Book Vic 20
88. ks nd 07 and reserved for future system use This then means that any system with expansion RAM any size will have this extra RAM available for future OS capabilities but it also means that the last Bank available for user programs will be Bank 5 on a system with 16 Megabytes of expansion RAM installed Detecting Expansion RAM Naturally one of the more important questions on programmer s minds is How do I detect RAM expansion and how do I Issue 19 know how much there is Okay that s two questions but we ve got answers for both First any new SuperCPU sold after the new SuperRAM card becomes available will sport anewversion oftheSuperCPU ROM Likewise all SuperRAM upgrades sold to users with older SuperCPUs will include the new ROM Thus the first step in determining if RAM expansion is present will be to check the ROM version This is accomplished by reading four bytes beginning at 00E487 64 mode only SuperCPU 64 128 Common Memory Map ROM System DAN Banks Banks F6 F7 Banks 502 5F5 16 MB Expansion RAM Banks 50 8 MB Expansion RAM 4 MB Expansion RAM Banks 502 50F 1 MB Expansion RAM Bank 501 PsuedoROM RAM Bank 500 RAM February March1997 These four bytes contain the version number string in PETASCII The version that will provide initial support for expansion RAM is 1 40 Read these bytes and compare for this number Ifthe version number is
89. ks or two Plus tools extonsiona languagos assemblers tutorials and 6 25 eet 000505 3 5 inch disk 000503 For 5 more got C Hacking MAG 000603 on 3 5 Inch disks only and NOT available separately o comploto your programming sot 20 00 PS Giruphics Compleat PS Vol 1 Tho Print Shop by Broderbund or Printmastor required Over 1300 artistic and novar before published PRINT SHOP imagas Scan through the many PRINT SHOP imagos sequentially by or by group numbor Prous a key and Sava tho graphic you want In 2 block 3 block and ovon JPRINTMASTER graphic files All that plus a printed guide Each volume is 20 00 Vol 1 C 64 128 3 5 Inch disk item 000143 5 25 inch disks item 000945 Vol 2 graphics trom pz 3 5 inch disk item 40002d3 5 25 inch disks item 001045 Fu p C 64 128 E Description Item Price ea Total Uso extra sheet of paper tor large orders oaa iy eet eee ess k in February March1997 1505 Clipart TOADSTAR preconis biggest Geo D Ee EE ILOADSTAR as well as some great files fro RE ro Een up never been seen before Use these EEN in your GeoPaint GeoWrite and GeoPublish Ae 1 POM vi FON alites Spi up your GeoFAX documents with thej ELE E SE GEN e SA EE EE IT DISKS Disk 01 RAILS Railroad art Europe ind tho USA 001205 Disk 02 V
90. l new SuperCPU TODAY SurenCPu etu 199 00 SurenCPu 128 299 00 lus Shipping US 10 AK HI PR 20 Canada 20 50 Deposits being accepted now Available in 1997 20 Mz ACCELEAATORS FOR THE Ceci C128 Ultra Fast Compatible Easy to use High Speed microprocessor 128K fast RAM advanced hardware logic and up to 512K ROM enable you to run all types of existing commercial software at speeds up to 22 limes faster than stock machines BASIC programs including most Bulletin Board Systems seem to run as fast as machine language and compiled BASIC programs run faster than ever Commercial machine language programs databases spreadsheets word processors telecommunications graphics etc run so fast that you ll think your running them on another computer GEOS comes alive No typing or scrolling delays graphic operations happen instantly faster printing and disk access Includes enhanced GEOS setup utility Easy to use Plug it into your cartridge port and start working no messy cables or special adjustments Built in JiffyDOS Kernal boosts disk access speed up to 15x faster with JiffyDOS equipped drives Pass thru port provides compatibility with RAMLink SwiftLink GEORAM 17xx REU s and other cartridges Unit Enable Disable JiffyDOS On Off Normal Turbo Speed and Reset switches make using the SuperCPU a snap An internal connecector simplifies future expansion i Ken SPECIAL SuperCPU 64 wim
91. ll Perfect Print LQ work with my printer Indeed it will but only because your printer actually has dual emulations Commodore and ASCII the latter is actually a very good Epson 80 emulation To take advantage of this capability you ll need to change some settings on your printer s dip switches According to the NX 1000C Printer Manual dip switch 5 controls the emulation In the OFF position it emulates a Commodore 60 dpi dot per inch printer such as the 1525 or MPS 801 Inthe ON position the printer emulates the Epson FX 80 which is an 80 dpi printer with the ability 1o print up to 240 dpi You may also need to change the setting of dip switch 1 auto line feed for some applications If this switch is in the ON position and you notice that you re getting white bands in graphic output turn it OFF If it is OFF and you notice that all your print is coming out on the same line turn the switeh ON Any programs that you have which support Epson printers will usually provide you with a much better quality printout in the ASCH mode than they will in the Commodore mode but you may find that some of your programs only support printing in Commodore mode For those programs you ll need to set dip switch 5 in the OFF position to select Commodore mode If you have been using Commodore mode for printing with GEOS and then switch to using Epson mode you should be aware of some differences GEOS applications are designed to
92. ll warranty above morchandise for 10 days Defects may bo returned for replacement or merchandise credit only with prior authorization No Refunds Shipping Cont US only Printers 10 00 Drives 58 50 Monitors 20 00 All other products will be shipped based on the shipping chart found in our main ad olsowhoro in this magazine COMMODORE WORLD Graphic Interpretation All too many times you have probably heard the old proverb that there is safety in numbers Yet for as antiquated as it may be that wisdom still holds true today for the GEOS user s boot disks It goes without saying that your Graphic Environment Operating System completely depends on the perfect health of your system disks boot files Conventional file copiers cannot produce working duplicates of the boot files because even if the disk s copy protection is broken the kernel file must reside on the backup disk in the exact position as it did on the original disk GEOS uses track and sector loading procedur loading With the ever increasing number of software and hardware products for the GEOS user comes greater demand on the user s boot disks thus the need for a program to back these disks up 1 would like to relate how I had to follow what could be called the Maverick maze and how Creative Micro Designs geoMakeBoot opened the doorto effective time efficient boot disk archiving I quickly learned the value of my boot disks l or within a mon
93. lower there s no expansion if it s the same or higher there may be expanded memory and you ll need to move on to the next step If you found a version that supports RAM expansion read in four bytes beginning at 00D27C These bytes contain the following information concerning RAM expansion 00D27C First Available Page 00D27D Bank of First Available Page 00D27E Last Available Page 1 00D27F Bank of Last Available Page 1 If there isn t any extra RAM installed all four bytes will contain zeroes The BASIC program SUPERRAMDETECT provides an example of checking these parameters and calculating the available expansion memory Please note that these variables are only valid in Bank 00 while Voi ched in should you need to check for expansion RAM with I O out these values are available in the same locations of Bank 01 If your application needs to use some portion ofexpansion RAM it mustalso update the memory variables This requiresswitching in theSuperCPU H W registers by storing any value at 00D07E decimal 53374 After you have modified the variables turn the SuperCPU H W registers back off by storing any value to 00D07F decimal 53375 Again 1 0 must be enabled during any of these changes or you ll need to change the variables directly in Bank 01 It is very important that you pay attention to the expansion RAM variables and that you don t make any assumptions with regard to RAM availabil
94. mber displayed on the screen will match the Checksum value If the numbers don t match you ve made a mistake Check the line carefully make your changes and press RETURN The computer won t know you ve made a change unless you press RETURN on the changed line to enter it A few type in hints The Checksum does not verify blank spaces in the program lines unless they are within quotation marks because adding or omitting such spaces will not affect the operation of the program The exception to this is hexadecimal Data statements These are the Data statements such as this one that don t have commas 100 DATA 12345678901234567890 12 4 67890 12345678901234567890 Instatements such as these you must have one space between the word DATA and the numbers that follow Checksum will not catch that error February March1997 39 Special Key Combinations Asyou type you may be confused the first time you see curly braces These braces mean perform the function explained within For example 22 SPACES means that you need to press the space bar 22 times Don t type the braces you can t of course because thereareno curly braces in the Commodore character set Hereare some other common examples ICLEAR HOME hold down the SHIFT key and press the CLR HOME key 2CRSRDN tap the cursor down key twice mn hold the CONTOL key and press the I key CMDR 9 hold down the COMMODORE key and press the T key Cont
95. mmers just not utilized by the CBM programmers Black White Red Cyan Light Blue Green Parple Green Blue Yellow Orange Brown Light Red Dark Gray Gray 1 Medium Grey Gray 2 Light Green Light Blue Light Gray Gray 3 February March1997 10F 5 from 293 297 6 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 11A 11B 11C 11D SUE 11F 3 The register contents 293 6551 Control Register 4 6551 Command Register 5 6 6551 User Defined Baud Rate value 6551 Status Register ESCOM recently purchased the iquidationsof Commodore Amiga GMT ectronics had earlier purcased the IC fabrication division called Commodore Semiconductor Group CSG One must remember that the 1571 DOS was a descendant of the 1540 DOS which wasin turn a descendant of the earlier dual drive IEEE drives To make the 1572 Commodore engineers tried to re introduce the di drive code that had been removed when Commodore started producing single disk drives Unfortunately the re introduction did not ultimately succeed The Commodore B 128 line Story hasit that the B 128 User s Group sued Commodore because they claimed to support the B 128 after CBM had closed down production of the B series The suit demanded that all materials needed in manufacturing and supporting the machine was to be handed over to the User s Group This included masks of the ICs
96. n BASIC Typically one gets a directory by typin LOAD 8 and then LISTing But this will wipe out anything you have in BASIC making it irretrievable This 24 is extremely inconvenient particularly if you are in the middle of ping in a program and need to see how much space is available on your current disk or what filenames are already taken up A id the disk s directory DOS wedge can directly rea tothe sereen preserving everything else you may have in memory Most DOS wedges accept the command y a non destructive disk directory Some older cartridges leave off the and simply require a single to be typed to give you a directory A DOS wedge cannot itself make di 5 for loading and saving files any faster it an only make your disk operations quicker to type in However there are various hardware to displa drive devici that give you botha DOS wedgeand some form of disk drive turbo Typically these fall into two categories cartridges and ROM replacements The SuperCPU s built in JiffyDOS falls into both categories and we ll deal with that later in the issue A Collection of Turbo Cartridges There are over a half dozen of these for the Commodore computers Most are Commodore 64 compatible only and will forcea 128 to boot in 64 mode The first cartridges started appearing in the early 80s and some like the Action Replay weredevelopedand produced
97. ng M n on your search form an narrow your search in this m Multiple Searches amp Conditionals Now we want to do something else with our search Back to the search form and enter 4 in the phone number field Click OK Click the left arrow to get off Uncle James entry and then click the Left Face Depending on who else is in your database you should end up looking at Uncle James again This search forsomeone ina placestarting with S 1didn t as 11 say delete that whose phone number starts with a 4 So far our searches have used geoFile Wild Cards The asterisk means substitute any numberofcharacters here The question mark means substitute one character here One other wild card is the exclamation mark T This lets geoFile search for asterisks question marks nd even exclamation marks 1 if you enter it into a search form As you noticed you can search for items in any or all of your fields GeoFile also supports conditional searches If you have entered a field for year of birth you could search lt 1979 to find who people who are over 18 Options include greater than gt less than lt less than or equal to es greater than or equal to ze and not equal lt gt These can also be combined with And E or Or Say you want to find all bowlers whose best score is greater than 180 and less than 250 enter 3180
98. nu and start typin in some names and addresses use real friends and this will bea good start we will need at least 10 Forour demonstration make one ofthe entries this one your long lost Uncle Johnson James 115 Nobody Home Lane Saskatoon askatchewan Canada R3G 5Y6 Yes completely fictitious and no resemblance toany person living or dead isintended You may find that you have to adjust some of your fields to fit this in While this can be fatal with a static database especially if you have entered 30 or 40 friendsalready itisnota problem witha dynamic database Go back to the form design page and point and click to resize as required OK we have entered at least ten names and addresses What about phone numbers You know what to do Forms Design and Point and Click to add a new field This is much easier than February March1997 startingfrom scratch again with a Static Database Enter Uncle James Phone Number as 436 8913 Ifyou wish tolook through your Address Book you may do so by clicking on either of the two arrows at the top of the page These will scan forwards or backwards through your file and present your data to you sorted according to yourchosen sort field Don t like the way it looks Go back and choose a different sort field or re arrange the fields on the page You can also create up to 15 different layouts by choosing change layout in the file menu see Pg 4 13 in
99. o be contained within an application and so the area of memory where it is located is not saved since it is up to the application on how to load the routines for the DB Small applications will likely have the DB routines already contained within the code Larger ones might store the routines in separate VLIR record The main similarity in how GEOS deals with DA s and DB in the fact that SaveState and RstrState are also used with DB s means that the same area at dlgBoxRamBuf is used to store the state of the machine And there s where the conflict lies If you run DB from within a DA the state of the machine will be saved as it is while the DA is loaded The state that it was in before the DA was loaded is lost since dlgBoxRamBuf got overwritten when the DB started up I would guess that when GEOS was first created DB s were instituted before desk accessories were thought of The name given to the area at dlgBoxRamBuf seems to imply this When DA s were included in the kernal the designers decided to use the same location and access the same routines for preserving the state of the machine Of course things like this were necessary due to the lack of available memory There Is Always A Way By now you should be realizing a simple solution to the problem From within ourown DA code if we set aside an area of memory that is 378 bytes in size we can save the it digBoxRamBuf before calling DoDIgBox and then restore it afterwa
100. oblems after the backup process is complete remember to create your boot disk on the device that you intend to boot from and have your system configured exactly as it will be when booting GEOS GeoMakeBoot will in short keep your GEOS software up and running well into the next millennia Until next issue happy archiving TECH STAR COMPUTER CENTER 206 251 9040 We ll repair your Commodore Serving the Commodore community since 1984 REFURBISHED SPECIALS 69 00 C64 amp 1541 64C amp 15411 C128 amp 1571 MONITORS 1701 99 00 OKI 10 79 00 CMONO S 29 00 MONO 59 00 MISC 612 642 9890 vox 612 642 9801 fax February March1997 17 Powersupplies cables ribbons paper disks cartridges programs new and used books magazines accessories COMMODORE WORLD DemoMania The snow is falling and soon we ll bid adios to 1996 In fact I bet by the time you read this we ll be well into the new year However 1996 won t 1 extremely good year for the Commodore 64 especially within the Demo Scene In 1996 we were treated to quite a variety of demosand even sawa few peoplereturn tothe Demo fold with theformationofan all new group withalot oftalent ambition and potential Now let me introduce you to the first ever Zig Awards created and judged solely by me an extremely avid demo fan Please know that a lot of thought has gone into these results but rememb
101. of CMD Early on becamea geoNut As I would tell my friends IfGEOS doesn t do it neither do I Since GEOS doesn t need JiffyDOS had no contact with CMD 13 Everything changed in 1991 CMD introduced the RAMLink and I was hooked 1 was so impressed by their revolutionary REU that wrote anarticlein 1992 which appeared in the Premier Jan 93 issue of geo VISION magazine My faith in the magazine soured when it only survived three issues but my perceptions on CMD proved propheti Ifyou hav turn to page 6 and find a feature story entitled ommentary on 1992 CMD Takes Center Stage By far the most excitingdevelopment in 1992 was the ascendency of Creative Micro Designs CMD This was the year that they pushed the HardDrive mastered the RAMLink and introduced the new FD drives Once upon atime we depended upon CBM for hardware and Berkeley for software But who do you turn to when you want to push the envelope a copy of this issue in your archives When you want to expand the limits of your computing world who do you call 1 usually call CMD Since that time CMD has become Commodore s Main Distributor As a computer friend expressed recently It seems like all the other suppliers are dumping what they have on their shelves and getting out ofthe Commodore business CMD is about the only place where 1 can buy what I need 1 pointed out that the reason they
102. or programs with extensive data to be fully loaded into memory as opposed to bringing in separate modules from disk a process that is both slow and inconvenient New programs written with the SuperCPU and SuperRAM card in mind can offer more powerful features But before we get into technical details let s take a more general look at the SuperRAM card itself Pictured on the right side of this page is the prototype SuperRAM card which CMD has developed for testing The board contains only a few component clock oscillator bus array logic device GAL a digital delay chip a complex programmable logic device CPLD and a handful of resistors and capacitors There are also two connectors on the back of the circuit board not shown which attach the SuperRAM card tothe Super DU main board anda 72 pin SIMM Single Inline Memory Module socket where the RAM SIMM is installed As with the SuperCPU itself the SuperRAM card s complex circuitry is mostly inside the CPLD which contains most of the memory mapping control and refresh circuitry While this vastly decre required developing the logic equations needed to program the chip for a specific function often driver a reprogrammable es the amount of board space proves to be very time consuming SIMM Chart The chart below indicates the size and organization of 72 pin SIMMs supported by the SuperRAM card for the SuperCPU All SIMMs must be Fas
103. ore publis eg called Boomerang Two 5 25 inch disks 000705 or one 3 5 inch disk 000703 20 00 postage pald Loadstar Order form Ovdl s Oi Stunning Art Tutorials The Compleat Walt During LOADSTAR s first ton years wo have published 24 of Walt Harned s slideshows and multimedia ovonts Now wo ve gathered thom into ono hugo collection 5 25 Inch disks or Inroo 3 5 inch disks There are ovor 250 picturos including soma that have never boon published The greatest one man collection of art on any computer platform 5 25 Inch disks order 4070425 3 5 inch disks order 070423 20 00 postage paid 1 800 594 3370 Address City Total Enclosed Check money order made payable MasterCard Visa Ameri Card Exp Date Authorized signature Subscribers I prefer 5 25 inch diskettes 3 5 LOADSTAR P O Box 30008 Shreveport LA 71130 0008 Questions 1 318 221 8718 Fax 1 318 221 8870 Name Postal Code State to Loadstar in US Funds an Express Discover inch diskettes 3 COMMODORE WORLD aS 26 2 A A e LETTERS AND QUESTIONS FROM OUR READERS Dear CW In Issue 17 s Graphic Interpretation column I get the impression that Perfect Print LQ will work with a 9 pin Star NX 1000C Commodore ready printer Others have told meit won t work with Commodore compatible printers have an NX 1000C Wi
104. pe we ll see the introduction of programs written explicitly for this powerful peripheral Just imagine the power this can provide a talented demo coder I hope someone has the time the knowledge and the will power to show us a SuperCPU explicit demo 1 must admit I m quiteanxiousto seehow demo artisans make use of all this added power I m sure it will be well worth the wait 1996 was the year that the Commodore Scene demo orientedand otherwise virtually exploded onto the Internet A large number of Demo Groups entered the Internet Arena with dazzling home pages featuring their creations Coolhand of Driven fame also maintains a very popular demo site where you can find all the issues of Driven all the hot new demo releases all the e mail addresses of the Demo Sceners and a wealth of demo related information I d love to know Coolhand s secret to finding time for all his many activities Not only has the Demo Scene entered the Internet World but the Commodore Community is now very well represented on the Net Jim Brain maintains the master of all Commodore sites providing CaBooM a database of all Commodore related sites available on the Internet the Commodore FAQ and almost anything Commodore related thatyou deverneed Another up and coming Commodore hit on the Net is the Commodore ci Commodore Siteswherecachsiteprovidesaspecial link to whisks users away to the next member of the Ring This
105. point SCPU Phase 2 Long I O Write SCPU Phase 2 CIA Write COMMODORE WORLD 1105 ns le va 24 ns 38 4 Issue 19 CHECKSUM Commodore World s Program Entry Checking Program and Tips on Entering Programs from this Magazine CHECKSUMisa program that proofreads your typing when youentera listing from the magazine It assigns a numerical value to each character that you type adds up the values ofthe line you typed and displays the sum Checksum therefore means that it checks your typing by summing the characters It also verifies that you have typed the characters in the proper order Checksum won t tell you if you missa line of code entirely so verify that yourself Checksum runs in the background when you type in lines of program code Whenever you type line and press RETURN Checksum will display a value Compare that value to the value published next to the line of code in the magazine If the numbers match you ve typed the line correctly Simple Typing in CHECKSUM First type in Checksum carefully from the listing on this page Be sure to press RETURNafterevery linetoenteritinto memory Onceyou have typed the program save it In fact save it a few times while you re typing just to be safe This is good advice whenever you type ina program Lusually change the name each time I save for example Checksuml Checksum2 and so on Double check your work making sure that you ve typed
106. put files were added to the new disk the system would freeze during the boot process Disk validation didn t work removing the much needed auto exec files Autoclock and Quikstash didn t work and the Maverick manual only mentions that its Track and Sector Editor should be used to allocate Track Sector 0 after validating This was extremely confusing for me and I never did figure out exactly how the Track and Sector Editor was supposed to allocate anything much less specific tracks and sectors After hours of trying I did manage to figure out how to make the Maverick backup complete the boot process no files could be copied to the disk space right after the boot file that is DeskTop 128 Page 1 Position 2 That was no problem until I copied a file to the disk because that needed open space would always be the first space copied to due to its location on the DeskTop GEOS always copies Issue 19 files to open areas on DeskTop pages in numerical order first page 1 then page 2 etc Unless that copied was moved to another space the boot disk would not function properly Worse yet the most recent edition of Maverick that I have seen version 5 makes no mention of CMD s HD series hard drives or RAMLink inits user manua compatibility with the hardware Here is where geoMakeBoot made life much easier for me and can for you Compatibility with all GEOS supported drives is one outstanding feature
107. quirks to go around Before we revisit this subject however we d like to hear from you out readers Tell us about you favorite work around for a BASIC inconsistency and we ll pass it along to everyone else COMMODORE WORLD ee MESL Y LIN By Doug Cotton This issue we re going to mix our m hine language with a little hardware As indicated by the subject heading that hardware is the geoCable What s a geoCable It s between the Commodore User Port anda standard printer s Centronics expensive than using a smart interface and printing is actually much faster as well What s the catch As you may have guessed there is one The catch is that most programs don t know how to use such a cable it requires custom printer drivers While this makes the cable easily applicable to programs like GEOS that can use external printer driver files it would be nearly impossible to use with programs like The Print Shop which has all of its printing information embedded in the main program ily some of the most important printing programs word processors often have support for this type of cable But for those of us who like to create our own programs writing and integrating a rather simple cable that connects port This kind of connection is much less geoCable driver is a prerequisite for using this cable To get started we should take a brief look at the signals and timing information related to drivin
108. rb ested EEN Power Supplies All Powor Supplies aro NEW C 64 untested as is all chips 517 95 64C NEW 64 14 95 128 NEW 34 00 C64 repairable ge C 128 D NEW aaum C94 Heavy Duty 5 2 39 95 C 128 Hoavy 5 2 Amps 39 95 Diagnostics Manuals 5 2 amps for Ram Expander Units 39 95 Commodore Diagnostician Guide to 154111 external 110 volts 7 95 diagnose amp fix C64 128 1541 6 95 1581 external 110 volts 157 95 Manuals 1084 1581 1571 64 128 Call 10845 Flyback Philips 24 95 Floppy Disk Drives 1084 01 Flyback 35 95 es ru 1084 Flyback Daewoo 35 95 Jost 2955 Sie5404t tor 1802C Monitor 512 95 1571 Refurbished 39 50 10845 MorntnboARD wit Fiyeack TRANSFORMER This new CBM board will cure 90 of 1084S problems Simply switch the PCB and your monitor problems are solved This motherboard with factory mounted flyback is the exact replacement and works with all 1084S monitors It is also very easy to install 69 95 CD32 MornutnBoano Contains all chips Lisa Alice Paula 68020 16 ADV101 except the 512K memories 89 95 With all memory 109 95 1976 Scientiric CALcuLATOR Save a piece of the past Brand new with charger and manual 8 95 Monthly A A500 COMPUTER with power supply and latest chips eg 8372 Agnus 204 0 5 Includes your choice of the following softwaro books Starter Kit Inc Kind Words
109. rds or at ng the DA Here s a segment of code least sometime before e that would do this Ier iMoveData word digBoxRamBuf word dbRamBut Avord 578 jroutines here for the DB jsr iMoueData sword dbRamBuf sword digBonRamBuf 578 dbRamBuf block 378 Issue 19 We re Not Done Yet In our here we are using a DB from a DA and a DA should refrain from disturbing the background screen This also means that the DA needs a way to recover it s own appearance after running the DB And you certainly don t want the area of the sereen where the DB is to be saved to the background screen That could really mess up the application the DA is running from You can t be sure if the background screen is being used as such or s holding program code The easiest way to handle this is to keep the DB in the area where the DA has set up it s ownself The DA might have drawn arectangle to operate in or some other form of screen appearance In any case if the DB is only messing up the actual DA then it is a simple matter to redraw the DA after exiting the DB If you put the DB outside of the DA then you will likely have a lousy looking screen when the DB exits since it was drawn over whatever the application had running If your DA is only using a DB and nothing else then you need not worry about saving and restoring the screen It will be handled as soon as the DB is finished because your DA will also end Bu
110. re displaying it but for UNIX files you ll need to change the display options for the LF linefeed character to CR for carriage return Browser defaults to stripping or ignoring the linefeed character so MS DOS files usually display without any adjustments Browser also alows forward backward paging through text files and saving an index file so you can page through it faster if you read the file again later Converting Text Files When we download text er platform computers chances convert the end of line format so we can read or print it formatted correctly d on other e we ll need to There s a very easy to use utility that converts MS DOS text files to PETASCII is written by Russell Prater and C128 versions this ul to split large files into several smaller Look for ASCTOPET C64 or ASCTOP Zed ZED007 SFX for the C128 can set the way the program reads in or exports files by first going to the options menu CTRL o and changing the Read and or Write options so they match the type of file you have or require The idea is to import the file with the Read option as the fileis currently you may have to guess or try a few different choices then save the file with the Write option set for the format you require The choices are ASCCL MS DOS text ASCLF UNIX text ASCCR ASCII CR text NONE Notranslation useful for importing PETASCII or exporting text in specific formats 23
111. re these in memory Each deck has 52 ions I save myself a lot of debugging by Issue 19 cards and can be further broken down into four groups of 13 cards a group for each of the four suits To save memory I ve decided to store both the card value and suit in a single byte This requires 52 8 bytes or 416 memory locations The card value can be up to 13 so in binary this will require 4 bits I ll store this in the low nibble a nibble is halfa byte and I ll store the suit in the high nibble To prototype my requirements I first need to check on creating each byte value correctly To do this I ll use exponentiation and a logical OR to move the card suit into the high nibble To prototype this I type 20000 20010 20020 030 040 20050 When I type RUN20000 and press the RETURN key I geta display of the numbers that my formula generates I got lucky and coded this correctly I realize that my initial code only gives me one deck but placing this code within another loop of 8 to create 8 decks will be real eas moment I m more interested in simply testing the values 1 create for each card Now that I know my theory for creating the numbers works in ice I can add the two lines I need to generate 8 decks 19990 FORD 0TO7 20060 NE Notice that I have used 0 instead of 1 to begin each loop and ended each loop at a value one lower than the number of iterations that were needed The reason I d
112. rld Issue 7 CW15 Commodore World Issue 15 Shipping U S and Canada 2 00 for first issue plus 1 00 per additional issuos Foreign 5 00 per issue TO ORDER CALL 1 800 638 3263 February March1997 33 be 801 466 8084 Specializing in NEW and USED Commodore Hardware Software and Accessories at excellent prices Send 1 00 for a HUGE list of products Office Hours 11 30 6 30 MST Visa MC Discover and American Express accepted 3366 South 2300 East Salt Lake City UT 84109 CAAD Service Center AFFORDABLE FAST DEPENDABLE Call Today 1 800 638 3263 Our Team of Technicians are Among the Most Qualified in the Industry Why Settle for Anything Less Than the Best We repair the following equipment Commodore C 64 64C SX 64 C 128 and C128 D computers 1541 1541C 1571 and 1581 Disk Drives plus CMD Devices JiffyDOS Installations a specialty All repairs warranted for 30 days Minimum charge 35 00 plus parts and return shipping You must contact CMD for authorization before sending any equipment Creative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 E Longmeadow MA 01028 COMMODORE WORLD 815 BEAT By Doug Cotton One of the more anticipated releases for the SuperCPUisjustaround the corner l m speaking of the SuperRAM card for the SuperCPU 64 long awaited by many of the developers involved in creating new programs for SuperCPU enhanced systems The card will allow larger programs
113. rtition followed by DeskTop DeskTop 128 Configure 64 128 or RamDrive compatible configure and your input and printer drivers Don t forget any auto exec files too Next copy geoMakeBoot 64 or 128 to your new boot disk or partition then place that disk in the drive that you will be booting from Finally open that drive with the new disk in it and double click the geoMakeBoot file icon The screen will clear briefly and when Desktop reappears the disk will contain a file called geoBoot geoBoot 128 You are now ready to roll SPECIAL 1541 J S Sft 99 Trade in Catalog 2 95 SYSTEMS Amiga Products HA 795 Raymond Ave St Paul MN 55114 COMPUTER Commopore Software new and used plus hardware expert repairs cables ribbons blank disks books ec Visa Master Card Discover Amex Bravo e mail raycomp visi com 1541 Much has been said in this article about geoMakeBoot s hard drive and Ram drive compatibility It should be noted however that even the most basic C 64 128 systems can utilize geoMakeBoot Its system S 64 128 version 2 0 a 1541 or 1571 drive and a requirements are simply GEI mouse or joystick Some pointers You have heard the old adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure CMD gives several ounces of prevention geoMakeBoot s instructions that will help keep you from having to troubleshoot pounds of pr
114. s the Commodore 17xx s Ui in that programs can actually execute directly from this memory It s also important to note that programs don t have to use the 658 16 s native mode to be able to access this extra RAM although there are some advantages to doing so The program SUPERRAMFAKE which accompanies this article contains a subroutine that shows how extra memory can be accessed in 6502 emulation via long addressing modes We ll discuss that more a little later but we should first look at how the SuperRAM card fits into the SuperCPU memory scheme s R 34 For a good overview take a look at the SuperCPU 64 128 Common Memory Map The areas in white Banks 00 01 and F8 FF are the memory found in every Super DU with or without memory expansion Banks 00 and 01 are static RAM while F8 FF are used and reserved banks for the system ROM This map is identical on both the 64 and 128 versions of the SuperCPU though the 128 version will have two additional banks of static RAM which will be swapped in at Banks 00 and 01 as needed Given the general map there is room for expansion RAM at Banks 02 through F7 To avoid the need to translate addresses on all expansion RAM SIMM memory addressing actually begins at Bank 00 although any expansion RAM that occupies the same address area as Static RAM Banks 00 and 01 or ROM F8 FF isn t accessible The SIMM RAM Banks 00 and 01 have been moved to Ban
115. sfers with other Connectors DB 9 Male AT style computers i e PC Mac Amiga To order call Turbo232 Includes ere 9 6 Lite 53995 Modem Cable DB9 25 8 1 800 638 3263 Turbo232 w Novaterm 9 y eps Mon Fri 9a m Sp m EST Turbo w Modem 33 6 amp Cable 51990 Turbo w Modem 33 6 Cable amp Novaterm 9 6 5224
116. solution 80 chars or 10chars inch cpi Graphicsresolution 480 dots or 60 dots inch dpi The two commands read in data from a disk sector However the U1 command always reads a full sector 255 bytes The B R command reads the number of bytes specified in the first byte of the sector Ifthe first byte is a 15 B R will read 15 bytes from the sector From the 1581 manual This command has been traditionally used to reset Commodore drives including the CBM 1541 However some early versions of the Drive DOS ly handle this command In these versions the drive and dto complete the command transaction successfully and hung machine resulted Commodore later fixed this problem If U seems to not work on your drive try U instead The function called SETLDA and residing at C100 turns on the drive active LED for the current drive The routine loads the current drive from 7F and sets bit 3 of DSKCNT 1000 296 files Note that it is not a multiple of 144 COPYRIGHT CBM 86 USR Ifone depresses the right mouse button during power up the 1351 will behave just like a joystick Each register holds the same type of information just for a separate axis so we will describe just one register Bit Function 7 Don tcare 6 1 Mouse axis position mod 64 0 Noise Bit check this bit to see whether mouse has moved SEB SFE 251 254 as much as they wei am not sure these were reserved for progra
117. source code for BASIC and DOS and schematics The following bytes would be sent to the printer 142 145 145 128 252 212 168 128 159 134 1 he Commodore C65 has stereo output The CS C02 running at 3 54 MHz Some versions of the prototype C65 are referred to as the Commodore 64DX None Thisisinteresting as Commodore started with two CPUs per drive 1 8050 etc went to 1 1540 etc and finally cost reduced the CPU completely out of the drive electror Elmer Elmer Fudd Basic v10 0 2 joystick ports 1 power supply port 1 expansion port 1 serial port 1 user port 2 audio ports 1 RGB video port 1 RF output port 1 composite video port 1 high speed disk drive port 1 RAM expansion connector under unit behind cover 13 ports in all 12 if you discount the PS plug A cassette port Depending on whether you count the help key as a function there are 7 or 8 physical keys which provide F1 F14 plus help ernal DOS in the C65 was based on DOS 2 7 found on the CBM Drive This DOS was adapted to the Commodore 65 by Dennis 80x25 The systems powers up with a multicolored banner on the upper left portion of the screen It has 6 lines of decreasing lengths in red orange yellow green light blue and purple E COMMODORE WORLD geoFile A Dynamic Partner for GEOS Users Database Just saying the word isenough to incite negative reac
118. sually Such disappointments cut deeply Thankfully even the darkest clouds can carry a silver lining For instance LOADSTAR still produces a super disk magazine GEOS users Maurice Randall appreciate whose geoprogramming is a godsend 1 know you think of others Sing a song of Commodore Filled full of hearty praise Then toast the silly seers who said Its seen the final days Let those who love the 64 Enjoy its lengthy run For in these days of Commodore The best is yet to come KD S Nevertheless the sad events of the recent past have spawned a sense of calamity and apprehension within many and these are not the building blocks of a strong computing family Too often we have seen people leave their Commodores not because they w cited by another platform but because they could no longer accept the uncertainties of this one These uncertainties must end A clear message must echo in ever corner ofourcomputer world that with the development of the SuperCPU the Commodore has turned an important corner The pendulum which has been sis now moving swinging the wrong way for ye inourdirection The kind ofsupport that we once sought from CBM can now be found at CMD There is a story close to home that illustrates my point My son in programmer He has written programs like GEOSIDPLAYER and COLOR GeoPrint which are probably usedin every Commodore country on the planet When he
119. t Page Mode type 70ns or faster SIMM Capacity Row Size Row Column Adr 1 MB 256K x 32 36 4 MB 1M x 32 36 8 MB 2M x 32 36 16 MB 4M x 32 36 16 MB 4M x 32 36 2KB 4KB 4KB 4KB 8KB 9 9 10 10 11 10 12 10 11 11 COMMODORE WORLD SurenCPu 5H RAM Expansion Card Prototype Slated for release in the next few weeks is the RAM Expansion Card for the CMD SuperCPU 64 This card can contain from 1 to 16 Megabytes of RAM using standard 72 pin SIMMs that can be used by future applications A GEOS driver is expected to ship with the card CMD SUPERCPU RAM EXPANSION amp TIMING The SIMM socket can be fitted with 72 pin memory modules containing from one to 16 Megabytes of standard Fast Page DRAM It s very important to make sure that the SIMM used is standard Fast Page EDO and other 72 pin SIMM types are not compatible and will not operate correctly The memory must be rated at 70 ns or faster the lower the number the fas the speed rating but bear in mind that RAM doesn t trans DRAMcontrollerhas fixed speeds for performing memory access For additional information on compatible SIMMs see the SIMM Chart included with this article The chart fully specifies all SIMMs approved for use with the SuperRAM card te into faster The General Memory Map Since the 65816 processor can address up to 16 Megabytes of RAM the SuperRAM memory is unlike previous RAM nders such a
120. t you still need to keep GEOS from messing up the background sci is well as the foreground screen upon exit Here s how we do it LoadW RecouerUector DoNothing open the DB here iredraw the DA here DoNothing rts When GEOS exits a DB it calls whatever RecoverVector is pointing at in order to restore the screen appearance Normally this vector points to RecoverRectangle since the coordina the DB are preloaded for RecoverRectangle to use This will cause the area of the background screen to be drawn to the foreground screen where the DB was located We do not want this to happen since the background screen does not contain what used to be on the foreground screen at least not in our case here So we loaded RecoverVector with a routine that does absolutely nothing It could also point to the routine that would redraw the DA In many cases that would be better Don t worry about restoring RecoverVector GEOS will take care of it when your DA exits Remember SaveState and RstrState A DB From Within a DB I suppose I should cover one more thing By now you should understand that you can t run a DB from within another DB The state of the machine also applies here You can do it if you really want to The general method however is to exit a DB and then February March1997 29 run the next one Clicking on an icon within a DB should merely set the variable sysDBData with a value that corresponds to
121. tact CMD for authorization before sending any equipment Creative Micro Designs Inc P O Box 646 E Longmeadow MA 01028 Don t forget to COMMODORE WORLD Please call or write with your change of address 6 to 8 weeks prior to your move so that you won t miss a single issue CW Address Change P O Box 646 E Longmeadow MA 01028 413 525 0023 Issue 19 What will the SuperCPU do for me Programs will suddenly spring to life screens and menus pop up instantly scrolling becomes fluid and graphics fly A C 64 equipped with the SuperCPU is like having a Volkswagen with a V 8 There s one small exception the SuperCPU rides much smoother Even though the SuperCPU gives your computer a radical increase in horsepower up to 22 times faster its operating system makes that power usable by maintaining compatibility with most existing software and making its operation transparent to the user Looking to the future the powerful 65816 microprocessor gives programmers vast new resources to create powerful and sophisticated software With its 16 bit registers up to 16 MB of system memory and 6502 6510 8502 emulation the SuperCPU makes it easy to enhance existing software as well as providing the power to create Internet browsers animation and other high tech applications The SuperCPU provides a bright future for a new generation of Commodore computing So join the Commodore revolution and order a powerfu
122. th after purchasing myoriginal Commodore 64 the GEOS 1 3 system disk became magnetized because 1 foolishly placed them too near a huge supply of static electricity namely the front of my monitor The moment that 1 realized what happened when mysterious COMMODORE WORLD by Paul Sullivan KA GEOS BOOT DISKS MADE EASY looking characters appeared on a printout instead of the report 1 needed quickly went and purchased GEOS 2 0 and searched diligently for a boot disk b creator QuantumLink offered or file for 1581 users but it meant nothing to me as I did not yet own a 1581 I then discovered the Maverick a complex utility system by Kracker Jax software Though it boasted of such tools as sector map editors and nybblers the primary feature I desired was the Geo boot from its GEOS tool kit Initially my needs were simple I only wanted GEOS 64 backups for my 1541s But like any aspiring Commodore user soon upgraded my system to a C 128 GEOS 128 two 1581 s and a 1750 RAM expander 16 The Maverick s limitations and my limited patience began to show once 1 tried to make backups of the GEOS 128 system disks for my 1581s The C 128 s capability to autoboot disks was not working on the 1581 Maverick boot disk When testing the new boot disk immediately after creating it a screen prompt appeared that asked for a disk with DeskTop 2 0 or higher Once DeskTop and the in
123. the 128 version but not the original Mach 5 othercartridgesdo diskm Fastload To my knowledge Epyx s Fastload was thefirsttohit the market Atone pointor another ybody has to answer to comparison to Fastload Attimesit seems pretty low frills there s a straightforward standard DOS wedge and a better than nothing disk accelerator But there s actually a bit of power stashed in the little black cartridge since there s a built in menu of utilities to do disk copying file copying and erasing and even disk sector editing A rudimentary machine language monitor is also included There s no reset button but for 128 users at least this isn t a major problem JiffyDOS and Other ROM Replacements Thenice thing about the cartridges is that they re easy to install and are more or less instantly gratifying But they tend to disappoint for some things like providing compatibility and faster load and save times within commercial software and games ROM replacements like JiflyDOS on the other hand are harder to install since they require you makea few changes within youractual comptuer and disk drive but can often pay dividends in their enhanced capabilities such as support for non 5 1 4 floppy drives Currently JiffyDOS is available tofill thisniche Wi hile it cannot genera ly boast the conditional peed ine speciall some cartridges can get on aved files it does have the au
124. the ual These sub layouts allow you toviewselected portions of them and allow for many printout variations Finding Saska where Exactly This is where the search capabilities are required You know your long lost uncle moved to some place that sounds funny and starts with an S but you can t remember where Remember our phone book and the headersat thetopofeach page GeoFile nner as well ntera Search form by choosing create search form in the Form menu and enter S in the State Prov field Click on OK at the top of the page Now click on either of the two Face Icons at the top of the page these are not identified in any of the pictures in the manual and only function search form The left facing one will search back through your data the right facing searches ahead and both will wraparound at the end of the file If no match is found geoFile informs you with a beep and redraws the entry you were looking at prior to searching Onceanentryisfound that matchesyoursearch criteria geoFile stopsand showsittoyou just like the phone book If it is South Dakota instead of Saskatchewan just click on the i Continue clicking until you find your long lost uncle s address Maybeyou remembered his name was Johnson Or maybe it was Johnston or Johnstone Johnsen or Johnsson Enter Joh as your search criteria and anymatchingrecordswillberecalled Friendswhose nestarts with M and ends with n can be found by enteri
125. thority to promise fast loading and saving within most any software package and it does indeed work with more software COMMODORE WORLD Table 1 Comparison of Load Speeds 149 block PRG file Product Load Time Times Faster 97 1 sec 21 2 sec 20 5 sec 18 7 sec 12 5 sec 8 7 sec Stock 64 Mach Fastload JiffyDOS Final Cartridge Action Replay 46 47 52 78 112 JiflyDOS built in DOS wedge is second to none in its command set The standard DOS d to use on a daily basisareall there as well asa set ofenhanced commands you and 1 would n commands to handle things like the enabling and disabling of JiflyDOS various feature specially mapped commands which let you copy and files between disk drives quickly and entirely within BASIC without relying on support programs Virtually all of the JiffyDOS extended commands are available from BASIC programs which is not necessarily true of all DOS wedges And you can apply the JiffyDOS wedge to any JiffyDOS aware device such as CMD hard drives the FD 2000 and the RamLink SmartMouse today fully programmable for other application holding down the right button SmartMouse is the Most Advanced Mouse Ever Created for the Commodore 64 and 128 Computers Three buttons means convenience If you re a GEOS user the left button is configured as single click the right as a handy double click and the center button is the TURBO
126. tions in people around you Sort of like saying Tax Audit in the springtime While word processing and graphics programs enjoy huge popularity other productivity programs like databases are shunned by a majority of computer users Maybe it is because people think they don t understand databases or maybe it s dueto the lengthy timeit takestosetupa database Whatever the reason this article will hopefully take some of the mystery out of using geoFile and show how a database can help or and save time anize your life A Little History Ihave been using GEOS on my C 64 for 9 years I became interested with the release of geoPublish and the freedom it allowed in laying out pages of text and graphics The system integration has made me a loyal GEOS user I faithfully bought all of the packages as they came out but found that I really only used geoWrite geoPublish and geoPaint regularly 1 found the lack of hen ability in geoCale a big GeoFile provided me with an easy method of cataloging my record collection but this was really the only purpose I could find for it at the time My collection of fonts and graphics grew and grew and when I read about geoPrint banners drawba greeting cards posters by Roger Lawhorn I just had to have it A nifty looking program called geoLabel came with geoPrint but the paper feed mechanism on my Star printer was such that I couldn t find labels to print on
127. to locate Are you wondering how we will continue when the parts disappear forever CMD has just finished the SuperCPU for the 64 Yet at the moment of our greatest triumph we seem to be uncomfortably on edge I am increasingly concerned about the gloom and doom creeping into our Comm adoring community Yet the signs are unmistakeable In a recent issue 15 of Commodore World CMDw arlie Christianson CMD s co founder sought to reassure subscribers by directly addressing their concerns You ve probably even begun thinking of worst case scenarios Is il that they are going to stiff me like so many previous Commodore magazines have Is it that they just don t care Are they getting out of the Commodore markel We can truthfully answer NO to all of these questions Can you blame us for being nervous Many of us feel like CBM abandoned us Berkeley Softworks EOS treated us no better It seems that we no sooner help make a company prosperous than they move on to bigger markets Bythistheory themoresuccessful CMDbecomes the quicker they ll leave us Who can blame us for feeling a little bit paranoid Charlie s From theEditor speakstothis point as well We have about a half a dozen people who have dedicated the last nine years of their feeling the heat The issue was late and eatorsofG life to the survival of our beloved C 64 and C 128 platform So without laying it on too
128. to the online systems text editor For buffer sends what format the text should be in depends on the term program If using Novaterm s File to Modem option in the buffer menu the file should be in PETASCIH format the text is sent as if you had typed it from the keyboard This feature has no relationship with the Novaterm s file transfer translation featurure discussed above Other programs such as Dialogue128 and Desterm allow you to import text into the buffer ASCII or ASCII format Import the text so it views properly while in the buffer and it will be sent to the BBS or online service correctly Also it s important to realize that before using this feature you must be in a text editor online as otherwise the online system will assume that you re sending it commands and this could cause problems Reading Files Sometimes you just want to read a file but don t want necessarily want to edit it Most text editors or word processors havea limit to the size file they can handle but there are a couple utilities that allow you to read files of any size up to the capacity of your disk drive C64 and C128 users can view PETASCII files using a utility in the ACE operating February March1997 system ACE15A SFX through ACEISE SEX called more The command is C128 users can view text files using Browser BROWSER2 SFX or BROWSERB ZIP The program auto detects whether a file is ASCII or PETASCII befo
129. torms to date as nature dumped some two feet of heavy snow in our area Some of us were without power for a couple of days and I personally had the great fortune of having a tree split part falling in my yard and the other part across my driveway But we all survived and while there was a lot of cleaning up to do afterwards the real damage was minimal In the realm of today s Commodore market we re sometimes challanged by similar storms both as users and as suppliers Large setbacks happen from time to time and we simply do what we must to weather the storm At Commodore World we ve had our share of storms though possibly none so bad as that which we ve recently been through The storm 1 speak of here is the loss of subscribers we have seen in the past few months which has been rather dramatic Sadly our loss is also the Commodore community s loss as the vast majority of those whom have let their subscriptions lapse have done so because they simply aren t actively using Commodore computers anymore Sad as this may be we ve carefully analyzed the situation and taken what we feel are the necessary steps to keep Commodore World in production Without this publication many of the remaining users and suppliers would simply cease to exist in the Commodore market This considered we feel a strong obligation to do whatever we can to make sure that we re around for a long time to come Yet the publication must work within the b
130. turns it shows the entire file as one long line of text variation is Those da stem you ve probably discov xt created 22 Text created with an MS DOS computer is usually formatted ok when viewed with a Commodore program but the end ofthe line may show a reversed character at the end or beginning of each line In some programs this is a reversed j character and in others it may be a reversed arrow key MS DOS text ends with both a carriage return and linefeed Our programs honor the carriage return character with an bac automatic linefeed no special chararacter required but some don t know what to do with the linefeed character in the file so they displ as if it were t To distinguish between the different types of text files we ll refer to files that end with alinefeed as UNIX files and those that end with a carriage return and linefeed as MS DOS files PETASCII always refers to Commodore s unique character code format and for this article we ll refer to ASCII files with a carriage return as ASC CR files This is the preferred format for viewing ASCII files with the C64 128 Sharing Your Files with the Online World If you re going to be uploading text files for use on another platform computer it s best to have the file in the format it will be used in before uploading it Usually you can simply upload an ASCII file without worrying about the end of line format T
131. u can find one memory a y useful et button res d well worth a Mach 5and Mach 128 Access did more than just publish such memorable titles as Leader Board Golfand 10th Frame Bowling they manufactured and sold these turbo cartridg he Mach 5 is designed for the C 64 only while the Mach 128 will operate in both 64 and 128 modes set by a built in switch on the top of the cartridge It predates the supercartridges like the AR and 25 FC butstill offers a DOS wedge disk accelerator and various useful utilities Unlike most of its counterparts it does not have a built in menued set of utilities like the Action Replay or a GUI driven utility screen like the Final Cartridge Instead youacces rrow s thespecial commands using the ba da menucan be brought up on your BASIC screen at any time ifyou velost your manual One notable feature of the Mach 128 is that with a two key command you can use the 128 s extra keys like the upper rowofcursor keysand the numeric keypad in 64 mode The Mach cartridges do things a little differentlyt sages returned from a DOS wedge command are displayed in reverse and typically over the line you ve just typed rather than a line or two lower as is normal for other wedges The Mach cartridges are on the slower side but the 128 model in particular stands out as being compatible with both sides ofa 128 system Thereisareset button mounted on
132. udgetary confinements dictated by the size of the subscriber base While many of the chan of the largest is not we ll no longer have an assistant editor to help create Commodore World This makes putting the publication together that much more difficult However we ve eased that somewhat by reducing the number of pages a step that was nece yes will be evident directly in our pages possibly one ssary in any case to reduce cost With reduced pages comes the obvious loss of some regular columns though we ve tried to pad the impact of that by constraining some of the larger columns to fewer pages This will fluctuate rom time to time however as particular subjects need more or less space We ll also probably see some of the old columns make occasional appearances when room permits so don t count them out entirely Meanwhile there are some positive things happening as well We ve had a small surge in new advertisers and there a couple in the wings that may join in soon New releases while coming slowly are indeed coming So hold on to your keyboards we not done yet not by a long shot Doug Cotton Editor 2 Issue 19 OADSTAR MONTHLY V iz Disk The Compleat Jon 11 amest tho ote gamu o ing covered hore fl Itlignce Poi gut o a en eren leven non violence which was a radical concept in its timo GE EE EE can see how Jon s style changed as the years rolled by 02103 S20 1841 E NEW Puzzle
133. ught it would be a matter of just uploading the file and that would be it boy was I wron When CBM designed their Commodore 8bit line they opted to go their own way instead of using what had become the standard character set for computers While other computer manufacturers were using ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange Commodore used a slightly different set of codes referred to in the C64 Programmers Reference Guide as Commodore ASCII In general use most people refer to this as PETASCIL When looking at a true ASCII file with the C64 128 it appears that the upper and lower case letters have their places swapped When uploaded my PETASCII file to the MS DOS BBS it ended up looking like gibberish online so I took a guess that I d have to tr the file somehow My guess was correct but the assing today lly I d have realized I need only translate something ONCE What did I do I converted the file to ASCH using my word processor and then when I uploaded We were each expected to upload islate way I went about things is If I d tackled the problem log the file used Novaterm s transfer translation too If 1 had simply done one OR the other it would have come out correctly Later 1 downloaded recipes that others had uploaded and found that I still had a lot to learn COMMODORE WORLD By Gaelyne R Gassion BATTLE OF THE ASCII S about ASCI
134. until very recently This does mean that none are available on the new hardware market but there are scores of them out there and many systems being sold include these devices Issue 19 All of the turbo cartridges offer some sort of DOS wedge and will accelerate disk and sometimes even tape drive loading and saving Byandlarge their turbo methods are compatible only with Commodore 1541 and 1571 drives and will fail to work with clone floppies or drives like the 1581 FD 2000 and hard drives Further the turbo methodsare very compatible for loading single files butoftenare unfriendlyin commercial software particularly those which are copy protected Yourmileagewill vary and you ll likely become familiar with your particular cartridge s disable method All of them have some way or another to render them almost invisible but occasionally you just have to remove them altogether to get certain stubborn programs to run which is a shame Among most of these DOS enhancers you can expect to find shorthand commands for such thingsas loading and saving programs Ty is used to designate program loading and s used to designate loading a machine language program replacing loading 817 in regular BASIC An overview of the features and low points of the cartridges you can expect to find out there is in order Action Replay 5 and 6 This was the last supercartridge in active production and
135. ut notice CMD Visit our Web Site at http www cmdweb com Business Hours Orders M F 9AM 5 30PM EST Tech Support M F 1PM 5 30 PMEST FoR THE BEST SELECTION OF NEW AND REMANUFACTURED COMMODORE EQUIPMENT CALL 1 800 638 3263 COMPUTERS 64 REMANUFACTURED WITH PS sgg 64 REMANUFACTURED WITH NEW REPAIRABLE Ps 51 1919 64 REMANUFACTURED WITH PS 4199 C 64C NEW MOTHERBOARD amp New REPAIRABLE PS 1599 E SX 64 REMANANUFACTURED 0233933355 C 128 REMANUFACTURED WITH PS 5 C 128 NEW MOTHERBOARD amp NEW PS 8229 C 128D REMANANUFACTURED 299 C 128D NEW MOTHERBOARD amp NEW PS 3329 Customize your C 64 128 or drive with Reset amp Device switches 64K VDC MONITORS nrumssHED o o CMD CARRIES A FULL LINE OF 40 AND 40 80 COLUMN REFURBISHED MONITORS CALL FOR AVAILABILITY 1571 FLOPPY DISK ____________ 1541 1541C REMAN 5 25 SSDD 170K 589 1541 11 REMAN 5 25 SSDD 170K w EXTERNAL Ps 5109 1541 11 REMAN 5 25 SSDD 170K W OUT Ps 59920 1541 11 1541 11 REMAN 5 25 SSDD wl NEW EXTERNAL PS 512522 1571 REMAN 5 25 DSDD 340k 5119 POWER SUPPLIES _____ C 64 64C NEW STOCK 9VAC1A SVDC 1 7A 529 T C 64 64C NEW 9VAC1A 5VDC 1 7 REPAIRABLE 539 C 64 64C ww wm NEW 9vac 1A 5VDC 4 3A Ge 55900 CMD Service Center C 128 NEW 9VAC 1A SVDC 4 3 REPAIRABLE 555 Reasonable Quality Work C 128D NEW CBM
136. vastly superior to using old digital input devices like the 1350 mouse or joysticks But everything can be improved Guaranteed 100 1351 compatible SmartMouse does everything the C 1351 does and more This highly intelligent three button input device includes a built in battery backed Real Time Clock along with double click and Turbo features for GEOS Plus it comes with a complete set of utilities for using the clock in GEOS and BASIC applications Modern ergonomic designs makes SmartMouse a smooth operator that s a pleasure to use So if you re tired of the slow erratic movement of your current input device make the intelligent choice and pick up a SmartMouse uses the same custom gate array chip as the Commodore C 1351 mouse to guarantee 100 compatibility Switches easily into joystick emulation mode on power up by COMMODORE WORLD 26 SmartMouse utilizes the same advanced technology used in today s powerful 486 and Pentium PC s providing you with unparalleled accuracy and smoothness Built in battery backed Real Time Clock automatically sets the GEOS clock displays time and can be used in your own programs Includes utilities disk and detailed manual explaining the utilities and programming information Attention Lefties SmartMouse can be altered for left handed use Table 2 Compatibility with SuperCPU and JiffyDOS Product JiffyDOS SuperCPU Fastload No No Action Replay Yes No Final Cartridge Yes Somewhat M
137. whatever you wish to do and then call RstrFrmDialog Upon exiting the DB that value will be loaded into rOL and can be easily checked But if you really want to run another DB without actually leaving the current one you will first need to preserve the area at dlgBoxRamBuf like we already discussed and also preserve one other important location Just like an application has the use of registers at a0 a9 GEOS has it s own register known as sO In GEOS 64 this two byte register is located at 0043 while on the 128 it is at 0044 You must preserve this if you wish to call another DB without exiting the current one This register is used pointer as GEOS is building the DB and using it It is set differently each time a new DB is created The safest thing to do with this is to save all 3 bytes from 0043 to 0045 so that your code will work with either system As you can see you can be quite creative and accomplish many complex and useful things with just a little bit of work on your part The biggest problem is simply knowing how to do it MEETING 64 128 USERS THROUGH THE MAIL p Cz NO USER S GROUP USER S GROUP FADING Join our world wide group for answers to your burning questions about C 64 128 COMMODORE MAILINK Contact Tom Adams President 4427 39TH ST BRENTWOOD MD 20722 1022 tomadams sysnet net COMMODORE WORLD BASIC INSTINCTS By Doug Cotton BASIC despite its occasional pitfalls allows av
138. y Once you begin programming possibly most important tip I can give you istowrite code that s readable Often you ll find yourself spending twice as much time or more making your code work than you did writing it in the first plac to read is one of the quickest ways to improve the writing debugging ratio that haunts every programmer In addition when you find you need a similar program six months after you a particular piece of code you ll find it easier to go back and ma our code e wrote There are numerous ways to make code more readable The first step is to start right off with a comment TRA Advanced variation Color your REM statements Here s how Type the line number and REM command then type two quotes Delete the second quote then enter RVS ON SHIFT M RVS OFF INST Follow this by selecting acolor using CTRL 1 through CTRL 8 or CMDR 1 through CMDR 8 Type your remark text and end it with another INST and color selection Press RETURN when done If you did this right your line will change colors COMMODORE WORLD 30 PROGRAMMING PEARLS THE PREQUAL when listed The first color code is for the remark itself while the one at the end is for lines that follow it The reversed SHIFT M issues a PRINT command when the line is listed Follow remarks with something that will make them stand out from the rest of the program lines dummy line Yes nothing more
139. zed database to work with You also might find it helps you keep all of your records organized in case that tax auditor comes around in the spring My address book con COMMODORE WORLD First in a series of three articles by Forthe Commodore community 1996 wasa y of delight and disma the anticipated rele were dismayed to discover how vulnerable we are When CBM left us most Commodore users shrugged and murmured Who needs then ButasCMD sproduction lagged behind schedule heard serioususersvoicing graveconcern What happens if CMD fails If they leave us who will we turn to for support ar rhe delight o course Was of the SuperCPU but we It occured to me that we might try putting the shoe on the other foot Imagine coming home everynight knowingthat your livelihood depends upon doing business with stubborn computer nuts like us we who daily declare our independence by defying the currents of popular computer wisdom Wouldn t that send you into a sound slumber Increasingly came to believe that CMD depends upon us as much as we depend upon them We are together linked in a kind of symbiotic relationship If both of us do our jobs well then everybody wins If either of us not both but if just one of us fails to fulfill our responsibilities then everyone loses This realization drove me to begin writing and to explore th

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