Commodore.news

Amiga - assembly programming | Tuomas Järvensivu and Harri Salokorpi have written a blog about how to program in assembly. They show how to make a simple animation and talk about the development environment, assembler, debugging, application start-up, main loop, application exit and running the program on real hardware.

C64 Game Programming | Steve Morrow has started a new series of videos to show people how to program games on the Commodore C64. In this videos: Game scrolling map, Full screen scrolling, Design & Tips, Vertical scrolling, Rasters, Animations, Collisions, etc.

The evolution of the (Epyx) Games | Jimmy Maher wrote a blog about the evolution of the (Epyx) games. In this story Jimmy tells about the American home-computer industry in the eighties. He talks about the Epyx games Summer Games, Winter Olympics, Summer Games II and California Games.

The Making of Lemmings | Rich Stanton wrote a blog about the making of Lemmings. The story is about David Jones who lost his job at the Timex company in 1988. David bought an Amiga 1000, and started on making games. Later he created with the company DMA Design the legendary game Lemmings.

Tetris - 6502 Assembler (7) | Wiebo de Wit is writing a blog on how to program a Tetris game in 6502 assembler. In each episode he explains how a part of the game works. In this episode: Line Score, Play Level and Next Block.

FRGCB | FRGCB (Finnish Retro Game Comparison Blog) is a new web page that writes about retro games. But the difference is that this blog compares the games between the different computers like the C64, Amiga, MSX, NES, CPC, DOS, etc. The most recent comparisons are: Cybernoid - The Fighting Machine, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, NGOTM: Teodoro no sabe volar, Alley Cat, Scumball and Unique Games! (7).

Tetris - 6502 Assembler (5) | Wiebo de Wit is writing a blog on how to program a Tetris game in 6502 assembler. In each episode he explains how a part of the game works. In this episode: The main loop and checking, flashing and removal of the lines.

History of Personal Computing: Commodore VIC-20 | A new episode of the Personal Computing podcast is available. In this episode: The Commodore VIC-20 with general information on the VIC chip and detailed information on the register of the VIC chip.

The 68000 Wars | Jimmy Maher is writing a story about the 68000 CPU. This CPU was used in the Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST. Jimmy writes about the introduction of the Amiga, the people who worked on the Amiga and the problems and successes of this legendary computer.

Sprite Castle | Rob Flack O'Hara has a web page for all his podcasts. His new podcasts are: Druid and 4th and Inches. Besides the podcast you can also find the links of web pages mentioned in the podcast.

Mastertronic Chronicles | Mastertronic Chronicles is a blog of witchfinder dedicated to the Mastertronic games for the Commodore C64. This time you can see the worst ten games. And because the collection project is now finished you can see the whole collection of 209 Mastertronic games.

Tetris - 6502 Assembler | Wiebo de Wit is writing a blog on how to program a Tetris game in 6502 assembler. He made a Tetris clone in 1992 and now he explains how the game is made. For the development he uses KickAssembler, Sublime Tekst 3.0 and the VICE emulator.

Sprite Castle | Rob Flack O'Hara has a web page for all his podcasts. His recent podcasts are: Break Street and California Games. Besides the podcast you can also find the links of web pages mentioned in the podcast.

CES 30 years ago | The most important electronics expo in the USA is the CES or the Consumer Electronics Show. Bil Herd is remembering when Commodore introduced new computers on CES. These were very hectic days for Commodore staff, you can read al about these days on Bil's blog.

History of Personal Computing: Commodore PET | A new episode of the Personal Computing podcast is available. In this episode: Retrochallenge!, Altair 8800b, Wade Ripkowski, Commodore brochures, The Commodore bankruptcy, The Commodore PET 2001, Commodore PET 4032 and the Commodore PET Disk Drive 4040.

TED part 2 - Bil Herd | This is the second part of the story about the 30 year old TED chip. The TED chip was used in the Commodore C16, C116, Plus/4 and the 364. Bil Herdwas in charge of the development of these computers and he implemented the TED (Text Editing Device) chip in the design. The TED chip was used for the video, sound, DRAM refresh, timers and keyboard / joystick input.

TED - Bil Herd | Bil Herd talks about the 30 year old TED chip. The TED chip was used in the Commodore C16, C116, Plus/4 and the 364. Bil was in charge of the development of these computers and he implemented the TED (Text Editing Device) chip in the design. The TED chip was used for the video, sound, DRAM refresh, timers and keyboard / joystick input.

Lost Treasures | On the Dustlayer Blog you can now see pictures of the Commodore production line in Hong Kong from December 1992. The photos were taken by Robert Baker who worked in production engineering at Commodore in West Chester, USA and who had been in Hong Kong for a pilot production run of the Amiga 600.

The Almost forgotten Story of the Amiga 2000 | Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote an article about the Commodore Amiga 2000. He writes about the introduction, the different models and the add-on cards for the A2000. He also talks about Video Toaster and the use of Amiga's at NASA.

Programmable Logic I - PLA/PAL | Bil Herd made an article about Programmable Logic. In this article he explains how the PLA for the C64 was developed. The PLA in the C64 is used to create chip select signals from various other signals. These signals control which chip is connected to the data bus and is therefore responsible for the memory mapping of the C64.

FRGCB | FRGCB (Finnish Retro Game Comparison Blog) is a new web page that writes about retro games. But the difference is that this blog compares the games between the different computers like the C64, Amiga, MSX, NES, CPC, DOS, etc. The most recent comparisons are: Summer Games, Afterlife, Turbo Esprit, Mikie, The Vikings and Bionic Commando.

Commodore 64 Machine Language (1) | Steve Morrow is making a series of YouTube video about programming machine language on the Commodore C64. In this part of the series he explains the reading and storing data into the memory.

FRGCB | FRGCB (Finnish Retro Game Comparison Blog) is a new web page that writes about retro games. But the difference is that this blog compares the games between the different computers like the C64, Amiga, MSX, NES, CPC, DOS, etc. The most recent comparisons are: Action Biker, Bump Set Spike!, Rock Star Ate My Hamster, North & South, Unique Games!, Fist II: The Legend Continues and Spelunker.

C64 Assembly Game Disassembly | Steve Morrow has made a video about the development of a game for the Commodore C64. The game Spaced Out from 1992 is written in assembly. Steve shows the different parts of the program, and explains how these parts work.

C64assembly blog | Pierre Hallsten started a new blog. On his blog he will explain how to program in assembly on the Commodore C64. Pierre has made many programs for the c64 and Amiga, but he also programs in C, C++, Assembler, Java, Objectiv-C etc. Some of the examples are: CharZoom, Crazy Shoes and opening of the upper and lower border.

Retro Asylum Podcast - 56 | Retro Asylum is a English podcast about retro computing. In this episode MrSid presents another My 8Bit Life. This time he has an interview with Paul Norman. Paul made the music for games such as Aztec Challenge and Forbidden Forest. Also in this episode Paul Koller and Conquistador for the Atari Lynx.

DRAM testing | Axlecrusher was repairing a Commodore C64. He found out that it was one of the memory chips. He replaced them all and the C64 was working again. But he wanted to know which of the 8 memory chips was faulty. He built an testing device with an AVR microprocessor to test each individual chip. You can read all about it on his blog.

Floppydays - Podcast #6 | The Floppydays podcast of last August is about the Commodore PET. In this episode: Better World Books, VCF Midwest, 2013 Chicago TI International World Faire, World Longest Yard Sale, Historically Brewed book, Commodore PET history, Commodore a company on the edge, VICE, CBUG, TPUG, World of Commodore, Terry Stewart, Port Commodore, Edward Shockley's Pets, CBM Pet File Archive and the PET Index at 6502.org.

MAS Player - Review | Dan Wood made an review of the MAS Player for the Amiga. The MAS Player is an hardware device that will decode MP3 music and makes it available to the Amiga. Dan shows you how to install the device and how the device works on a Amiga A1200.

Commodore 1551/1541 | Dan Wood made an review of the Commodore disk drives. In the 20 minute video you can see the differences between the serial 1541 and the parallel 1551 disk drive. Dan also speak about OpenCBM and the XM1541 cable.

Boingsworld #39 | A new episode of BoingsWorlds (German language) is now available. You can listen to the following articles: OSD launcher, The Amiga years, MorpOS tutorial, A1200 label, X1000 2nd production run, M.A.C.E. preview video, Hyperion blog news, Konfigtool Indivision AGA MK2, Radeon HD driver and a bit of a different meeting.

C64 Basic Sprite Animation | Steve Morrow made a video about sprite animation in C64 Basic. He explains how to work with sprites work in Basic. He also demonstrates a sprite being animated and explains what is happening in the registers.

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