World of Commodore 2011 December 3rd In Toronto 142
Leif_Bloomquist writes "The Toronto PET Users Group (TPUG) is pleased to announce the World of Commodore 2011. TPUG would like to invite everyone to join us for a weekend of all things Commodore. There will be information about and displays of a variety of Commodore computers, demonstrations of new hardware and software projects using Commodore equipment, screenings of Commodore related videos, vendors selling the latest hardware and software available for Commodore computers as well as classic hardware, accessories, applications, games and much more."
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Commodore is not just about nostalgia. A big part of the Commodore community is about seeing just how far you can push 8-bit technology. Ram Expansion Units (REUs) and other cartridges that expand the capabilities of the base machine are simply fun to play with. One of my personal favorites is the Turbo Chameleon cartridge that adds VGA-out, stereo and ethernet to the old C-64. The Chameleon can also be used in stand-alone mode as a FPGA system running c64 and Amiga 500 cores. A cheaper option is the MCC-21
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What do you mean, "adds stereo"? Does this company have a stockpile of 6581s? Where did they get them?
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Perhaps the proper term is "simulated stereo."
Great timing! (Score:2)
That gives me a whole day to come up with transportation and hotel and move from the southern USA to Canada! (if I could afford to do such anyway)
Ok I get it if this is really your thing one would know about this months in advance but thanks for the ultra short notice.
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Wish I woulda known about this a while back. I'd have gotten a couple of geek friends together for a retrocomputer road trip.
But alas with age also comes needing to get time off approved, schedules matched up and arrangements made. No longer can we just say "Screw it, we're going." at 2 am the night before.
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With great age comes great responsibility.
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And great responsibility.
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And alzheimer disease.
Damn! I forgot about that.
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Fly out Friday night, fly home Sunday. I'll be there.
Granted I planned a month ago but I could still go this weekend if I'd just read about this and didn't have any plans tomorrow.
(1,200 miles away, but we have non-stop Toronto flights, which helps.)
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Ok I get it if this is really your thing one would know about this months in advance but thanks for the ultra short notice.
You might have Slashdot's snail-on-a-salt-lick editors to thank for that.
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it was just announced today
Wrong. (Score:2)
It was announced on the 13th of October.
So the gp's comment about the snail-like qualities of /. editors is spot on.
Theres always the Commodore Vegas Expo in July (Score:2)
There's always the Commodore Vegas Expo [portcommodore.com] in July as well as several regional US and other world wide gatherings of Commodore and other classic computerists.
Closer to Canada would be the Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention [globalpc.net] (no listed 2012 date yet, There's one I think in Lousville KY in the spring, but cant find a link. And in the fall there's the AmiWest Expo [amiwest.net] in Sacramento for the Amigans out there.
(that's all I can recall off the top of my head.)
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 **** (Score:5, Funny)
READY.
10 PRINT "Hello, I'm the Commodore 64 - What is your name ";:INPUT A$
20 PRINT A$ "is stupid!"
30 GOTO 20
Re:**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 **** (Score:4, Funny)
20 PRINT A$ "is stupid!"
?SYNTAX ERROR
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Works fine....
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I was going to post the same exact thing. It's not a syntax error, but the mistake still flew over everyone else's head.
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From the 4.0 manual http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=commodore%20basic&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFEQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.commodore.ca%2Fmanuals%2Fpdfs%2FCommodore_Basic_4_Users_Reference%2520Manual.pdf&ei=dHPYTrvvBaeWiAK5g_jHCg&usg=AFQjCNHYQokHvhY1FQG6LzCwiaHYLNJIdw&cad=rja
"The position of each printed item is determined by the punctuation used to separate the items on the list. ... A semicolon casues the next value to be printed immediately after the last value. T
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Commodore BASIC was pretty lax in some of its form. You could get away with a lot of things that strictly speaking shouldn't have worked. Dropping the semicolons was one, e.g.
PRINT A$;B$;C$;D$
PRINT A$B$C$D$
Both functioned the same, but
PRINT 4;5;6;7
would require the semicolons to separate the numbers properly.
Creative BASIC programmers took advantage of this as a way to save memory. Similarly, strictly speaking for/next loops were structured like FOR T=1 TO 100:[ACTION]:NEXT T but typically Commodore prog
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Still, I remember porting over a date validation subroutine on an old WANG computer to a more modern PC. The heart of the code centered around the calculation 94.49-63.36 (or something similar). For the life of me, I couldn't understand what the code was doing. 94.49-63.36 = 31.13. Then, in a fit of desperation I typed in PRINT 94.49-63.36 at the WANG's prompt. It replied 31.129999, and the validation routine suddenly made sense.
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he's referring to english syntax. hence the funny.
All the best ... Not much of show (Score:1)
Kudos to them for organizing this, but this looks like an affair that could be held in a school's gym or a local legion. Half-dozen vendors and the same number of presentations.
I loved my c64 and even though i have the time to kill, i will most likely not cross the gta to make it to mississauga.
May have been better if this was a larger retro-computing thing ...
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For what it is, it's pretty large. Why not come out and have some fun? I'm crossing half the country, surely you can brave the 401.
I agree that it might be fun to have a huge retro-computing festival with all sorts of computer platforms supported. Maybe one day someone can put that together.
Last time I went to a Commodore show... (Score:3)
I was wearing a "Happy 1st Birthday OS/2 Warp" tee-shirt.
Gee, didn't I get some funny looks.
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I Want To Go! (Score:1)
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It's not how much time you spend... it's how much you can accomplish in the time you are given.
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Why is it that the work week went from 80 hours a week to 40 from the 19th century to the 20th century, but now that everyone is sooooo priductive, we still work 40 hours a week so we can spend 25 years paying for a house that took six weeks to build? What are we producing, for whose benefit, and why?
All explained here [youtube.com]
Don't forget to Canadianize your C64 (Score:4, Funny)
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
10 POKE 52380,2
20 POKE 52381,1
30 PRINT "HELLO, HOSER"
RUN
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That should be 53280 and 53281 :)
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Those are the Canadian memory addresses. Just like Canadian Bacon... it's just wrong.
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?SYNTAX ERROR, EH?
Re:Don't forget to Canadianize your C64 (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that I still know exactly what that does, and what colors those poke values represent, almost brings a tear to my eye, literally. I pretty much owe my entire current way to life to the C64. If there was ever a product that deserved to succeed and carry on but didn't....sigh.
Commercially, the C64 was a huge success worldwide. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (and cited), the C64 is the best-selling single computer of all time. Here's a blog post with some heavy analysis of the numbers. [pagetable.com]
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Yes, it could hardly do any better than it did. It sold very well for five years if I remember correctly. No electronic product launched today can match that.
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Four years from now nobody will buy an iPad 2 because they're not sold anymore. The C=64 sold steadily, unchanged, for 5 years, which was a long time even then. And that was in a time when many people didn't even know why you should have a computer in your home.
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No pun intended, but this is an apples and oranges comparison. The iPad is not a personal computer, it's a tablet computer and is therefore in a different category than the Commodore 64.
That said, the boast that the Commodore 64 is the "best selling computer model of all time" may not be entirely accurate. It's important to note that the sales figure quoted actually includes a number of different models of the Commodore 64:
the Commodore Max,
Commodore 64
Commodore SX64
C64GS
and the Commodore 64C.
That's actuall
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Maybe if they didn't spend all their time going around in circles they would have taken over the market.
Guru Meditation (Score:3)
The red screen of death
OMG! Memories of the Transactor!!! (Score:1)
Where is the invitro?! (Score:1)
Ah fuck it...this will have todo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wu8cnIpdLY [youtube.com]
oh and...just because...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscllvMFbfE [youtube.com]
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stardust memories (stardstm.mod)
http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=59344 [modarchive.org]
Dazed & Confused (Score:1)
OMG! I didn't know TPUG was still around!!! (Score:3)
The first computer games I ever played were TPUG tapes full of games for the Commodore PET computer. Years before the Commodore 64, I first learned programming on a Commodore PET model 2001 with 8K of RAM and a cassette tape drive built right into the unit. A few years later, all the schools in our area acquired PET 4032 computers for the computer science classes, and my dad, who was a teacher, used to bring one home for the holidays. I still remember how exciting it was when he brought home a Commodore 2031 disk drive for the first time, and I bought my first floppy disk. (Yes they were sold singly back then!) I fit the contents of all my old TPUG tapes on two floppies!
We had a local chapter in my home town of Windsor called PEG (for PET Educators Group), and I remember attending meetings regularly. One of the most exciting days of my childhood was when we had Jim Butterfield as a guest speaker! Sadly, I heard he passed away a few years ago.
I still remember fondly my days of playing Adventure, Miser, Miner, Space Invaders, Dungeon, and other games on the old PETs. I'm glad to hear TPUG is still around.
Call me SID (Score:1)
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There's a the Nano SwinSID, a pin-compatible SID replacement made with an Atmel microcontroller.
http://www.nightfallcrew.com/05/04/2011/nano-swinsid-prototype-unboxing-and-first-impressions/ [nightfallcrew.com]
Buy yours here:
http://retro-donald.de/sinchai-shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=90 [retro-donald.de]
I Still Use a 1541 II & a Disk Notcher (Score:3)
I have an E-Mu SP-12 Turbo [vintagesynth.com] sampler/drum machine that saves its data to a 1541 drive. It's my favorite sampler/sequencer and many other people's as well.
I have three 1541s in my basement as backups.
Thanks for nothing, Slashdot. (Score:2)
This was announced on October, and you only post about it NOW, a day before the event is to occur? I could have actually made plans to go if this had been mentioned in any sort of timely fashion.
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This happens every year. Plan now for 2012.
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Slashdot. News for nerds, stuff that's two months old.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a real computer you cheap assholes.
People who still use Commodores in 2011 are many things, but cheap is not one of them. Keeping an antiquated computer running and doing useful work is going to cost them much more than buying a new low-end PC from Walmart would. (and that's not even counting the airfare to Toronto)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
World of Commodore... Held in Admiral Inn...
Someone has a sense of humor.
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Geeks in general have a good sense of humor.
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YMMV
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*cough* "in general". I guess they have a good sense of humor but poor pun detection.
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oh ok :-) YMMV stands here for Yacht Marine Mystery Vessel! :-D
Re:First Post (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, the smart ones will just take that money and build their own box, and have something capable of running the latest games.
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Also, being double sided was more than a convienence, especially for BBS SysOps who couldn't just flip disks 24/7 but needed extra storage for file transfer sections or door games. While IBM PC's took over the BBS landscape early in the 90's, Commodore I remember being an early front runner in the 80's because of decent BBS software and ease of setting one up. It took BBS's from the mainframe systems and let home enthusiasts have some of the fun, or frustration depending how you look at it.
I really miss t
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By default, the 1571 powers up in 1541 mode, so the GP was correct. Unless used with a C128 in C128 mode, you must manually set the drive to 1571 mode to access double-sided disks (the command to be sent to the command channel was "U0>M1"). Then you can format the disk and get 1328 blocks free instead of the standard 664. The drive must be in 1571 mode to access files on both sides, although AFAIK files physically stored on the front side of the disk will be accessible even in 1541 mode.
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"By default" is basically the same thing as "out-of-box experience", as I'm reading it here. Yes, the 1571 was a lot more reliable than the 1541 (so was the 1541-II, however). Let me qualify the statement a bit to make it more accurate.
By default, the 1571 has no advantage over the 1541-II for C64 users. C128 users do benefit the most of anyone when in C128 mode, and users of any other IEC-based machines benefit when explicitly commanding the drive to switch to 1571 mode.
You also mention speed advantages, s
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Isn't that sort of like saying that, by default, a fridge is inconvenient because you have to open a door to get your beer out?
With the C128, the 1571 gave full capacity by default. With a C64, it didn't - it pretended to be a 1541 drive so that copy-protected games worked. A simple command and the emulation was disabled so that you could have full disk capacity. It was a brilliant, user-friendly move if you ask me, in an era when user friendliness was just beginning (the Mac was just released that year
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Nope, since I never stated anything about the 1571's "convenience", merely the default power-up state of the drive absent any external influence (which is not modifiable without burning new ROMs, since the drive does not store any settings or state when powered off).
With the C128 even, the 1571 gave no benefits "by default", to be technically accurate. It doesn't do anything special until the C128 sends a fast serial request. One could include this in "by default", since it happens with no user interaction,
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I even got a special 'clipper' to create the notch. They sold them right next to the drives even. And then we opened up the floppy, took out the grey disk and put five of 'm together in one, so you could send it through mail. Ah, those were the days. You could say we were uploading 5 x 360k in 2 days, which would comes down to about 10 bytes p/s! Without a modem!
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My 1541 was actually more expensive than the actual C64 when I got it back in the day.
Oh... and get your 1581 here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-1581-Disk-Drive-tested-and-working-/190608048217?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c61200059
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I had a floppy drive not made by commodore (can't remember the maker). It was cheaper and faster than the commodore ones.
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Oceanic OC-118N? [wikipedia.org]
Re:First Post (Score:4, Informative)
If you really, really, really need a retro keyboard you would be better off buying a non-functional Commodore 64 from ebay for about $20 or less with $15 shipping then purchasing a Keyrah board from amigakit.com for about $35 and turning the thing into a USB keyboard. Total cost: $70.00. Plug it into an existing machine and load one of the free C64 emulators (Frodo, Vice, etc.) and enjoy.
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you must be young, if this doesn't ring any nostalgia with you.
Anyways, I think it's really cool. It's just a club, to have fun, and friendship with like minded people.
I am not at the level of commitment of any of these folks, but i have all kinds of old computers, apples, commodores, and all kinds of other stuff. i like the feeling i get when i look at them.
This sounds like fun from their club:
- The Ultimate Modded Commodore 64C
Stereo sound, four joystick ports, joystick/mouse switcher, four selectable Ker
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the poke would kill newer PET machines, in the first revisions it would make text appear faster, in later models it funked up the line analog circuitry causing failure of the CRT.
Re:First Post IN THE FUTURE TENSE OF THE THOUGHT ! (Score:4, Informative)
The Commodore PET 2001 article [wikipedia.org] which mentions its chiclet keyboard, pictured here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PET_Keyboard.svg [wikipedia.org]
The "killer poke" for the Commodore PET later models:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke#The_Commodore_PET [wikipedia.org]
I was born before the IBM 360 was introduced, sonny boy.
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System 360 -> System Z
DOS -> Z/VSE
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It was certainly a good idea on your part to always post as anonymous coward. Everybody still knows it's you, but at least you don't have karma loss to deal with. If you stay away from your obsession with your real account, that might not get
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For instance, I haven't seen a UNIVAC-CON announced in a while... maybe the vacuum tube costs got too prohibitive.
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My Sperry-Univac U90/30 had no vacuum tubes inside, you insensitive clod. It was built out of TTL chips.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you equate "productive" with "grown up"?
This fallacy, that when you reach the age of accountability you suddenly must become a dour and sour minded automoton that spends all their time woring, is a very serious problem these days.
Really, what is so wrong with wanting to get together with a group of people that share similar interests, and just have some old fashioned, totally nonproductive fun?
Tell me, mr. "Grownup", what exactly does watching weekend football accomplish? What product gets produced? What's that you say? Nothing? Oh, I see... ok, how about having a beer with your friend? What does that accomplish? Oh? Nothing again? By your logic, you shouldn't do those things. Instead you should be spending all your time toiling in obscurity to produce a product... but for whom?
This is the reason why your post was modded down. Even FOSS developers are not slaves. The joy in creation for creation's sake is destroyed when people bitch, moan, and demand more free shit. Expecting "nerds" to do nothing but work so you can have neat toys you didn't work for, and telling them to grow up when they want to have some fun is perverse.
If somebody is in need of understanding reality, and growing up, I would say it is you sir. Everyone needs to simply have fun from time to time. Especially adults.
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Some people really don't have anything useful to do or contribute to our society...
That is exactly what I thought, after reading your post.
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Yes, because slashdot is productive and useful. :)
Maybe you should get off the Internet and go do some coding or something productive.
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You mean like posting derogatory comments on slashdot?
I know maybe they can start an online campaign to get Firefly put back on the air.
Here's some serious for you (Score:2)
Yeah, Mac fanboys, we were here first.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaXVdwWuU-A [youtube.com]
Satire aside, A lot of skilled folks that made computers what they are today was thanks to Commodore computers in the home or school. Many folks have just have decided that they are still just as cool today.
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Re:Why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
It qualifies as "news for nerds" in a big way. I think you're in the wrong place, sunshine.
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You know, every single article posted on slashdot includes posters who say "this doesn't belong here." This valueless contribution is usually modded down to oblivion very quickly, and with good reason.
Not only have you joined their ranks, with your very first post, but you choose one of the most clearly "news for nerds" articles you could find. I would be tempted to think you were trying to be ironic...but I don't see enough evidence of this.
Wow. That is really a first post to be proud of. Way to get th
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Because you swore at the moderator.
What? You think people like being sworn at?
*shakes head*
FUCK YOU ANONCOW (Score:1)
I opted out of a free, "Don't knock my Karma," option to definitively identify the problem with people like you, and I'm pretty sure that problem has something to do with your misplaced love for Amiga or OS/2. Since you swore, maybe it's Windows related? Either way, fuck you, Dude.
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Back to the VIC-20 and PET age - as the Commodore 64 debut was in 1982.