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Post by Blaine on Nov 29, 2022 20:43:53 GMT -7
Hey Everyone, Our December meeting is going to be at the Judith Umbach Library, 6617 Centre St N, Calgary, AB.
Tuesday Dec 6.
Yes, there will be cookies !
See you there !
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Post by Cube Inc. on Nov 30, 2022 13:50:39 GMT -7
I'm guessing 7:30 pm? I haven't been able to make the last two meetings to my everlasting disappointment, but the calendar is looking like I should be able to attend this one. If I had more time (and let's be honest, skill) I'd love to program a Christmas demo for the meet. Maybe someone could break out a '64 and we could play the Creatures 2 demo which had a Christmas-themed intro as I recall. 
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Post by Blaine on Dec 3, 2022 8:45:11 GMT -7
We're booked for 7pm, the library closes at 9 so 7:00 gives us a couple hours.
I'm not sure what we're going to look at this month, but I've got a couple of things we can attempt.
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Post by Cube Inc. on Dec 3, 2022 13:16:27 GMT -7
A friend of mine gave me several Commodore books a few weeks ago and as I was reading through one of them I came across a command that I'd never seen or heard of, to my knowledge & recollection, before. It had to do with sending commands to disk drives - you know where you would normally go OPEN 15,8,15 [ret] PRINT#15,"N0:BLANK DISK,JF" [ret] CLOSE 15 only this command syntax was a one-liner. I don't remember off the top of my head what that one-liner was, but the book is on my bedside table and I could speedily fetch it though I thought I'd posit the question here instead to see whether anyone else has heard of a one-line command for sending commands to peripherals? This was for a stock '64 (IE: No wedges or JiffyDos or anything; indeed many of those things would not have even existed at the time this was written! |
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Post by Cube Inc. on Dec 8, 2022 10:30:42 GMT -7
I quite enjoyed the meeting on Tuesday, and it ticked a lot of boxes:
- Solving Problems
- Working on actual Commodore hardware
- Great snacks and story-telling
Blaine brought in a Lumafix64 mod and we attempted to install it into his 64C. It's a little hard to see in the picture, but the goal of this product is to fix the vertical lines that you can see in the image, especially on modern LCD displays. Here is a picture of the library's TV screen before the lumafix was installed: (Although it doesn't look too noticeable here, in person you could see the lines - especially up close.)
Blaine and AnalogThinker hard at work installing the mod: As you can see, when the Lumafix64 was first installed, the picture became noticeably worse - unusable in fact. The immediate concern was that something was broken or not compatible, but after checking and re-checking, it was confirmed that this mod should work in this model of 64c. Initially, turning the pots did not seem to have any visible effect on the image, which was practically un-readable with the Lumafix64 installed.
After much tinkering, we finally broke down and followed the directions, which walked us through the proper steps for calibrating the three potentiometers on the PCB. Once properly dialing all three of them in, we were rewarded with a perfectly smooth Commodore 64 boot screen: Here is what the Lumafix64 looks like installed in the 64C:
There was much mirth and laughter at the notion that after 40 years, those little lines in the background have finally been resolved! What trivial nuisance shall modern technology next conquer I wonder? Thank you to all who came out, it was a fun night and the hours flew by. I'd like to wish all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I can't wait till the next meeting in January!
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