Scan: Electronic Projects for your Commodore 64 and 128

airship · January 24, 2009, 03:27 AM

I skimmed through this yesterday, and here are my first thoughts.

(1) The title is a bit of a misnomer, as a couple of chapters are devoted to software projects. Fractals, including the Mandelbrot set, to be exact. Still great stuff.
(2) There's a very good overview of how the 6526 CIA chips work, so if you're fuzzy on that topic this book is a nice place to start.
(3) All the basics of working with the user port are well covered. He takes a hacker's point of view, using an electronics breadboard with lots of loose parts and jumper wires. There are no PC etch patterns here.
(4) His chapter on turning a DRAM chip into a B&W TV camera is awesome in its creativity for the day, and an interesting read. Totally impractical in this day of extremely inexpensive TV cameras, but quite a hack for back then.

As far as the scans themselves go, the OCR seemed to work very well. There are few glaring mistakes. The fact that the program listings are jpegs means you'll have to type them in, just like in the old days, but it does ensure there are no annoying OCR mistakes. That's a common problem in scanning program listings from any source. Also, the illustrations need to be redone at a higher resolution. It's just plain impossible to read many of the text labels in them. That being said, I'm very grateful to darkatx for scanning this book. It's a classic, and I know scanning books is a time-consuming process. I'd much rather have it with a few glitches than not have it at all.

I highly recommend this book as a great place for a budding C64 hardware hacker to start, and it's got enough going on to be of interest to old pros, too.

darkatx · January 24, 2009, 07:16 AM

Yeah, thanks for the many kind words everyone - it's because of this very thread that got me back into the commodore community again after lurking on and off for a few years. Looking on the finished product now, Airship certainly hit every nail square on the head with the many flaws in the book and quality...

Again, my fault on the first 4 chapters of diagram scans (the latter half seemed much better) - I tried to save my progress and as a result my scans were greatly deteriorated from the dreaded GIF conversion of saving it to HTML. I tried to save it in other formats but at the end of the day I need to get a proper word processor to do the job...heck I need to get something better than the OCR software I currently have - it's over 10 years old...LOL. This was a definitely a learning experience for me, but my main failing was patience...I just fell into the 'get it done at whatever the cost' mindset and that is what hurt the quality. For that folks I'm sorry...

Yet, I have all the original pages scanned at 300 dpi which gives me a pixel ratio of almost 2000 * 1500 so I could always go back to it later on and improve the quality much more after I'm finished my next project I'm currently working on now.

And hey thank Mr. Smith here for getting the ball rolling, I even used his cover scan for this PDF...so thanks a lot man you truly started this community effort.

RobertB · January 24, 2009, 07:59 AM

Quote from: darkatx on January 24, 2009, 07:16 AM...my main failing was patience...I just fell into the 'get it done at whatever the cost' mindset and that is what hurt the quality. For that folks I'm sorry...

No reason to be sorry. I'm happy with whatever is there.

That was a long download,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
Catch the Fatman and Circuit Girl at
http://vimeo.com/jeri

airship · January 24, 2009, 09:11 AM

Likewise. I appreciate very much the effort you put into this. It's much more important to have it than to wait years and never get it.

And please forgive my style. I'm an old magazine reviewer, so I have a tendency to be a bit brutal, even when I really like something.

megabit · January 24, 2009, 10:17 AM

QuoteAnd please forgive my style. I'm an old magazine reviewer, so I have a tendency to be a bit brutal, even when I really like something.

Are you getting warmed up for my project? :laugh:

Dan...

airship · January 27, 2009, 03:18 AM

Real soon now, Dan. At least the USPO finally delivered it!

See your messages.

darkatx · January 29, 2009, 05:06 AM

Since it's under the same umbrella of the book - found this in my dad's basement.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/c64kybrd.pdf

How to create and add a music keyboard or create an adapter for an existing synthesizer keyboard to the commodre 64. The code came out a bit light but it's pretty straightforward.

airship · January 29, 2009, 05:25 AM

I'd like this better as a continuous slide controller, as in the venerable PAIA Gnome synthesizer.

SmallCleverDinosaur · January 29, 2009, 07:23 AM

Quote from: darkatx on January 29, 2009, 05:06 AM
Since it's under the same umbrella of the book - found this in my dad's basement.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2...4kybrd.pdf

How to create and add a music keyboard or create an adapter for an existing synthesizer keyboard to the commodre 64. The code came out a bit light but it's pretty straightforward.

I can't get the file, the link just takes me to the fileden homepage

darkatx · January 29, 2009, 02:43 PM

I'm fixed the link now

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/c64kybrd.pdf

Try this out..and the reason why I posted it was it seemed to be open to exploring and expanding the music project. Lot's of room for novel ideas for interfacing with the SID.

Definitely a good read none-the-less...if it stops working then I'll report it later on in the day...Fileden might do another reset in the next 24 hours or so.

SmallCleverDinosaur · January 29, 2009, 06:03 PM

Quote from: darkatx on January 29, 2009, 02:43 PM
I'm fixed the link now

Now it worked much better, thank you