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Death Wish 3 on the Commodore 64/128

3/9/2017

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​The actor Charles Bronson played the iconic role of vigilante Paul Kersey in 5 movies where he takes the law into his own hands when he doesn't get justice and criminals get off. This game is based on Death Wish 3 which came out in 1985. A friend of Kersey in New York has been killed and he takes to the streets to help the police lay waste to gangs that are brutalizing and rioting in the city.
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​He has a bulletproof vest that will protect him from several shots and can wield 4 guns: the 475 Wildey Magnum, shotgun, machine gun, and rocket launcher. Avoid shooting grannies on the streets, mean street-walkers and the police who occasionally will help you take out the baddies. If you start shooting policemen, they will turn on you too. The upper half of the screen shows you the side-view of the street or building you are in. The lower half shows your score, high score, injury meter, a scrolling police report so you can know where crime is taking place, a compass direction, a map which will also show you where weapons and bosses are located, and which weapon you are holding and the ammo left. When you enter a building, you can fire out the window for higher points but beware of enemies that may come up behind you.
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Commodore 128D

10/18/2016

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​Late in 1985, Commodore released to the European market a new version of the C128 with a redesigned chassis resembling the Amiga 1000. Called the Commodore 128D, this new European model features a plastic chassis with a carrying handle on the side, incorporates a 1571 disk drive into the main chassis, replaces the built-in keyboard with a detachable one, and adds a cooling fan. The keyboard features two folding legs for changing the typing angle.

According to Bil Herd, head of the Hardware Team (aka the "C128 Animals"), the C128D was ready for production at the same time as the regular version. Working to release two models at the same time had increased the risk for on-time delivery and was apparent in that the main PCB has large holes in critical sections to support the C128D case and the normal case concurrently.

In the latter part of 1986, Commodore released a version of the C128D in North America and parts of Europe referred to as the C128DCR, CR meaning "cost-reduced". The DCR model features a stamped-steel chassis in place of the plastic version of the C128D (with no carrying handle), a modular switched-mode power supply similar to that of the C128D, retaining that model's detachable keyboard and internal 1571 floppy drive. A number of components on the mainboard were consolidated to reduce production costs and, as an additional cost-reduction measure, the 40 millimeter cooling fan that was fitted to the D model's power supply was removed. However, the mounting provisions on the power supply subchassis were retained, as well as the two 12-volt DC connection points on the power supply's printed circuit board for powering the fan.
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A significant improvement introduced with the DCR model was the replacement of the 8563 video display controller (VDC) with the more technically advanced 8568 VDC and equipping it with 64 kilobytes of video RAM—the maximum amount addressable by the device. The four-fold increase in video RAM over that installed in the "flat" C128 made it possible, among other things, to maintain multiple text screens in support of a true windowing system, or generate higher-resolution graphics with a more flexible color palette. Little commercial software took advantage of these possibilities.

The C128DCR is equipped with new ROMs dubbed the "1986 ROMs," so-named from the copyright date displayed on the power-on banner screen. The new ROMs address a number of bugs that are present in the original ROMs, including an infamous off-by-one error in the keyboard decoding table, in which the 'Q' character would remain lower case when CAPS LOCK was active. Some software will only run on the DCR, due to dependencies on the computer's enhanced hardware features and revised ROMs.

Despite the DCR's improved RGB video capabilities, Commodore did not enhance BASIC 7.0 with the ability to manipulate RGB graphics. Driving the VDC in graphics mode continues to require the use of calls to screen-editor ROM primitives or their assembly language equivalents, or by using third-party BASIC language extensions, such as Free Spirit Software's "BASIC 8", which adds high-resolution VDC graphics commands to BASIC 7.0.
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Commodore VIC-20

9/10/2016

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​The VIC-20 (Germany: VC-20; Japan: VIC-1001) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units.
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​The VIC-20 had proprietary connectors for program/expansion cartridges and a tape drive (PET-standard Datassette). It came with 5 KB RAM, but 1.5 KB of this was used by the system for various things, like the video display (which had a rather unusual 22×23 char/line screen layout), and other dynamic aspects of the ROM-resident BASIC interpreter and KERNAL (a low-level operating system). Thus, only 3583 bytes of BASIC program memory for code and variables was actually available to the user of an unexpanded machine.
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​The computer also had a single DE-9 game controller port, compatible with the digital joysticks and paddles used with Atari 2600 videogame consoles (the use of a standard port ensured ample supply of Atari-manufactured and other third-party joysticks; Commodore itself offered an Atari-protocol joystick under the Commodore brand); a serial CBM-488 bus (a serial version of the PET's IEEE-488 bus) for daisy chaining disk drives and printers; a TTL-level "user port" with both RS-232 and Centronics signals (most frequently used as RS-232, for connecting a modem).

Importantly, like most video game consoles and many computers at the time the VIC had a ROM cartridge port to allow for plug-in cartridges with games and other software as well as for adding memory to the machine. Port expander boxes were available from Commodore and other vendors to allow more than one cartridge to be attached at a time. Cartridge software ranged from 4 - 16 KB in size, although the latter was uncommon due to its cost and only larger software houses produced 16 KB cartridges.

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​The graphics capabilities of the VIC chip (6560/6561) were limited but flexible. At startup the screen showed 176×184 pixels, with a fixed-colour border to the edges of the screen; since an NTSC or PAL screen has a 4:3 width-to-height ratio, each VIC pixel was much wider than it was high. The screen normally showed 22 columns and 23 rows of 8-by-8-pixel characters; it was possible to increase these dimensions up to 27 columns, but the characters would soon run out the sides of the monitor at about 25 columns. Like on the PET, 256 different characters could be displayed at a time, normally taken from one of the two character generators in ROM (one for upper-case letters and simple graphics, the other for mixed-case—non-English characters were not provided). Normally, the VIC-20 was operated in high-resolution mode whereby each character was 8×8 pixels in size and used one color. A lower-resolution multicolor mode could also be used with 4×8 characters and three colors each, but it was not used as often due to its extreme blockiness.

The VIC chip did not support a true bitmap mode, but programmers could define their own custom character set. It was possible to get a fully addressable screen, although slightly smaller than normal, by filling the screen with a sequence of different double-height characters, then turning on the pixels selectively inside the RAM-based character definitions. The Super Expander cartridge added BASIC commands supporting such a graphics mode using a resolution of 160×160 pixels. It was also possible to fill a larger area of the screen with addressable graphics using a more dynamic allocation scheme, if the contents were sparse or repetitive enough. This was used, for instance, by the game Omega Race. The VIC chip did not support sprites.

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​The VIC chip had readable scan-line counters but could not generate interrupts based on the scan position (as the VIC-II chip could). However, the two VIA timer chips could be tricked into generating interrupts at specific screen locations, by setting up the timers after a position has been established by repetitive reading of the scan-line counter, and letting them run the exact number of cycles that pass by during one full screen update. Thus it was possible, but difficult, to e.g. mix graphics with text above or below it, or to have two different background and border colors, or to use more than 200 characters for the pseudo-high-resolution mode. The VIC chip could also process a light pen signal (a light pen input was provided on the DE-9 joystick connector) but few of those ever appeared on the market.

The VIC chip had three pulse wave sound generators. Each had a range of three octaves, and the generators were located on the scale about an octave apart, giving a total range of about five octaves. In addition, there was a white noise generator. There was only one volume control, and the output was in mono.

The VIC chip output composite video; Commodore did not include an RF modulator inside the computer's case because of FCC regulations. It could either be attached to a dedicated monitor or a TV set using the external modulator included with the computer.

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    Yngvi Th. Johannsson

    Retro gaming enthusiast and all around computer collector. 

    Check out youtube site for more videos !

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  • Home
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  • Hardware
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    • Complete Video Walkthrough
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