Commodore legend, Jack Tramiel, has passed away

As Bil Herd told me, "It was a very special night... very rare...", the night of the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64 at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California, in 2007. Jack Tramiel, CBM founder, was there, making a rare public appearance. And I always thought that there would be another night with Jack in the future. Jack passed away on Sunday, April 8. In the above photo, Jack (left) autographs the On the Edge book for Bil Herd.

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

VIC-20 Diagnostic Cart

(photos courtesy of Ray Carlsen)

Yesterday master C= technician Ray Carlsen demonstrated the CBM VIC-20 Diagnostic cartridge on a later VIC-20 board. He connected the special VIC-20 Diagnostic harness to the computer and ran the tests. The photos show some of the test screens. When a keyboard dongle was attached, the cartridge report that the keyboard was bad. With the dongle removed the keyboard was reported as being good. When a C64/128 Diagnostic harness was used with the VIC-20 Diagnostic cart, the tests would run to a certain point and then lock up the computer. In other words, that C64/128 harness was not meant to be used with the VIC-20 Diagnostic cart. Ray has information on the Diagnostic cart at http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/misc/diagcart/vic20%20cart/ He has not yet posted a schematic of the VIC-20 Diagnostic harness nor its user port cartridge.

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Capture II boards being rebuilt

As mentioned at http://retro-link.blogspot.com/2012/02/various-boards-from-ranheim-company.html , a Capture II board was resurrected. Well, SCCAN member Joe M. is taking the remaining Capture II boards and will rebuild all of them to full-working condition! Capture II will live again! I will keep one, one will go as a door prize at the July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo, and the rest will be extras. I'm hoping that they will all be done by the time of the May SCCAN meeting.

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

The Other Group of Amigoids

http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network

http://www.sccaners.org

C= computer repair carts

While reorganizing the house, I rediscovered the box of computer repair carts that I obtained from a computer repair shop which was closing in San Rafael, California. Some of the computer repair carts are ones I have never seen before, e.g., Micro Doctor's Diagnose 128 and the Diagnose 64 with their banks of LEDs. I will hand these over to C= repair tech Ray Carlsen for him to examine.

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Digimaster 128 released!

(photo by Hydrophilic)

Hydrophilic has released Digimaster 128, his version of Autumn Technologies' Digimaster for the C64. Boasting improvements over its C64 cousin, such as capturing longer sound samples, running in 2 MHz. mode when the screen is blanked, auto-detecting NTSC or PAL, and faster serial loading of samples, Digimaster 128 is used with audio digitizers, such as the Sound Ultimate Xpander 6400 (SUX 6400). Digimaster 128 is shareware. To see the discussion on this program (and to download it, if you are registered there), go to

http://www.commodore128.org/index.php?topic=4162.msg20510;topicseen#msg20510

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Various boards from the Ranheim Company

As mentioned earlier in this blog, I received various boards from the Jason Ranheim Company. There has been some interest in these boards, and so, I have posted these photos. The first is a Jason Ranheim PC-8 board, fully populated and fully working. The second photo is a JRC Capture II board, which SCCAN member Joe M. resurrected by adding an EPROM with Capture II firmware and a 16K RAM chip. The third is a SuperCard+ found in a 1571 given from the Ranheims, and the fourth is how it connects to the VIA in the 1571, including what appears to be a pot to control drive speed.

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Too many RAMLinks!

These CMD RAMLink v1's and v2's keep multiplying! O.K., I can account for 4 of them, but how did the extra one appear? :)

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug