Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-14
|  For James C
Just got back from a 2 month stint, up country, in McDougall... was nursing a sick friend. Left before Thanksgiving and just got back to find the package I sent you sitting in my mailbox as undeliverable. I will try to resend Priority, this time, if you wish
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-15
| Yes Jim
Please ship Priority Mail to my work address that you sent the CD to:
James Crook c/o Main Appliance Center, 7205 West 80th Street, Overland Park, Kansas 66204-3719
I do not know why the package could not be delivered to my home, unless you sent it 'signature required' and my wife did not answer the door when the carrier knocked.
Please be sure to get a tracking number and email that to me; I will reimburse you for all of this (including double postage).
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-15
| Even better
If it can be done, my birthday is Monday the 20th.  Can you UPS or FedEx that quickly from where you are?
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-15
| Nope on the Ups...
Will check on the FedEx tomorrow and let you know. I never charge to anyone, in the past, when we were swapping hard/software, so don't worry about it. I'm enclosing the "personal stuff" folders I left out of the original CD I sent you and will leave it to you as to what you want to release. Sounds like they are crying for new software to "feed the beast" All hardware mods, games and utils in there were rewritten for the Plus4 (not hacked) and in the case of another author, it was with their express permission (let's face it.. no one gave a spit about the Plus4, at the publishing houses, back then on this side of the pond). You will find the permission releases in the personal correspondence disk. I've converted those to ascii for you. All files are Ntsc/Pal compat.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-15
| Jim -->
(jumping up and down with excitement) Ship it! Ship it! Ship it!
Even if it has to go Priority Mail, I don't care..... just want that tracking number so I can watch it progress from you to me!!!!!
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-16
| Will do!
I'll post you a note when it is out
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-17
| Jim -->
Has it shipped yet?
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-18
| Monday..
Sorry, got caught by an ice/snow storm. It will be Monday (20th) before I can get to the Post Office.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-18
| Hmmm...
James, you ever notice that activity drops off when I post? Maybe we aren't liked?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-01-18
| Come on!
Don't be silly, Jim! That must be a coincidence. You both are definitely "liked" by me Keep up the good work fellows, we count on our American connection 
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-18
| Jim -->
Post Office is closed Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr. day.
Now if you're going to town on Tuesday, that would be better.....
Things 'die down' when you and I post 'cause Europeans don't usually have 24/7 Internet access, they borrow time from work or pay by the minute from home. Very seldom do Europeans chat or instant message on the weekends because of this. You, Csabo, and I are just about the only ones who can mess around all weekend on the 'net for free (or pretty close to free).
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-18
| My bad...
Was just a creepy feeling.. must be from the l-o-n-g dark, that we still have, here. I forgot about the Euro situation.. I thought they were changing that. The last time I heard from Peter Hanson and Steve Morgans, over in England, they were talking about "nationalizing" internet access, to elimininate that nasty pay-by-the-minute situation. That was a few years ago, I thought it was a done deal! Hmmm... sometimes I think the folks over there should have someone like Joan Baez singing their causes, of course it didn't work too well here, in the 60's/70's, either... 
Ooops, I forgot about the holiday, it's those odd ones that throw me like MLKjr and Alaska Day (State) Etc. Okay I WILL get it out Tuesday. Probably better, before things get worse and they get weird and think we are passing secrets on Commodore Floppies. Ha!
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-19
| Found some stuff
Hey, it was a good thing I delayed. I was digging around in the one shed today and uncovered a box I forgot I had. It had some work disks in it from '96/early'97. That had to have been toward the end of my Plus4 messing days. A lot of it was music files and adding background music to some of the cardgames... including one for Peter Hanson as the "International Slide Poker Championship" program. I remember I was just dumping my Amiga for a new PC, so I transfered over a lot of .wav files from it and from the PC. There is a nice wav player, for the Sidcard and they don't sound too choppy on the Emus. I wrote an interrupt player for my Plus4, to use some of the Music Master files that were being used on the C64. There is also V1.2 of a SidPlayer that uses the standard .mus files for the C64... man, there were a zillion of those. I'm just up late using the XE1541 cable to transfer these to D64 images. Some of the disks are pretty stuck, but are reading okay in a new jacket. Even got one for Luca, I remember he was playing with os96 and I ran across the source-code for it, that Christian sent me, and the docs in ascii. Don't know if you/he need that. I'll pop up a couple of disks on the gci page, for you to play with on your birthday. Don't remember if they were de-bugged or not.. but they might be fun to play with. Just use 1541 emulation on any multi-part or menued programs. I was using that ml requester menu and it doesn't like 1551 mode for directory work. Mostly I started adding .ted or .sid to the filenames to make it easier to remember what it was supporting. But, don't count on that... you might have switch back and forth on the Emus. Since you don't (if I recall) have a Sidcard I'll sent you more Ted stuff. Run these on your Real Plus4, too.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-19
| Jim -->
I snagged everything that's currently posted; too tired to repost tonight but will try to in the morning.....
I was messing with TEDPaint and somehow got the help screen graphic up, but the pixel cursor was about center of the graphic screen, therefore I could only see the top quarter of it.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-01-20
| Just a couple more
I pulled the solitaire games from my page, tonight. I hope I didn't pull them too soon. You got those, right? I pushed up a few more tonight, along with that source code for os96. There is also a Sam Poker game that uses the Sam speech module. In the zip is the d64 and a screen save and a snapshot to load on your Yape. Saves a lot of bother, not having to load the Sam shell.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-21
| Jim -->
I had downloaded what was on the site as of Sunday morning. I will go up tonight and get whatever's there that you uploaded Sunday and Monday.
My apologies to everyone who hasn't received a reply email yet; I've had the stomach bug for the last two days and have not felt like playing on the keyboards.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-21
| Okay Jim
I have everything that you've uploaded within the last week.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-01-25
| Update to Jim's Page
I have uploaded 48 disk images to Jim's page on cbm264.com. Included are many solitaire and poker games, a few graphic utilities, and a couple of graphic operating systems (but not GEOS, sorry).
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-02-07
| Jim -->
I received a package from you today, postmarked 2-4-2003. 3 days from Alaska to here is pretty quick!
The package contains a SIDCard, OS96 (3 ROMs), an 8501, two 8360s, a PAL crystal, 3 KERNALs, a BASIC ROM, a PLA, some game ROMs, and some utility ROMs.
However the 6525 was not included in this shipment.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-02-07
| Sorry..
That was the only spare I had... have very little hope of it showing up at this point. Glad you got the stuff. Will have the other out to you shortly (SX parts, CD, other stuff). Guard the SidCard with your life! Christian doesn't have them anymore. Now you can play with the Sid supported stuff on your REAL plus4
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-02-08
| Jim -->
You can keep the SX parts. I have decided to use it for another project; the three major boards (i/o, cpu, disk controller) have already been auctioned off. I forgot that you were gonna send parts for that..... turns out that some of the wires were coming out of the plastic connectors and I didn't feel like messing with it.
I shall start hunting for Magic Voice cartridges, to rob the 6525 from.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-02-09
| New one on me...
Hmmm... the Magic Voice art has the chip, never knew that. How on earth did you latch on to that tidbit. I have several voice/audioVox carts for the C64, but I doubt if they have them. What are you going to do with the SX? If I had one to kill (mine still works okay) I was always tempted to plug in the Plus4 guts and replace the floppy with a 1581
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-02-09
| Jim -->
I don't remember where I learned that; I think from a Google search for commodore +1551 +6525.... the SX, if I can get time to do it, will be transformed into a 264D (hush hush though I want to surprise the world! ) with a choice of ROMs built-in.... slide a switch and hit RESET and get a different ROM. I'll probably end up using a 1541-II controller board to control the disk drive, as the SX disk controller board's wiring was severely mucked up. By using a different controller I can gut most of the existing bad wiring and wire compared to a known good unit.
I think one of the last pre-C64 units, I want to say the B128, uses the 6525 too but getting ahold of one of those would be too expensive to part out.
The rest of the Magic Voice should be somehow mateable to the Plus/4 since the V364 didn't have a 6525 inside. Therefore by my logic I can use the one cart for two projects.
Back to the SX, first thing is moving the disk drive up to the upper slot; the Plus/4 motherboard needs the space where the 1541 currently sits at the bottom. But by looking at the mounting bracket, Commodore didn't plan on putting a full 1541 assembly at the top. The space is different, the bracket actually angles outward. Could use spacers I guess, but I need to get the bracket out of the way entirely if I want to mount the +4 motherboard there.
I guess I could go 1581 in there, but I'd want the 1563 ROMs for it..... just to make it more 'original' .... hehehe Are you still gonna send a 1581 mechanism? As I said I only need the Newtronics D357K mechanism, the newer Alps uses different connectors (this one has a seperate power connector like a PC floppy). I'll need a new faceplate too; I've cut mine and it looks bad. Or if you don't have one, I'll just sell this bad unit (the board and case are good) for parts on Ebay; I should be able to get my $20 back out of it when fully working ones are going for $70-100.
And I still think that the Commodore LCD was a TED unit. It has the Plus/4 arrow keys, built-in function ROM, no sprites or fantastic sound, and the matching 1563 that was displayed had the up and down color bars like the Plus/4, not left and right color bars like the C64 and 1541.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-02-10
| Correction to above post
The 3 1/2" drive shown with the Commodore LCD was the 1561, not 1563.
And Jim, I do need a keyboard cable for an SX if I intend to reuse the SX keyboard.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-02-10
| Kinda figured...
Sounds like a do-able project. I don't have a spare SX keyboard cable, but I can trace the pinout for you, if it isn't already available on the net. You may just have to hardwire a cord for it. Yeah I'll just send a 1581. You are talking (in the 156x series) a unit similar to the outboard drive for the Amiga?
My "real" plus4 has a dual Ntsc/Pal kernal in it using os93. Did an article on it once, for Jack Vander White it should be on that first CD, it uses a 27256 eprom that switches like Jiffydos. Dpdt slide switch selects the rom and switches one leg of the appropriate xtal for ntsc/pal... which is why I sent the pal xtal (didn't know if you had one). I experimented, once, using a 27512 (which is as big as the Promenade could handle) and put a couple of operating systems on a chip. It worked just fine, allowing you to switch two kernals in the lower bank and two in the upper bank. The drive signal on the xtal seems to be hefty and forgiving enough to allow up to 5 or 6 inches of wire to the xtal switch. I never did check with a freq meter if there was any drift with extra wire, but I never have a problem with it locking to the xtal ntsc or pal. Let me know how that project progresses.. if it is Top Secret, then email me.
I'd sent Csabo the Elder files from the CD, since you were mostly interested in the Ntsc side of things. He might as well have the Euro stuff (Pal). I'd noticed that SVS was asking about him an his collection. The Elder stuff I had was a fair chunk of it. Didn't think you'd mind that...
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-02-10
| More on LCD and 1561 drive
The 1561 drive can be seen here.
Details about the LCD can be read here.
I have an SX cable now, but one pin is broken. Someone on newsgroup said that pin isn't even used on the SX; I've not verified this cause the d*** SX didn't want to work!
I don't mind Csabo putting up the PAL stuff, since he and Lando are representing the European side of things.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2003-02-11
| Okay
Sounds good, I should think that Csabo should have the CD by now, or soon. The unit still kinda looks like the external type for the Amiga.
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