If you have an interest in the Commodore 64 (C64), SX-64 and Commodore 128 (C128) and all the various hardware that comes with that, like 1541 disk drives, modems, 1702 monitors, etc, then the Commodore Computer Club and Users Group is for you.
We also discuss the Commodore Amiga, VIC-20, Commodore 16 (C16), Plus/4, CBM PET and even the C64 Direct-to-TV (C64DTV) designed by Jeri Ellsworth. If it’s Commodore related, we discuss it at our meetings.
The goal of the club is to have monthly meetings and discuss cool things that are still happening in the scene as well as share project ideas or concepts and to inspire each other for new ones.
In May of 2011 we started the Retro Computing Club as a “sister” club to compliment and cover other vintage computers like Apple, Atari, IBM PC, Tandy, Texas Instruments, Macintosh and more along with video game consoles like Nintendo, Vectrex, Sega, etc.
Like any self-respecting user group, their resources page is well populated.
Keir Fraser’s Greaseweazle is a project for versatile floppy drive control over USB. By extracting the raw flux transitions from a drive, any diskette format can be captured and analyzed - PC, Amiga, Amstrad, PDP-11, many older electronic musical instruments, and industrial equipment. The Greaseweazle also supports writing to floppy disks. The design is fully open and comes with no license encumberment.
A companion code library, Disk-Utilities, converts between flux images and multiple, standardized floppy disk image file formats. These can then be used in hardware floppy emulators, like the Gotek or FlashFloppy, or as disk images in hundreds of pure software emulators.
Very inexpensive! $30us!
The FluxEngine is a very cheap USB floppy disk interface capable of reading and writing exotic non-PC floppy disk formats. It allows you to use a conventional PC drive to accept Amiga disks, CLV Macintosh disks, bizarre 128-sector CP/M disks, and other weird and bizarre formats. (Although not all of these are supported yet. I could really use samples.)
The hardware consists of a single, commodity part with a floppy drive connector soldered onto it. No ordering custom boards, no fiddly surface mount assembly, and no fuss: nineteen simpler solder joints and you’re done. You can make one for $15 (plus shipping).
Github: https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine
I might even have the board it requires in my drawers someplace. It looks suspiciously familiar.
As I haven't found a good source on archiving your personal collection of Atari software on floppy disk, I documented my own progress, so others might benefit from it.
I started looking for methods to copy my floppies to a PC so that when my 1050(s) break down, I still have some of my source code, letters, games, etc. As I only have recent hardware in the form of Apple, PC (intel) 'antiques' - albeit almost 20 years younger than my atari's - laptops from Y2k or a little bit more recent and several 'embedded' stuff in the form of Arduino and Raspberry Pi's, I started this journey by looking into the various methods that are available to hook up one of the aforementioned devices to my Atari and 1050 setup so I could start archiving.
This repo contains the PDF book The Cyber Plumber's Handbook - The definitive guide to Secure Shell (SSH) tunneling, port redirection, and bending traffic like a boss. The book was first published in October 2018 for purchase, but now I'm providing it for FREE to anyone interested in learning more about the magic of SSH tunnels and port redirection.
Repo contains the PDF for download. CC-BY-NCv4
The service offers an endpoint that reads a string input and parses it. it decodes the base64 encoding and interprets it by breaking it down into smaller statements and solved following the order of precedence. It returns either an HTTP error code, or a solution to the calculation in JSON form.
Ideal for use in a faas container.
AIDE is a tool for monitoring file system changes. It can be used to detect unauthorized monitored files and directories. AIDE was written to be a simple and free alternative to Tripwire.
Much more lightweight than the more commonly used solutions for this problem these days.
Packaged by just about every distro these days.
How to use rossumur/esp_8_bit's atr_image_explorer.html file to explore the contents of ATR disk images and disassemble the files.
Atari 8 bit computers, NES and SMS game consoles on your TV with nothing more than a ESP32 and a sense of nostalgia. Simple schematic to rig up video and audio outputs to connect to a television.
Emulates the Atari 400/800, XL, XEGS, 5200, NES, Sega Master System, and Game Gear. Controllers and keyboards must be Bluetooth enabled so that they can connect to the ESP32.
Most interestingly, it has an HTML-with-Javascript page (https://github.com/rossumur/esp_8_bit/blob/master/atr_image_explorer.htm) that stands alone which implements a drag-and-drop .atr image explorer/binary disassembler.
Public REST API to track JWST's current status
API data source: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
Public endpoint: https://api.jwst-hub.com
A list of command line tools for manipulating structured text data.
A carefully curated list of CSV-related tools and resources
CSV remains the most futuristic data format from the distant past.
XML has risen and fallen. JSON is just a flash in the pan. YAML is a poisoned chalice. CSV will outlast them all.
When the final cockroach breathes her last breath, her dying act will be to scratch her date of death in a CSV file for posterity.
I offer the most common X cables that Joe Forster/STA lists on his site, not the X adapters as I have no ability to make the PC boards required. Special cables not listed below will be considered on a case by case basis and if I have the parts to build them.
The prices for the cables are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping. The cable costs vary as each one contains different components and take different amounts of time to build. Shipping is typically $7 for one cable in a bubble-wrap envelope and multiple cables would mean a different shipping container and higher costs. Since I have no shopping basket, e-finance capability or ordering page, please email me with your orders. All of my cables are verified working under DOS, and are tested using various drives with the latest ROM versions and/or JiffyDOS.
The main goal of this project is to archive pristine versions of original Commodore 64 software, including copy protection. A secondary goal and benefit of this will be to catalog and document all the different copy protection methods used. This information will be used to improve emulation, as well as allow remastering of the software onto new disks for you to enjoy on the real thing.
They sell new hardware for classic 8-bits, including flash cards, hardware programmers, and interfaces.