February Updates
Time is flying and I swear my deep dive back into Commodore land makes it fly faster. I have so many projects going on and so much more excitement ahead. Let’s dive into some of my projects at present.
The Vampires
Work on the V4 has mostly been about building various OS images. I was able to get Amikit and Coffin both working on the V4 SA. While fun, I still prefer to work on the Apollo OS 9.2. For that OS I am still on the beta core 9128 and trying to get some every day tools installed. I guess many would wonder why in the world I would do that when I have 2 very high-end Windows Workstations and the reason is that I want to push to make my Amigas produce these Blog Posts and bask in the nostalgia of the experience. To that end though, I am having some issues getting a working word processor program and it is awkward using one when the modern PC tools are so much more advanced. Launching Wordsworth 7 locks up and never loads. Eventually this will all work out.
As you may have noticed, I am using the Vampire via a capture card on my PC. I will reference that project at the bottom for anyone interested.
When the Icedrake arrived, I installed it in my Crystal Amiga 1200 to make sure it all worked. I have a refurbished recapped 1200 that it will eventually land in when it gets here. I am having that A1200 put in a black 1200 case with new black keys. I will dress that system up with Vampire stickers ect. I will also fine a way to mount a CF Card slot into the case for easy card swaps. Same with the SD Card. This should result in a sealed A1200 that looks really slick and is highly functional.
Next up for the Vampires is an Omniboot Image fully loaded. I also have a Fast IDE Card to support multiple IDE devices ordered as well.
Crystal Amiga
The Crystal Amiga is back to having the 060 processor and Flicker Fixer installed. I am working towards finding a way to mount the CF card for external access. The long IDE Cable I tried g3arbles date transfer so doing it with a shorter cable is going to be required. Maybe the fast IDE Card system can go into the Crystal and if it works well I will order another for the IceDrake Amiga.
It would seem like the second reinstall of the flicker fixer works better. I was getting some digital distortion before and now it looks great! There is one annoying thing about the flicker fixer so far and that is I still have to enter the adjustment mode every time I boot up and resize the screen back down to fit. I also received my Realtime Clock and installed it, that works great.
I still need to figure out how to network this Amiga, the PLIPbox just didn’t work. I might try one more as it seems to be one of the most popular solutions out there and perhaps the one I received was just defective. I am looking forward to getting this Amiga all resealed up and finalized for a while. I am starting to think that I will just keep both Amiga over in the retro station and keep the Vampire SA over with the BigBoy PC’s. At that point I will use it to explore all the disks I purchased and develop a few different CF cards for it.
The 64C’s
Not much going on with them to be honest! Still a score of projects planned though! I feel like a kid in a hobby store and also the owner. A seemingly limitless list of possibilities. I am still debating on whether to transfer the MK II Reloaded Kit to the Crystal case. I still have the enhanced SID Chips in route as well. Also need to Install the R4 CIA Chips. There will only be 1 C64 on the retro station desk and it will definitely be the reloaded. The others will serve as backups from which I can harvest if ever needed.
The Chameleon Card with its dock may move over to the BigBoy PC Area with the Vampire SA and run through the Capture card as well. I wont lie, its just more comfortable on that side.
Assembly Code Training
I have embarked upon attempting to learn Assembly Language for the Amiga. I have to say this will be a really hard adventure for me. For some reason coding and languages don’t come natural to me. This will have to be a learned skill and I have done that a few times in life, so while I know its tuff, I feel optimistic that if nothing else, I will understand it all better. I have setup a development environment now on Amikit, started reading a book on Amiga ASM and am also exploring the hardware side of the Amiga. Many will be disappointed that I am not coding on the Apollo yet, however, for right now, this will be the best way to get started, then I can move to the Apollo and tap into the hardware if successful.
This will be a long journey and challenging! This gives you an idea of what I have been working on for Amikit as well!
The MiSTer
Absolutely Zero activity! Some day when I find the time!
Till next time!
Happy Commodore Computing
EverStaR
Logistics (more to do with Commodore now than Retro)
A good deal of time in the past few weeks has gone towards the PC and making upgrades. I started to have stability problems with my main PC. It was using an Older i9 Intel Processor and I decided to go ahead and switch it over to an AMD 5 system with DDR 5 Ram.
There were issues with the first motherboard I tried so I ended up with a 670E Crosshair Hero and once I got past all the setup issues it is simply magnificent. I also added a 4K capture Card, 4K Webcam, and Stream Deck Plus. This box scores over 10K in performance test, it is sooooooo smooth to drive!
So to close things out, here are a few pictures of what CommodoreNow’s Lab looks like. Of course its not all Commodore, however, I do have Commodore work going on both sides of the room. The multi-monitor PC side workstations are more for Photography work and Ham Radio, however, I also ruin VM’s and lots of emulations there as well.
Yes, I have a messy lab right now, lol That’s how it looks when your ripping into multiple computers! Neatness will eventually happen once everything is situated!