I was quite surprised to read in a forum group about some gent who seemed utterly confused as to how to configure his Commodore 64 and Retro Replay network device. He did list a number of other devices and asked for help with them all! They were mostly network-related issues.
I tried to offer assistance but as he said, he only spoke a limited amount of English, so the conversations via email tended to be confusing, to say the least. I went through how to configure his setup and apply the same principles to all his hardware and networking devices. He wanted to know why it just didn't work like his IBM compatible PC did, then started to demand I go through a step by step process on how to check everything, just so he could just follow what I had written.
Now not knowing his setup I had to make some generalisations and best guesses. I did this and went through (as best as I could) a step by step process with Contiki first, from how to download it, then put the file on an SD card to run the software. After all this effort he reposted the same problems on the forum group again! It was as if he really wanted someone to go to his house and just set it all up for him while he sat back and drank tea and watched TV – he had no inkling to be motivated. I even recommended some beginner's books about networking and he refused to even look at them. I suggested if he learnt the basics he could actually answer all his questions himself. He didn't want to do that, and wanted to know why there were no guides on the Internet to set up the equipment. The emails seemed to turn nasty and I had to assign him to the spam list, (he was also banned from the forum group. And the moral of the story, is …..
Well, you need to help yourself as much as cry for help from others. Most people are happy to help, but you do have to put at least "SOME" effort in yourself.
Now with all that negativity in my astral plane, I phoned a friend and explained about "this guy's" problem. My friend said he never had Contiki working with Retro replay and RR NET! So I went round and set this up for him – although he was more interested to learn, and I watched him set up warp copy and copy files. Result! At least something went in; I was wondering if information wasn't actually needed then to configure the software, and my friend said he had a friend with the same problem, although my friend helped his friend set up, much to my relief!
So after that lengthy intro we have a "how to setup Contiki and Retro Replay with RR net" to browse the Internet. Of course, with this knowledge you should be able to apply the information to other networking setups and software on your machines. It also could apply to other Commodore and hardware – not just the Commodore 64, so it's a worth read. It does go to show that things one person finds easy can seem overwhelming to others!
A catch-up on the CBM prg Studio and how the program is building up into a must-have programming environment for Commodore 8-bit machines. We also have the Contiki configuration and setup guide for those with less hair to pull out than myself. We have a Q and A session with the designers of the ARMIGA project, (you may remember this was reported as a news item in Commodore Free) another Games that shouldn't have been (I really need an award or logo properly designed for this). Even more VIC releases and I am still maintaining that 2014 is the year of the VIC.
"Good heavens. I thought Issue 80's E-Tape was going to be the last E-Tape for Commodore Free". Suddenly things start to hit me, on my 1541Ultimate 2 there is actually plenty of stuff to put on to future cover tapes. So the life of the cover tape will be living a bit longer. I am hoping this is also good news for you all.
Secondly I have had to rush with this issue's cover tape again, due to problems with time. Once again all programs have been mastered with the R-Loader system.
So then what is in store for you in this issue's E-Cover tape? Well, yet again it is devoted to mainly SEUCK games. We have two of the remaining SEUCK compo 2014 entries for you to enjoy. Also unearthed is Cycotics by Carl Mason and an exclusive look at the first level with a playable preview of 3000 Kung Fu Maniacs. And basically that's all.
So what are you waiting for? Press SHIFT+RUN/STOP, press PLAY on tape and let those flashing borders roll.
Travel back in time to 1941. The Second World War is still in operation. A series of bombardment attacks have taken place on your home island. Fortunately during that time you and your family were safe inside the air raid shelter. The enemy planes missed your hangar, so you decided, "That's it.... I'm going to get you!" You and a friend exit the air raid shelter and set off in your planes to stop the enemy forces.
As part of the Allied forces, you must thwart the enemy forces of the dictator and destroy the biggest threat of this war. A giant machine. To be able to complete this mission, you must fly through the skies, shooting, ducking and diving. Avoid the enemies, and shoot them down long or short range. If you destroy the mean machine, you'll find out what really caused the destruction of your island.
In the year 3000 a new planet was discovered. It was very similar to our planet Earth, and so it was called "Earth II". Within 100 years, the richest part of the population of the Earth emigrated to Earth II. The poor were still living on an already wasted planet but, just when they were losing their hope in the future, some young brilliant scientists started searching for a way to clear the water and the air, to improve the agriculture and to get new sources of energy. They finally succeeded, and brought the planet to a new life. In the meantime, the people who colonised "Earth 2" were almost starving: just as their food supplies were almost over, they found themselves unable to work and to produce food on their own. At that point, they decided to go back to their old planet. Soon they discovered that a hostile alien race was planning to destroy the population of both Earth and Earth-II!
You've been enlisted to control the most technologically advanced space-fighter, the only effective weapon in the hands of the Earth-II inhabitants. You must fight against the aliens in three different stages.
At the end of the third stage you must fight against the enemies' ultimate weapon; if you destroy it you can fly back to your beloved Home Planet.
This game is for 1 or 2 players.
It is a tough life cycling from work, especially when there is so much traffic on the roads and annoying cyclists blocking your way. Only one thing for it. Get the stereo on, play some garage, techno and bassline. It's time for PROFESSIONAL CHAV SIMULATOR … Er, no. It's Carl Mason's SEUCK classic called Cycotics. It is a stylish vertical scrolling SEUCK game that has some pretty nice graphics.
You and a friend can control a cyclist in either joystick port. The idea of the game is to simply cycle through the streets, and race all the way to the finish causing as much havoc as you like in order to score bonus points. The trouble is that there is a lot of traffic in the way. Also you cannot cycle over buildings. There are other cyclists and people who get in your way. You can knock them off their bikes for bonus points, but don't crash into them otherwise your bike will get trashed. You will have a limited amount of attempts to get through to the finishing point. Can you or a friend make it, or will both cyclists decide to give up? Good luck!
To end this issue's short E-Tape comes an exclusive playable of 3000 Kung Fu Maniacs. This is a preview of the very first level, in which you play the Master of Awesome. He is given a letter from the Master of Exposition. The Master of Exposition puts the Master of Awesome on a quest to deliver a letter to the Ninja Master. Unfortunately for poor old you the streets are not safe. They are crammed full of evil ninjas. Those guys just don't give up. Using a joystick in Port 2 you must Guide the Master of Awesome through the streets, defeating the evil ninjas. Watch out as those Ninjas are really powerful. Bare fists and kicks cannot be enough at times.
Banana peel – Slide this across the floor left / right to trip the grounded Ninjas. While you are using your fists or low kicks on the enemies.
Fireball – Create a fireball at body height, but it can only travel a certain distance.
Golden shuriken – The same as a standard shuriken, but it can travel much faster.
More levels with plenty of humour – The game will be split into 2 parts, and also a separate ending.
The full game will be available sometime in the summer / autumn of 2014 as part of the Kung Fu Maniacs trilogy. On disk, tape or digital download from http://www.psytronik.net.
This issue was yet again dedicated to SEUCK games. This was done in a major rush, due to time. However, it is time to look forward to what will be on July's E-Tape.
The tape shall be going back to normal. There is already a new exclusive SEUCK game in the works, which sadly hasn't made it to this issue in time. So it'll be on the next tape. There will also be a mixture of PD games and utilities.
Do you have anything you would like to submit on to the next cover tape? If you do, then please email it to richard-bayliss@blueyonder.co.uk or Commodore free, we will be grateful for your support.
Lovablechevy has created the HandyPNP. The Handy Plug "n" Play is a system which features a 3.5" screen with controls, batteries, and a universal connector. You plug in a cartridge that contains a complete game system. The system supports the C64 DTV and other game systems.
Carsten Jensen has written an article on how to replace the power switch in a Commodore 1084 or 1081 monitor. With a few minor adjustments, he successfully repaired the monitor with a replacement switch.
David Horrocks has release another update to the HOXS c64 emulator. The emulator tries to mimic the Real Commodore 64 as closely as possible.
Cycle-based CPU, CIA, VIC and SID.
Seanser has released BMP2MC a bitmap-to-C64 multicolor converter (5 colours). The program runs in Windows.
Relaunch64 is a program (text-editor) for C64-asm-coding.
Response of Darklite has released his fourth pure SID album.
Immediate download of 8-track album in the high-quality format of your choice (MP3, FLAC, and more). Paid supporters also get unlimited mobile access using the free Bandcamp listening app.
The television show shows Commodore 64 games being played. They were recorded with a live chat, so you can see the creator chatting with tweeters and the comments being made. He emailed me the links to put in Commodore Free, so enjoy!
At the end of the third stage you must fight against the enemy's ultimate weapon; if you destroy it you can fly back to your beloved Home Planet.
Game corner is a disk based magazine about new games and cracking games. The games featured are 2048, Arcade Football, Blob, Bomb Ace, Bouncing Ball, Castle Boy, CC65 Chess, Chickhack, Color Flood, Combination Deluxe, Cosmos, Crazy Dog Racing, and many more. The magazine is released by Laxity.
World War 2 is in operation. A series of bombardment attacks have taken place on your home island. Fortunately the enemy planes ran out of bombs and missed your hangar. You and/or a friend are a fearless pilot of an English World War 2 fighter plane. As part of the Allied forces, you must thwart the enemy forces of the evil dictator. To be able to complete your mission – and maybe get a reward for it – you must take a long flight to another city, in a cover-up attempt to put a stop to this war once and for all. Your battle will take place in air, across land and sea. Joystick port 2 controls a plane which can only shoot upwards, whereas joystick port 1 can shoot directional fire. Good luck pilots.
After the defeat in Transylvania of Mozgorioth (the evil vampire in Vampire Hunter), Astaroth, brother of the beaten monster, is in New York. In an attempt to get his revenge on Adam for killing his brother, he wants to kill all population using an ancient poison in the city sewage system. Playing as Adam, you must destroy all the evil forces in New York, and kill Astaroth, who will be waiting for you in the theatre. You are the fearless Vampire Hunter.
Act-Otl has released a version of 2048 for the Commodore 64.
In the game you have to move blocks with numbers written on them around the screen. When you connect two blocks (with the same numbers) together the blocks are merged. The goal of the game is to achieve the number 2048.
You can now find 6058 games on this web page. New games added recently: Air Rescue (Ahoy), Alien Armada, Arena (Ahoy), Bellringer III, Bloodwheels, Codename Desert Storm, Conrad Dash, Cosmic Ark, Deep Star, Der Fall Sydney, Devil Ronin, Dodos Deep Doo-Doo, Flin Flon, Gigamaze, Grayhawk 2013, Guardian (Ahoy), Harrier Strike, Helsing's Hunt, Humphrey, Hunt for Bubber's Bathtub, Invert, Island of Secrets, and The Sydney Affair.
Mini-Mag is a German diskette magazine. In issue 07: Editorial, Forum, Interview: The Ryk, Hannover Classic Computer, Doreco#38, Block 'n' Bubble, Turbo Chameleon 64, PETSCII Editor 3 and a puzzle.
Re-Alienator is a new game for the C64 by Yngve created with Sideways Scrolling SEUCK. The music in the game was created by Aldo Chiummo.
The military base has been infested with hungry, slimy, green aliens. A time bomb has been set to destroy all alien life forms, but you must escape the site before the bomb detonates.
The website says this version was created with the Commodore 64 Pinball Construction Set. The gravity/physics seems a bit suspect, but it's a playable version. Use a joystick in port 2 to play.
It's a popular colour-elimination game, and like 2048, this variation is based on a Flash adaptation of the same name available from here http://floodit.appspot.com/ The object is to fill a multi-coloured screen of blocks starting from the top-left corner, reducing the coloured blocks to just a single colour by pressing corresponding colour keys 1 to 8 (depending on the difficulty level). You only have so many moves to achieve a 100% mark with 16 levels. You also accumulate points on each level with extra bonus points for 100% completion of any given level, which adds towards the total score. There is also a random practice mode which will give you a random layout to hone your skills on.
Csabo has released a new game for the Commodore Plus/4.
You have to move blocks with numbers written on them around the screen. When you connect together two blocks with the same numbers the blocks are merged. The goal of the game is to achieve the number 2048. The game is 16 Kbytes and compatible with both PAL and NTSC.
The commodore16.com site style has been revamped. The original web page was created over 10 years ago by Chris. The newly-designed website now looks much more like a Commodore C16 screen with custom 8-bit fonts.
Association WArMUp is proud to offer you the Chrysalis 3.5.1 for MorphOS 3.5.1.
This pack allows you to quickly obtain a complete pre-configured environment. This pack is not official; it must be installed just after a clean installation of MorphOS 3.5.1 (registered or not).
NetSurf is a small, fast web browser for AmigaOS 4 (and other operating systems). NetSurf 3.1 contains many improvements over the previous release. Highlights include much faster CSS selection performance, faster start up time, a new look and feel to the tree views (hotlist/bookmarks, global history and cookie manager), improved options handling, undo/redo support in text areas, and general improvement of forms. Also included are many other additions, optimisations and bug fixes. We recommend that all users upgrade.
Not really a shock to anyone who follows pop art or the Amiga, you will remember Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol were both present at the Amiga Launch. The Register carries a story about the finding of some of Andy's art on floppy disk. You can read more by clicking the link.
BOH is a unique retro-flavoured puzzle-riddled dungeon you move around searching for the Evil Masters, who throw countless enemies at you and you must then face them in the final battle, various power-ups are scattered around.
"Marco Gregorio's Adventures to Unusual Places" has been released.
The game has 5 levels, 3 of them are location levels and 2 are walking levels.
The game has been tested on A1200 68030 50MHz clock on Marco icon.
Antique Code Show Xenon marked the beginning of a distinguished career for The Bitmap Brothers, legendary developers from the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST era. Overhead, vertically scrolling shooters were doing great trade in arcades across the land, and with its exposure on Saturday morning kids' show Get Fresh (you don't remember Gaz Top and Gilbert the alien?), Xenon was always going to do well.
Read more via the link below.
Buried in the midst of these (well it's item 4, but…) is the Famous OctaMED tracker. Some readers may be surprised that hit singles were crafted from the software!
The Codetappers website has an interview with Galahad. In 1990 System 3 developed the game Putty Squad but the game was never released for the Amiga. Then, in 2013, System 3 announced the game would be released for modern consoles. Galahad contacted System 3 to offer his help and to make an Amiga version. You can now read how the Amiga version of Putty Squad was created.
One-year warranty – If this RC power supply is not acceptable or fails in any way, send it back for repair, replacement, or refund.
Check/money order preferred in USA. PayPal accepted for overseas orders.
Quality. Durability. Ruggedness. Craftsmanship. These words all describe the Ray Carlsen universal power supply for the C64/128/VIC-20CR/Plus4. Though I've been testing prototype #2 for a few months, it has never let me down.
When I received it in the mail a few months ago, I was immediately impressed by its construction. It had a metal, vented case with striking black and white paint. It used a thick insulation over its heavy gauge output cable. It sat on 4 sturdy rubber feet. Inside, there was plenty of air space for the components - a new, modern 5VDC unit putting out 5 amps, a new, modern 9VAC unit putting out 1 amp, and the Ray Carlsen Computer Saver which cuts out the 5V line should it go over 5.40 volts. Everything was neatly, firmly screwed down to the metal case. There was no messy mass of wires, just an orderly placement of the wires. On the outside of the case was one LED which showed the power supply had power.
The power supply had the looks, but did it deliver the goods? A big YES! I've had it running for hours, and it barely emitted any heat through the vents on the case. In fact, the Commodore computer to which it was attached felt much warmer. Whether on a VIC-20CR or a C64 or a flat C128, it never failed. It endured the SuperCPU, a notoriously power-hungry device. Thus, it should easily cope with the 1541 Ultimate cartridge and even good, old Super Snapshot - both which need a little more oomph in the power department. Screen interference on the CRT monitor? None!
Ray hand-built it, testing and tweaking it until it met his critical standards. He showed me some oscilloscope screenshots of 5V it outputs -- just clean power. He also showed me the oscilloscope screenshots of a new power supply from a different company -- spikes all over the place... no clean power at all. In fact, that company's p.s. had such bad regulation that it varied from 4.9V to 5.3V.
Now the production model of the Ray Carlsen power supply has been released. Each power supply is hand-built and tested by him. The production model uses a slightly bigger, metal, vented case than the prototype, because his supplier had the other one on back order. The production model has an improved internal Computer Saver.
I was quite surprised that a user on a recent mailing group has great confusion in setting up Contiki with his home network. I emailed the user and tried to help, although he seemed rather more inclined for me to go to his house and just set it up for him to work. It was as though he had bought the equipment but had little understanding of what it could do or even basic network knowledge to setup the device. He also said he didn't want to learn, just have the device setup so he could "surf the web" with Contiki.
Although I sent countless instructions, even down to the point of "click this enter this", "type this" – I am still not sure he understood or cared – all he wanted was someone to set the thing up for him.
I wondered how many other people are struggling. Hence the article, as an email to a couple of my friends reviled they had given up too, deeming the whole process too complex. So let's see if we can shed some background knowledge about networking and how to set up Contiki.
So, a little history about Retro replay and the Retro replay network card (RRNET) Retro Replay, which was basically designed as a clone of a well known freezer cartridge. You press a button and get a menu on-screen, you can freeze the memory and then save it to disk or tape. The device had some header pins and this is where the RR net card fits onto. This means now your C64 has a network card and can plug into your router. It's not wireless! It plugs in with a network cable.
I am on windows 7 other versions may show less options but the options we "need" will be the same.
The network mask shows what network the clients are on. For us it's just important to note the number and ensure we enter the same one!
The default gateway is how we would access the Internet (our gateway out). In our case this is also the router. The only other setting we need is the DNS server address. Contiki will only take one address, but that's OK.
You will need these to configure Contiki.
We now need to download Contiki operating system.
I am only interested in the web browser, but once this is working the rest of the applications should be self explanatory.
A menu appears. Use the cursor keys to scroll down and from the list select Configuration.
For our Commodore, in Contiki, and any network (remember each device must have a unique number assigned to it) this makes the assumption there are less than 64 devices currently connected on your network. I think this is a fairly safe assumption for a home network.
Now we are done, so we can save and close!
But you still need to configure the network card to use the right driver first! Otherwise the DHCP tool will fail!
You can now start the browser with f1 to display the menu.
The other thing to note is that there are other drivers on the disk for other network cards, so for things like THE Final Ethernet, you would load it in the config program with tfe.drv. Listing the disk directory will show what DRV or drivers there are – if you are using something else.
Or whatever your IPCONFIG command showed as your network settings!
This configures the disk with our network settings and then downloads the disk!
However, you will see that a listing of the disk only shows a very small number of programs compared to the other version of Contiki OS.
You can run the DHCP.PRG to let this configure the network settings from your router (should you need to) if nothing is working.
Also lets you download a second disk with the breadbox twitter client on it, but you have already gone through the basics so you should be able to use this without a problem. I do not tweet so I can't demo this for you.
I hope this has helped some of the Commodore Free readers who have been stuck with configuring Contiki.
Good grief! This seem to be a regular section in Commodore Free: new games released for the VIC! Anyway, I am sure it will make some of the readers happy! I have put the games all under one section but they all receive a review, so this month we have 3 new games. Someone said to me that this year is the year of the Commodore VIC, because of the quality (and not to mention) the quantity of the releases. I can't argue with that. I would also say that 2014 is the year of the VIC. We start with a superb title called Bertie the Ball.
Description: an action-adventure / platformer for 16k VIC-20 computer. It's a tribute for the great C64 game called "Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back"
What makes this game really stand out is the animation and gravity/physics on Bertie the Ball himself. When you watch the game on YouTube it doesn't sink in that this is on a VIC. Some people have commented that the graphics look like a Spectrum game – I can say the game looks classy (that's for sure). Loading the game up on a real machine is what's needed, and to me the game looks like a C64 game release. It's another game (where) if you hid the machine and said it was a Commodore 64 release, not many people would realise it was running on a VIC. The VIC pumps out a very weird tune, it's more like a random collection of notes although, to be fair, it does fit the game rather well, and is actually well implemented. I can't see many people dancing to this, though!
It's a frustratingly easy game. Guide Bertie around collecting items, which sounds like it should be a "walk in the park", but you need to come to grips with the control method and how the timed bounces work. It's all been implemented very well and the frustration is soon forgotten as you grasp the joystick for the famous "one more go." I must have said that hundreds of times while playing the game. Once you leave the title screen the music stops and you are treated with in-game spot effects – Bertie "boings" as he bounces, and other items crash and "boing" as you run into them, or vice versa.
I'm not so sure it looks like a Spectrum game, as some people suggest, but it somehow reminds me of the BBC micro (but in a good way – I was a big fan of the BBC, especially from Elite and Frak). From the screen shot you would think the game was very simple; however, you need to see the game playing to experience the quality of this release.
A cute game that will frustrate and have your friends grasping the joystick from your hands to "show you how it's done" – a lovely addition to anyone's VIC collection, and proving once more, this really is the year of the VIC (I think we need a better slogan for that)!
b) two identical numbers (3 and above) resulting in the sum of them, e.g. 3 and 3 giving 6, 24 and 24 giving 48 etc.
Each move a new number will be shifted in.
While It may not be the "milestone" release you are expecting, Threes is one of those games that will have you pulling out your hair. This version is written in Commodore BASIC, but is (unbelievably) fast, and has all the features of the Apple IOS version (except upgrades, in-app purchases, and oh, swiping the screen with your finger. Now that would have been clever, hmmmm... a lightpen version). Anyway, it seems that almost all of the VIC's memory was used up with the game's creation, so let's see how it fairs up.
Not having any Apple products and no desire to own any, I came to the game (maybe) at a disadvantage, as I had never seen or played the game before, so the first thing was to find out how to actually play the game! This took some Googling as the VIC version doesn't have any instructions and the discussion includes only a brief outline of the game play. Let's see if I can help – or make you more confused than ever.
This is a "numbers" puzzle game. The game starts with a playfield of 4 x 4 tiled grid, and random numbers of differing values are inserted (they seem to be from nothing to 3). You can move the board, or in the VIC's case, shuffle the numbers using the cursor keys (so up moves them all down and down up, etc.).
Numbers not matching this formula will not be moved, so I expect it's just about as "clear as mud" to most people.
Remember, you could be moving more than one row or column at a time, and depending on the direction you move, this could also move other rows or columns (so moving up will shift all rows down).
After each move, the game will place a new tile in an empty space left behind by the action. For example, if you swipe right, the new tile will be placed in the first column of one of the rows that moves to the right. An indicator at the top of the screen tells you the next tile that will be placed on the board.
The game ends when you have no more moves or merges to make.
The game can be very addictive or just frustrating, and from the description you will know if this is a game for you. For example if you can sit for hours trying to master a Rubik's Cube then this should be the game for you, but if after 10 minutes of "cube twiddling" you became frustrated, then you need to stop reading as this game definitely isn't for you.
It would seem (to me) that trying to keep "free space or cells" seems a good playing tip and the bottom right will show the next number (when one can be placed). If the board is filled up you will need to create multiple merges to free up cells – if you're not merging, then you are filling the boards space up!
While it may not look and sound that classy, if you like this sort of game it will keep you well entertained. It's well programmed, although in BASIC, and could really do with a coat of magic to guzz it up a little – but it's playable!
A simple game: Step on the bricks to save your cat.
While this game may not be that original, it adds a new twist to the formula by making you "get the cat." The game is written in Commodore BASIC but the speed doesn't seem to relate to this fact. It's very responsive – you use the joystick to move left or right and the fire button to place a block under your character (assuming you have blocks left to place). You can only step up one block, but can fall from any height. More blocks fall from the sky (seemingly) at random, but the thread says that every fifth block will fall over your head, and every 5th level you gain an extra life.
The object of the game is to drop or move your man so he can get to the cat and save him. The cat is in the lower left of the screen sitting on a tree or small plant.
As the levels move on, so does the height of the plant the cat sits on (if that's what cats do on plants), so the first level one block is enough to get the can. The next level you need to step up 2 blocks etc. and so on.
A decent game reminding me of those type-in listings you used to get in magazines, and although you typed everything as printed they never worked. I presume they added errors so you bought the issue next month for the amendments and corrections from the last issue.
It's been quite some time since Commodore Free interviewed Arthur Jordison about his c64PrgGen application, and during that time development of the application has moved on by some leaps and bounds. Commodore Free thought it was time we caught up with Arthur to find out what developments have been implemented in the application and what others are planned.
Q. Hi, Arthur Jordison. Thank you for agreeing to the catch-up. First, for the new readers – can you explain C64PrgGen and what it can do for our readers?
AJ. Well, first let me clarify things by saying that "C64PrgGen" has become "CBM prg Studio" now, but more on that later. Basically it's an application that allows you to type in (or load from a text file) a BASIC or machine code program into a windows environment and then generate a .prg file which you can use in an emulator or with real hardware. It also lets you create and edit sprites, characters, and screen layouts, and then create the DATA statements you need for your programs.
The application also has an extensive 6510/65816 debugger, and comes with most of the sample programs taken from the Commodore user guide and programmer`s reference manuals. There are also some simple formatting tools built into the application, such as program renumbering and keyword auto completion. If you're more interested in how other people's programs work, it's possible to import and disassemble programs and also import character and sprite graphics.
Q. Is this just a Commodore 64 tool or could all 8-bit Commodore users benefit from your work?
AJ. In addition to the C64 you can use CBM prg Studio to generate code for the VIC20, C128, C16, and Plus/4 and PET (BASIC 2 and 4).
Q. How much feedback have you had with previous versions of the application?
AJ. I get a lot of feedback (not always positive!) after a new version release and then it tends to tail off to a few emails a week, usually from the same people. I like it this way as I can focus on getting things fixed or create new tools for them. I tend to get more feedback from Europeans (Germans, Dutch, and Swedes mostly) but most of the downloads are from America.
Q. We looked at C64PrgGen quite some time ago in Commodore Free, way back, in fact, to 2008, issue 23 (http://www.commodorefree.com/magazine/vol2/issue23.htm). As you are continually developing the product, can you outline some of the milestones the program has now gone through?
AJ. I can't believe it was so long ago! The biggest change (in functional terms) moving from C64prgGen to CBM prg Studio (apart from the name) was the addition of new machines to develop programs for. Before the release of CBM prg Studio there was C64PrgGen and also VIC20PrgGen. As you can guess, they were 99% the same – the only difference was the lack of the sprite editor and SID tools in VIC20PrgGen. Fixing bugs meant fixing them in both versions (which was crazy), and also at the time I was thinking about creating a version for the PET machines, which would have meant three programs to support. Eventually I merged the C64 and VIC20 prg Gens into one and of course the application name had to change to reflect that. The two biggest additions are the screen designer and more recently the 6510/65816 debugger.
Q. Were these all suggested by users – or have you had some additions left out because of time restraints etc.?
AJ. The bulk of the new features added over the years have come as suggestions from users. The developers in the Commodore community know their machines far better than I do and so the requests are usually something like "wouldn't it be good if there was a tool to..." and then I take it from there. The major new feature in the current version (support for the 65816) literally came out of the blue in an email from Bert Novilla back in October, 2013. One feature that's still missing is the ability to listen to the sounds that you create with the SID tool. One of these days I'll get it done!
Q. Of course with so many tweaks and amendments, and such a well created package, I have to ask, will the product ever be finished and development stop?
AJ. No, I doubt it will ever be finished as there's always bugs to fix. As for new features, CBM prg Studio goes through phases when I think there can't be any major new features left, and then suddenly I'm working on something new. Again, I have the users to thank for that. As for stopping, that will happen when I no longer enjoy writing code and as I do that for a living – hopefully it won't be for a long time yet!
Q. It would seem that c64prgGen has really been taken up with the Commodore community. I know, for example, "Alien Bash 2" was written using CBM prg Studio by Tomi Malinen (http://www.flimsoft.co.uk/), and also HELSINGS HUNT-A STAB IN THE DARK A game made for the mini Ludum Dare #45 by Goerp in 2013, and a few demos. Now I know you are aware of this, and a few readers have also asked for updates on your project and even tutorials. How does that make you feel?
AJ. A big part of the incentive to keep developing CBM prg Studio is from the feedback I get and from seeing it being used to create actual software, rather than "hello world" demos (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Also, because I'm interested in the project myself, it doesn't take much feedback either. If I get an email containing something like, "I came across your application and got back into programming after 20 years..." then I'm happy. I get more of a thrill when I see users recommending CBM prg Studio to other users (or supporting it) without any input from me. Some users have even gone to the effort of making YouTube videos! The feedback works both ways though. I try very hard to get a bug fix or a new feature coded up quickly so the user can try it and I think the quick turn-around is appreciated.
Q. The original project was just to dabble with VB. Could you ever have imagined the project would have turned into what it is now?
AJ. Not at all! I started writing C64PrgGen back in 2007 and it was released in 2008. I certainly didn't think I would still be working on it 6 years later – or that it would be as popular as it is.
Q. Finally, what is the feature you are most proud of, and do you have any final comments you would like to add?
AJ. That's a tough one! It was probably the first release of CBM prg Studio (after the name change), because it was the biggest technical challenge in terms of adding the new machines, and making it look and work more like Microsoft's Visual Studio. I'm also very pleased with the debugger – there's around 12,000 lines of code in that baby!
Q. Just to close, do you have any further comments you would like to say to the readers of Commodore Free?
AJ. Well, I'd like to thank the Commodore Community. A project of this size couldn't exist without the support I get from them. I'd also like to thank Commodore Free for this opportunity to update its readers. I still get the odd email from C64PrgGen users asking if there's a new version out soon!
Full Amiga 500 emulation: The target machine is the iconic Amiga 500 and right now 90% of the disks are working!
Boot to Android: Armiga supports Dual Boot and comes loaded with Android 4.2.2, so when you're not playing you can have all the power of Android!
Disk dump: Create ADF images of your favourite games and keep them safe on the SD.
Disk swap: Just insert the disk and it will be dumped. When time comes to change disks, just select the right ADF. Ain't it easy?
FTP server: No need to take the SD off to manage the ADFs; just do it from your computer!
Autosave: Forgot to save? We do it for you!
Screenshot: Wanna share your joy? Give our screenshot feature a try.
Q. Hi, can you introduce yourself to our readers and a little information about your background?
We are two engineers (Igor Modino and Luis Guirado) with a crazy idea and project we wanted to develop. We are from Spain and we live in the Canary Islands.
Q. I suppose for the readers that don't realize you will need to explain the projects name "ARMIGA".
We are trying to bring back the Amiga 500 in the shape of a plug and play device which is a mix between the retro world and newer technologies we have nowadays. It is aimed at retro gamers and people who want to recall the feelings of the old games.
Q. So who came up with the project and what was the original concept?
The idea for this project came to us over two years ago. After many years of working in technology for the government project, we decided to brainstorm to find some interesting and viable project to be able to spend some of our time, and expand our personal and professional horizons. Like almost all good projects, the idea matured in different bars, always accompanied by good beer and the appropriate cover ;) However, the original concept was to re-implement the Amiga 500.
Q. There have been other "similar" projects. So, how does the ARMIGA differ from say "the minimig"?
Anyone who has used emulators realized that the experience is far from the original machine: you have to manage configurations, ROMs, images ... and worse, in most cases, you cannot use the original media (disks, cartridges ...).
As far as we know however, there is no system that does what Armiga does. Of course we have PC emulators and FPGA systems too. And yes, there is the Minimi. However, we are talking about a radically different target audience. In this case, they are enthusiastic. Anyway, they presented the same problems as before, the devices do not have a disk controller. There's the Kryoflux for reading disks…, but there's no system that works as a whole and is truly plug and play.
Q. Can we be clear on what this is, as most readers will think this is just another "emulator" can you explain how the project recreates the Amiga?
What we are proposing is a total abstraction technically. With the Armiga you just turn on, you enter the disc and you play. The system is already configured and even includes a licensed version of Kickstart 1.3, so that it is truly "plug & play".
Having said that, it took us some time to design our custom FDD controller. We finally decided to go for a powerful 32-bit controller on top of our fully custom algorithm, both for reading the disk and for transferring the digital image, which is currently done at 1Mbps.
We used the Pi for the first prototype. We decided to develop the first prototype with this board because of its broad availability, great community and documentation.
On top of the Pi we ran a custom UAE version, more precisely, based on UAE4All (the original, not the versions for Android, for example, which all vary in quality). As you may well know, there's no ARM version of UAE that runs smoothly, so it was quite a mission to do it right. Processor specific and VideoCore optimizations were key for the performance; however, we kept investigating alternatives and found some nice pieces of hardware around.
Right now, our second prototype uses a DualCore Cortex-A7 1Ghz. CPU, with a Mali MP2, DualCore GPU, with OpenGL ES 2.0 support, which the Pi lacked, and also has 1GB of RAM. In a nutshell, just the CPU raw power in this new system is 4x what we got in the Pi… and we are not even talking about OpenGL.
This second prototype has allowed us to bring Symetric Multiprocessing (SMP) into UAE, sandboxing the emulation side from the rendering side. Right now we have to limit the frame rate; otherwise (unleashed mode, as we call it ;D) it climbs to more than 200fps, making games unplayable. We are talking here about HD 720p rendering, with upscaling and filters applied.
The sound side is also "pumped up" and the output is 16bit 44.1 KHz, in stereo format.
There's nothing much to say about the system, but that is has 2 USB 2.0 ports, microSD slot, HDMI output, Ethernet connection and 4GB of internal NAND memory.
Q. So you supply a licensed version of Kickstart. Who holds the rights to this?
We only offer the license for Kickstart 1.3. Amiga Forever is the owner of the rights.
Sadly The ROMs are property of their respective owners and we won't include them with the Armiga package.
Q. The project started as a crowd funded idea, although the money needed to achieve the projects goal is quite high. How close were you to achieving funds target $140,000?
Yes, the Crowd funded project ended and we didn't reach our goal, but we have launched a BETA PROGRAM focused on users who bought the Armiga Beta Edition and want to be one of the very firsts to have a fully functional Armiga.
Q. So you do have a physical working prototype yet?
Q. Although the goal is a working Amiga 500, will other Amiga machines (such as the 1200) be emulated?
We are focused on A500 at the moment. A1200 support is a bit trickier because the AGA support is much more demanding than OCS/ECS and really the market for this support was quite narrow. Anyway, AGA support was one of our objectives at Indiegogo and still something we have in mind.
Q. I presume you have researched the need for such a project. When you approached people and explained the project, what was their initial reaction?
When we approached people the reaction was "surprise" mainly. The crowd funding campaign has been our market testing. We needed some way to evaluate the interest of the project.
Q. You mentioned the device runs Linux or specifically Android. Can you "boot" to this and use the Android OS to play games and email, etc.?
The system has a microSD slot and 4GB of internal NAND memory. This is what allows us to do the DualBoot. In our second prototype, this internal NAND is where Android 4.2.2 sits.
Q. On the finished version, what will be the process to load games, and can the Armiga run productivity titles and Workbench itself?
There are two ways: Choosing a ROM from our menu or dumping a floppy and then choosing the created ROM. Armiga can run productivity titles and Workbench itself, but it is designed to be used with games.
Q. Will versions of Workbench be included with the project, and can any external Commodore hardware be used with the project?
No version of Workbench will be included, nor will there be support for Commodore hardware.
Q. Will there be some software to allow the user to create disk images of their favourite games with the package?
We have developed a custom controller which allows making images of games through a menu shortcut.
Q. So you can actually load Amiga floppy disks? I presume that copy protected disk won't work though so you would need games with this feature removed.
As you may know, ADF is the de-facto standard when it comes to Amiga emulation and so it's our main supported format. However, ADF is just raw bitstream, with no time (and hence, density) information and so we (and no one else that uses ADF) can read variable density tracks out of it.
There are several formats out there that circumvent this problem by basically oversampling the disk, but there's no standard for that. We have our own custom format that is not oversampling-based and, thus, is much more compact.
We are still working on a single format for all the disks (unprotected, flaky bits protected, and variable density protected) and the mechanism to automatically detect them – that's one of our goals.
Q. The case design looks brilliant: "Floppy disk." I presume it was easy to come up with this as an idea for a case, as it seems very logical. It looks like a peripheral for something like the Amiga 2000, 3000 or 4000 range of computers.
It's really hard to quantify the time and effort involved in each of the Armiga aspects. However, from the very beginning we had three main design objectives: make it stylish, make it modern, and make it resemble the original Amiga.
We tried different patterns, orientations, sizes. etc. It was a constantly evolving process as we were also designing the circuits and both had to fit together like a glove.
From the very first hand sketches, we moved to the CAD systems, polished it there, and then did many 3D-printing tests – until everything was just perfect. It's quite amazing how every piece of the hardware fits so well in the design.
Q. Will the ARMIGA come as just a board option – or will you have to buy as a completed project with the case?
As we are planning the next steps, we are considering some alternatives. First of all is the BETA PROGRAM. We have cream and black as choices for the case colour.
Q. Maybe one of the readers is looking at this and thinking, "I could help." Are you still open to offers of help, and if so, what would you most like help with – and how would our readers contact you?
Q. With the crowd finding ended https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/armiga-project – what are your plans now?
Yes, sadly, this project has failed. Anyway, we want to go on with the project and we are looking for people who want to buy our beta program.
Q. Can you give our readers an idea on the project's retail price?
No retail price for the moment – sorry. We need to get private funding to start production.
Q. Thanks for taking the time to talk to Commodore Free. Finally, is there a question you haven't been asked, or a comment you would like to leave the readers with?
All I would like to say is, we have had two main collaborators: Keith Monahan, for the FDD controller and Chui for UAE.
Chui..., he's just terrific. He really knows every nut and bolt of UAE and the Amiga "dirty tricks" and that helped us especially in the first steps. We've been very lucky he was interested in the project and jumped in from the first time we talked.
You just have to take a look at his emulators page (http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/) to get an idea of how good his work is. It's not in his page, but he's also one of the fathers of FAME M68K core and MegaDrive emulator GENS. Now he's working in PierSolarHD.
It's also very easy to work with him, and he always finds time to help. In addition, he's been the key for us being at RetroMadrid2014, where we first publicly showed the Armiga.
What can I say about this game? I was just so excited when I purchased it especially after watching the TV show for so long. My excitement soon left me mainly because The Commodore 64 version is just so bad, it's just another cash in with no idea of where to take the game! The sprites are just too big, and this makes the whole game totally unplayable, add in that the game is insanely difficult anyway, the whole thing looks nice but then the game starts, the main screen and music are fine. Of course later remixes of the theme tune produced some amazing sonically accurate renditions of the tune, but the music was fine for the time, (try holding some keys down on the main screen it makes the music play S...l...o...w...l...y...) the sound effects, were, well just that, sound effects in the game!
The game sees you flying the hi-tech Airwolf helicopter. In the C64 version you fly from right to left in a scrolling game; you can go back, and of course the screen will scroll with you, You must fire at traps to open walls or remove items from the screen that are firing at you. While the idea lacked imagination the games playability was completely broken. Even with cheat modes enabled the game was impossible to play. The almost barren screen seems to remove all realism from the game (true, we have some columns and bits of rock but just a black background).
Rather sadly the plus 4 version doesn't seem to improve things, its scrolling the opposite way for some reason the graphics are smaller and totally different, it's another game where pixel perfect flight is required, but to be honest the gameplay isn't there on either version. The plus 4 version also lacks the music from the C64 version and seems juddery and more like a type in listing.
Hey wait! You say wasn't there an Airwolf 2?
All we can do is wish it was never released, Hide the cassette in a drawer, Draw a line in reality and move on quite quickly.
Hello again! Who wants to hear more about the Stack? We managed a good start last time out, yet barely scratched the surface. Today we're going to continue our discussion, but this time we will approach it from the perspective of a real-world problem and its solution. Larger programs generally keep their functions and data somewhat (to very) organized, much more so than smaller programs. The "largers" must organize in order to prevent chaos. As fellow programmers, you all know how hard it is to find your way out of a large program's source code once you're lost. It can be much worse if the large program needs better organization. In larger programs, if re-organization is needed, often one of the first tasks is the gathering of all the functions that drive the program, and organizing them into some compact, coherent block of memory, making sure each function has been altered to use data common with the other functions, and linked together – as much as is practicable. In simpler words – the code goes in one place, data in another place, and everyone shares. This re-organization is an early stage in the life cycle of the Function Library.
We're going to begin assembling a Function Library, along with a stack-based function-calling engine tailored to the Library. It's an "out there" type of project for sure, yet many of us have wished for one at one time or another in order to make things easier. I won't kid here, either – this turned out to be much harder to explain than I ever thought it would. Much harder. So please accept my apology now for later – when you're looking for a way out. Even though we won't get this all finished today, we will get a good start on it. We'll start today by laying out the memory usage and perceived future needs (the ability to add more functions).
We are going to tackle this using both 6502 and 65816 assembly language, and we will see how to manage the parts of a modern Stack from two distinct vantage points – 6502 and 65816. We use the term "modern" in the sense that good examples of 6502 stack use are practically non-existent, and if available, are certainly not published in a very conspicuous place. Most books have done a horrible job of explaining what the 6502 Stack is and what it does. Yeah, I read the books, too! Invariably you're left with a very poor understanding of whatitis, whatever thatsit.
Truthfully, it wasn't until I learned x86 assembly, which meant understanding how two different stack systems worked, that it finally all started to sink in and make some sense. I then began to wonder why we (the 65x Community) weren't doing some of the really cool things with our stack that x86 programmers were doing with theirs.
Traditionally, the 65x Stack had been used for an extremely limited list of circumstances, and rightly or not, many programmers "got by" knowing very little about how this highly efficient piece of hardware works. As I was pondering this – the "why not us too?" question – it soon became obvious: It was just an information gap – and that's all. The information never made from There to Here.
Today our project has it all! – an elegant function-calling mechanism with parameter passing, return values, and local variables, or "locals." Best of all, we're going to use symbolic labels to make the concepts easier to understand and integrate into your own applications. As good assembly language programmers, we should always be thinking in terms of symbolic labels anyway. So, Note to hard-coders: Today we will be using Labels and Comments freely. Better strap yourselves in.
We want to write a function library and need a good way to access the functions within. Our solution should be something simple to operate (at the user's end) and easily extendable (on our end). We can assume that, prior to a JSR/JSL to a single address (C64 = $02A7, SCPU = $020000), the Caller pushed input parameters onto the Stack (in reverse order), loaded the count (# of parameters) just pushed into .A, and loaded .X/.Y with a Function ID#.
At first glance the procedure to access a function seems fairly involved. However, if no parameters are required, the process boils down to simply loading A, X, and Y, and JSRing. Very little involvement, actually. Parameter passing is the elegance we talked about earlier. But more powerful functions often require more parameters. Our springboard will make parameter usage convenient for the function.
We don't know yet what each function will do – we need a standard way to interact with the function once it is put in place. Our springboard must pass parameters, return results to the Caller, and process errors. We also must ensure safe return to the Caller's environment. Springboard is just fancy-talk describing a mechanism to safely transport the Caller from its home environment, interact within the Function environment, then travel safely back to the Caller's original environment.
First, our springboard must save any parts of the Caller's environment we intend to alter (for restoration later).
Next, Function Locator searches the Function Address Table, looking for an ID match.
When a match is found, the offset to the function is retrieved from bytes 2-3 of the 4-byte function entry.
The address is put into a documented address with a JSR (or JSL) prefixed.
The function executes, then performs a normal RTS.
Our springboard restores any environment alterations, clears up the stack, and returns to the Caller's environment.
Our springboard must act as a liason between the caller and function, so it needs to be easy to operate and powerful, yet fast. The way we approach the job depends heavily on which processor we are writing for – 6502 or 65816.
Stack: Parameters are pushed onto the Stack by the Caller, usually in reverse order, along with any other necessary information, before jumping to the springboard address. We would like for our springboard to handle the entire affair, including cleaning up properly afterward.
Inline: Parameters are placed in the code stream following the call to the springboard address. The function parses the in-line params and the springboard handles fixing the Return Address (on the Stack) before the program resumes execution. Fast, good when memory is tight because of low memory overhead, but it mixes code and data, which can be a problem for ROM or segmented memory.
Direct Page: An agreed-upon set of shared Zero/Direct Page addresses. Information is transferred using these locations. Overall the fastest method, it generally (but doesn't have to) relies on the presence of a rather large contiguous area of memory, a luxury which is not always available in 6502. Passing parameters in 16-bit mode is easy because Direct Page is relocatable.
Register: The easiest (and most limiting) method for passing function parameters. It's just A/X/Y and SR flags, such as Carry, for BOOL data. With this method the function has to deal with parameters immediately because they are (of course) being held in volatile processor registers.
The Stack is just memory used for very specific purposes. When the computer first starts up the Stack Pointer will read as set to $FF (or $01FF for 65816). This is a pointer to the next stack address which will be "pushed" to. When dealing with the Stack we can calculate locations using relative addressing, or as offsets from a known location. The known location is always the address SP points to (which means the known location can and does change as data is added or removed from the Stack). It is this fact which causes so much confusion.
Let's push three "fake" parameters to "dummy" and see what it does to stack alignment, assuming we began at $01FF.
In both cases, 6502 and 65816, we were able to turn a stack offset into a label, which means addressing data on the stack can be made easy to understand.
We give labels to the three parameters, but the assignments given to the labels are absolute addresses which can be combined with indexed, X (X = TSX) to address the location directly.
The instruction LDA PARAM2,X or LDA $0102,X will get the value for PARAM 2 from the Stack, offset from SP = 2.
We give labels to the three parameters, but the assignments given to the labels are offsets from SP.
The instruction LDA PARAM2,S or LDA 3,S will get the value for PARAM 2 from the Stack, offset from SP = 3.
Our reference point is always the value of the Stack Pointer, so we must be careful when making any more changes (such as local variables) to the Stack Layout. For example, adding 32 bytes of local variable storage will add a new offset to our labels, called "LV".
As can be seen from the tables, regardless of processor, adding local variables only changes the offset from SP. So when a 32-byte local variable chunk is placed on the Stack, it is a simple matter to add +32 to the offset value when addressing any of the older data you see in the charts. You, the programmer, must pay attention to which level, or "frame" you are addressing at all times.
We'll set up some data for the table.
First, please accept my apology if today's article seemed long-winded or convoluted. As I wrote this, it became apparent that our subject matter is worthy of many words, split into chapters. How does one fix that on the spot?
Today introduced the springboard, a section of code used for calling functions located in tables. We showed the impact of pushing function parameters (and later – local variables) on the Stack, and how to address stack variables – regardless of where they are. The primary difference in memory between 8-bit and 16-bit is that 16-bit variables need twice as much space. So, by adding 32 bytes of local storage we only gained 16 16-bit variables, as each variable is two bytes in size.
Unfortunately, subject Stack is a biggie. This article ended up too long, so let's just pick this up later? Next time we can... build a function library and fill it with exactly one function – a tester named "dummy." Mr. tester will have a recurring role as our guinea pig while we develop smart things. We will construct a basic parameter-passing system which will execute functions such as "dummy." "dummy" is the perfect vehicle for us to see how "local" stack variables work, and what a Prologue or Epilogue is. We'll probably talk a little about other ways all this could be accomplished.
Next time we will add more to our project. Today was mostly justsetting things up. We will initialize and make use of our local variables, and we will show how to destroy the local variables when we're done with them. The springboard will have some important code added to it, and everything will hopefully become clearer next time out with Part Three of this primer about the Stack. Good stuff, I promise. So, until our next meeting, take 'er easy, and I'll see you next time right here... at the corner where Art meets Science.
Today's Tip is an easy one. I would like for you to check out what a guy named Shaun Bebbington writes. He can be found at --> http://yearofcodes.tumblr.com or on Facebook --> https://www.facebook.com/retrocomputermart.


Yesterday Elspeth and I acted as rent collectors. The Mayor is required to collected a dozen red roses from the charity who run the Flower Show in lieu of rent for Victoria Park. Today I undertook another of the more unexpected duties of the Mayor, namely to pick pictures to hang in the Mayor's parlour in Southport. I understand that the duty used to be discharged annually by the new Mayor but in recent years the practice has lapsed somewhat. In truth the same pictures have hung there for so long I doubt if anyone has looked at them for a good while and of course if they were to be taken down they would reveal a rather obvious need for redecoration. Clearly my first move was to get agreement that the parlour needed redecorating-which given the state of the room I managed to achieve even in these austere times. My next task was to acquire some new pictures.
As many readers will know The Atkinson is home to our art gallery. Over the years there has been an active programme of acquisitions and donations. I booked an appointment with the Curator of Pictures, Steve Whittle, to see what I could find. Steve had done his homework and had visited the Town Hall to view the 'space'. It is a mid C19th building and the pictures that hang there broadly come from the period. I was keen to have a change. Clearly there were constraints on my choice, even if I had wished to have a Lowry or Sir John Collier's Lilith from The Atkinson collection they are too valuable to be lent. Equally the panels where the picture will be hung do rule out some of the larger pictures.
Apart from wanting a change I was keen to inject some local interest into my choices. My first thought was that a past Mayor, Samuel Lawson Booth, was a well know artist. He is in the 'rogues gallery' of past mayors in the ante room to the Council Chamber. I thought it might be a good idea to show to visitors who come on tours of the Town Hall. Visiting school children usually pick him out as he is the only one wearing knee britches and sporting a sword. He seems to have majored on large scale scenes, hills and mountains, Steve showed me his 'Holy City' by way of persuading me not to choose him. I guessed he donated that particular work to The Atkinson because he couldn't find a buyer. He clearly didn't always paint on that scale as he did have a royal commission to paint a picture for the library of Queen Mary's dolls house.
It was becoming clear what I couldn't have so now is the time to explain the choices I did make: There are nine pictures and I will initially post on the four pictures that are catalogued on the Art UK website beginning with my favourite by a modern artist who spent time as Portrait Artist in Resident at The Atkinson, Peter Layzell. I will return to the others when they are hung in the parlour.
As we entered the storage room in The Atkinson one picture at the farthest end of the first rack and the edge of my vision made me pause and look. Steve Whittle had prepared a long list of options for me to consider and was already sliding out an English Impressionist landscape of Ormskirk, I had logged the modern painting with the women in the vivid pink dress and wanted to look at it more closely. After we had worked our way through more English Impressionists and I had been shown my folly in considering Samuel Lawson Booth we at last returned to the modern painting in the first rack.
Peter is predominantly a figurative painter who has chosen to work with oil paints, preferring to paint onto smooth wood panel rather than canvas, a combination which he feels allows him to work the paint a little faster across its surface. He works slowly and meticulously in a small studio at his home, focusing painstakingly on detail and using strong colour. It can take as long as a year to finish a single work, though he may have a number of paintings on the go at any given time.
.Challenged with a question about whether a modern world awash with images of people needed yet more of them created from paint, he asserts that painting is not dead, that it has been a "reliable tradition", that the "transformative power" of paint was something everyone can connect with, and that painting involved an "intensity of looking" that he feels is due for revival in the world of contemporary world.
I am becoming increasingly aware of the importance of painting in a virtual world where computers monopolise the workplace and manual dexterity is replaced by push-button stupidity. Picking up a pearl of colour on the tip of a brush and applying it with thought and sensitivity to a hard wooden panel seems to me an altogether more real and satisfying sort of activity.
Of all the pictures I viewed that afternoon this was my runaway first choice. Once the parlour is redecorated it will hang by the entrance in the foyer. Steve pointed out that the door in picture has a similar architrave to the one in the parlour. I certainly hope people will pause and study the picture when they come to visit.
The vibrant colours- of what turned out to be the spring blossom in Adrian Berg's picture of Gloucester Park- and the size of the canvass led me to ask Steve about the picture. The first thing he told me was that the artist didn't mind which way up you hung the painting. Adrian Berg had a studio overlooking Regent's Park and he had painted the scene many times from different stand points and at different seasons. It was clear that this canvass came into the category of 'too valuable' to borrow but Steve told me that there was a smaller version that we could consider.
Berg was brought up in the heart of the British establishment; prep school, public school (Charterhouse), Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he embarked on a degree in Medicine before deciding to switch to English. He then spent a year at Trinity College, Dublin, taking a Higher Diploma in Education. Two years of National Service followed and it was only then, in 1955, that he began to train as a painter, at St Martin's, Chelsea and finally at the Royal College of Art.
In 1961 Berg set up his studio in Gloucester Gate, overlooking Regent's Park, which he occupied for almost a quarter of a century and where he made the rich, exquisitely coloured Regent's Park paintings for which he is well known.
He was a renowned teacher and amongs his pupils was Tracy Emin who allegedly called him 'Bergy Baby". He was a quiet man who did not seek publicity -unlike his some of his pupils.He died in 2011 you can find his obituary here He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1992.
This was an occasion when knowing more about the artist and the picture helped. When we went back to the Mayor's Parlour we agreed that 'Little Berg' would be the picture you see facing you on entering the room.
Later works by McCrossan, including St Ives (1927) from the Liverpool Williamson Art Gallery and Museum's collection, suggest that she was significantly influenced by the Post Impressionists.
Some people cannot see a picture of Venice without recalling Mahler's music which accompanied 1971 film. I think this will be a popular choice for the parlour.
A still life by another leading female artist. Amy Katherine Browning met and became friends with Sylvia Pankhurst later assisting her in the mounting of the Women's Exhibition of 1909 and during the First World War worked alongside Pankhurst to raise money and provide work for women in the East End of London. There is, apparently, a very useful book about Browning and her work, with excellent illustrations: Joanna Dunham's Amy K. Browning: An Impressionist in the Women's Movement.
She is well known as a portrait painter who was commissioned by Winston Churchill and who also painted his wife Clementine. Browning is a portrait painter whose own portrait appears in the National Portrait Gallery.
I thought that this colourful picture would contrast well with some of the other choices I have made.


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Universal Truths from the Ball Field to the Boardroom: What we can learn from all-star athletes
Jul 3, 2017 | Management and Leadership, Philanthropy Journal, Resources
While ideas and advice from the movers and shakers in your own industry are always of value, looking outside the box—or in this case—inside the fence can offer a fresh perspective on how to be a better employee, leader and generally well-rounded individual.
By Beth Stevenson
Philanthropists build careers rooted in their passion for improving the lives, conditions and welfare of others. The profession requires long hours, hard work, dedication, passion and most of all—heart. If you stop to consider it—and if you happen to share my affinity for baseball—you might recognize those are some of the very same traits you find displayed on the ball field.
Later this month, Major League Baseball (MLB) players will take the field in the 2017 All-Star Game, affectionately known as the Midsummer Classic. These elite athletes are the best-of-the best, at the top of their game and stand out among their peers.
Lessons from the ball field
Fear will hold you back. Just like a professional baseball player cannot allow the fear of being hit by a 98-mile per hour fastball stop them from getting into the batter's box, you can't let fear of failing prohibit you from accepting challenges and pushing the envelope to advance your cause. As a philanthropist, volunteer and supporter of charity, you are already tackling tough issues and projects, use them as opportunities to prove you can rise above the crowd.
Do not shy away from coaching or asking questions. Take feedback from your professional mentor. They've likely been in similar situations before and can help you navigate toward success.
"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is." – Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians pitcher 1936-1956
You can't win them all. This truism is, well, true. Whether you find yourself facing a skeptical board member or falling short of a fundraising goal, this is one of the greatest life lessons any professional can accept. Even when you bring the best ideas and work to the table, you may not always come out on top, but that doesn't mean you can't finish with a winning record.
When you do take a hard hit, walk it off like any good ballplayer and get back in the game.
"My motto was always keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging." – "Hammerin" Hank Aaron, held MLB record for career home runs for 33 years
Teamwork. In life, in the office, in creating a change movement, you can only go so far on individual talents. Big ideas, like big games, are won through the combined talents of many star players. Embrace the give and take of teamwork. Understand that some days your colleagues will carry the weight of the important work, other days you will step in to lead the team to success.
It's critical to build teams that trust each other, share in the mutual passion of your organization or cause, and are willing to learn from each other along the way.
"Building a baseball team is like building a house. You look for the best architects, the best builder, and then you let them do their jobs." – Pat Gillick, World Series winning manager of several MLB clubs from 1978-2008
Respect. The idea of making a positive impact on society is noble, but if we fail to recognize and respect diversity—the very mosaic that is society—then those efforts may be short-sighted.
It's critical to appreciate the time, talents, successes and different perspectives that others bring to the plate. This opens your eyes to a whole new set of possibilities and partnerships with your colleagues, other organizations and maybe even those you are trying to help.
"In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's." – Ernie Harwell, MLB play-by-play announcer for 55 seasons
Hard work, dedication and big dreams can be a home run. It's okay to dream big. Every professional ballplayer started out with a big dream of making it to the major leagues, but talent alone didn't set them on the path to all-stardom. Set lofty goals for yourself, for your organization, then lean on hard work and dedication to turn those dreams into tangible successes. Put in the hours, practice your craft and live your passion.
Big dreams sometimes change and lead you in many different directions. Embrace them.
"When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing … I told him I wanted to be a real major league baseball player—a genuine professional like Honus Wager. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish." – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
Beth Stevenson is a vice president with FleishmanHillard and avid baseball fan. She has more than a decade of experience in journalism, communications and public relations across public, private and nonprofit industries.
The Gift of Scholarship Can Leave a Lasting Impact
The giving the gift of scholarship can be transformative. UMB Bank's Chris Calmer talks about how it is a different way of giving back and can leave a legacy for years to come.
Best Practices for Nonprofit Directors
Good governance will always be the key to the organization's success and sustainability. Northern Trust's Marguerite H. Griffin offers best practices to help nonprofit directors fulfill their responsibilities and be effective leaders of their organizations.
7.11.16 NC Nonprofit News
The 4-H 74th Annual Greensboro District and Guilford County Junior Dairy Shows will be held July 21st and 22nd, Charlotte cancer-fighting block party "Pink to Drink" raised $28,000 for 24 Hours of Booty, Triangle Nonprofit Communicators presents "What's the Buzz All About?" hosted by the The Burt's Bees Greater Good Foundation, and more

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Q: Can asynchronous LiveData/Room queries lead to race conditions? Consider a simple activity containing two fragments:

*

*RecordListFragment: A RecyclerView bound to LiveData<Record> via a @Query and a button which calls a @Delete query for a Record

*RecordEditFragment: Several widgets to change the record and a save button which calls a @Insert or @Update query for a Record
The documentation for RoomDatabase.Builder#allowMainThreadQueries states:

Room ensures that Database is never accessed on the main thread because it may lock the main thread and trigger an ANR. If you need to access the database from the main thread, you should always use async alternatives or manually move the call to a background thread.

Every tutorial/blog/example I found states the same, you should not block the UI thread with database work. My instinct disagrees: There's nothing more I want when inserting or deleting data from a database than having an easy way to block the user from interfering.
If all database access happens on a worker thread one possible order of events that comes to mind is:

*

*The user deletes Record a on the RecordListFragment

*The user manages to enter the RecordEditFragment for Record a

*The background thread executes the deletion

*The user tries to save/update the non-existent Record a

*Boom

Another scenario is:

*

*The user updates an existing Record a from the RecordEditFragment, transitioning to RecordListFragment

*Before the list has a chance to update the user reenters the RecordEditFragment for Record a

*The RecordEditFragment opens with old data

*The background thread executes the save

*Boom

These are classic race conditions when working asychronously and I cannot imagine that this is actually best practice on Android but I cannot find any documentation that states otherwise. Are these scenarios actually possible or does Android prevent stuff like this from happening? Why not just block the UI for a simple task like inserting a record to not have any possibility of a race condition?

A: You can block the user from interfering with tasks without "blocking the UI".
You said:

There's nothing more I want when inserting or deleting data from a database than having an easy way to block the user from interfering

You can definitely change the UI so that it won't let the user do something while you have background processes or whatever you want running. That is not what "blocking the UI" is. Blocking the UI means blocking the UI thread from being able to operate.
Modern Android development, including built in functionality with Kotlin Coroutines, in some ways prevents you from blocking the UI thread by not even compiling until you fix your code. But it's possible that you could be supporting older versions of Android or else not using those language features, so it is still up to you to not write code that will run slowly on the UI thread. This makes it so that your UI seems to be responsive even if the things going on in the other threads might be taking a while.
So, if you need to write to RoomDB or run a network request, that should go on another thread like the IO thread.
See https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and-threads
for more information regarding Android processes and threads (specifically read the sectino about Threads), or for more specific information about how Kotlin Coroutines help check out https://developer.android.com/kotlin/coroutines-adv
Especially, note the following quotes from the Android developer link above:

When the thread is blocked, no events can be dispatched, including drawing events ...
... the Android UI toolkit is not thread-safe. So, you must not manipulate your UI from a worker thread—you must do all manipulation to your user interface from the UI thread. Thus, there are simply two rules to Android's single thread model:
Do not block the UI thread
Do not access the Android UI toolkit from outside the UI thread

So go ahead and fire off that background work on another thread, and change your UI to show that it's doing something until that other thread completes. Then you have prevented the user from interfering and you've also made the app work in a way that doesn't appear broken.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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I was officially diagnosed with dyslexia relatively recently, in 2004. Giving my problem a name was something of a relief and somehow I felt exonerated.
All my life I have struggled with retaining information. When I went to be tested for dyslexia I found that I could remember the first paragraph of what I was reading and after that the information became blurred. This is what seems to occur when learning lines. Sometimes I remember a sentence but then conjunctive words slide off into a void. Consequently, I sit with a script for a very long time.
Theatre and television are completely different animals. The turnover of scripts is far speedier with television. With My Family, for example, a new script would arrive on a Friday and there would be a read-through and rehearsals would start.
On Monday there would be rewrites and on Wednesday we would pre-record the scenes which couldn't technically be performed in front of an audience. On Thursday, along with the dress rehearsal, the whole script was shot and filmed in front of an audience; then a new script would come on Friday and the whole process would start again.
Consequently, I was confronted with having to learn a new script every week, which made me feel under enormous pressure. At times I felt the dialogue was lacking in imagination or rhythm; sentences short and sometimes inconsequential, sometimes out of character. Dialogue is easier to learn when it's well written. For example, I find Shakespeare with his innate rhythm relatively easy to learn. Because it is iambic it is in our DNA.
The job of any creative human being is to make it look effortless. For me it is cripplingly humiliating not to know my lines and to go wrong in front of an audience in any situation. Sometimes I had lines written on my wrist or on a chopping board in the kitchen on set, or on any bits of furniture the audience didn't see.
When researching a character, ironically I do a lot of reading. I've learnt more about history, sociology and the human psyche because they give context to my work. I've always been very visual and I look at a lot of imagery and photography. I also listen to the music of the period - all of this builds up character.
I was miserable at school and felt I had no right to be. My parents had worked hard and spent a lot of money on my private education and I was screwing up and must have been a disappointment. My father always told me I had the attention of a flea and my mother was worried about me. I think the teachers saw me as another creature. I couldn't understand English grammar and still don't.
But there are many people in the arts who are dyslexic and who have many different forms of dyslexia. It's extraordinary how many people have surmounted it without really knowing it. A focus on the arts develops a vital muscle in the brain.
Dyslexia has made me want to achieve more in what I am good at, but I also know my limitations in a much healthier way. However, like many people, I will do the gardening or the cleaning or anything rather than sit down and look at the text I am meant to be learning (which to me is like doing homework).
I became patron of a school which specialises in working with children with dyslexia. At a prize-giving there a young man, an ex-pupil, spoke. He gave this wonderful speech about how he thought he could never be a pilot and he now flies for British Airways.
That summer on holiday I met a young boy who was at another school for dyslexic students and desperately wanted to fly. His parents were very concerned about it but I told them about this extraordinary speech I'd heard and told him, 'You have to do it.' Eighteen months later I heard that he had flown solo.
The staff at Dyslexia Action who tested my for dyslexia advised me to think not that 'I am dyslexic', but that 'I have dyslexia'. I think it's a wonderful thing that if you accept dyslexia and what it means for you, it can make you very determined. It won't stop you.
Zoë Wanamaker is an award-winning stage, film and television actor; star of Harry Potter, Agatha Christie's Poirot, Mr Selfridge, My Family and more. This article was adapted from her contribution to Creative, Successful, Dyslexic – 23 high achievers share their stories, by Margaret Rooke (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, £8.99).


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Online Identity Protection: How to Select a Smart Password.


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Luchi Gonzalez Returns To SMU For US Open Cup Match
June 13, 201911:31AM CDT
Michael RamirezFCDallas.com
Follow@ michrami_
FRISCO — Four trophies, a plaque and a jersey sit elegantly in an individual glass case in SMU's Heritage Hall. The number 9 on the white jersey with two blue horizontal stripes at the top overlooks all of the accolades, staring at the man who used to wear it.
A piece of SMU soccer's history sits in the glass case — a former MAC Hermann Trophy winner, a ride to the College Cup, and four conference titles from 1998-2001.
FC Dallas Head Coach Luchi Gonzalez was the key to SMU's success during that period, and it was he who wore No. 9, the one who ranks third in SMU program history with 128 career points. He's the only player from SMU to win the Hermann Trophy.
18 years and six clubs later, the 6th overall pick in the 2002 MLS SuperDraft returned to where it all started when FC Dallas traveled to SMU to host its 4th Round Lamar Hunt US Open Cup matchup with OKC Energy FC.
It was then where he reminisced of his old playing days at his alma mater, strolling through Heritage Hall, perusing through SMU soccer history. A big chunk of it lays with him. It was an emotional day for Gonzalez, who always loves to come back to SMU for its campus and its people. But, before the team even left Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, Gonzalez admitted his return didn't hit him until he actually thought about it.
"You know, I never really thought of it too much. It's because SMU is a home of mine, it's my alma mater and I have a lot of great friends that are still very involved with the school. And, I get to visit when I can. I seem to miss too many alumni games because of my schedule, but those guys and that program is always in my heart. I always get excited to visit the campus and to see a lot of the familiar faces. It's a special moment to go to my college and do what I do for a living now, which is coach at this level and with the local team. So, it's a nice feeling."
FC Dallas went on to win its match 4-0, and after the game, Gonzalez admitted it was an honor to once again step foot on the field he played at his senior season.
"It was fantastic," Gonzalez said. "This is my alma mater. I have a lot of great memories here, and I remember competing on this field and to do it as a coach is an honor. It was a great feeling."
SUMMER CLASSIC: International Stars on Show at Toyota Stadium
SUMMER CLASSIC: FCD Looking to Learn From Sevilla FC
HOW TO WATCH: #FCDvSEV on Radio!
CANNON: Reggie Talks Gold Cup, Returning to FCD on SiriusXM FC
Matchday Guide: FC Dallas vs Sevilla FC FAQ
GONZALEZ: "It hurts because I thought we did a lot of good things"


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Rajasthan is a state in northern India. It covers 342,239 square kilometers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population.
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WebWritingAndDesign : ThomasOnMiddleTechStyleSample
J. D. Thomas on Writing
MIDDLE TECHNICAL STYLE
Function. A large group of intelligent and well-educated laymen occupies a position midway between the specialist and the man on the street. (Included in the group are many technical experts in certain fields, who may be only "intelligent and well-educated laymen" in other departments of scientific knowledge.) A substantial part of technical composition is directed to such persons. Reports, for instance, often are prepared by experts for consideration and action by industrial boards or public agencies having group authority, and perhaps wide individual experience, but lacking specific skill in the matter under consideration. A purely technical style might be a mistake in business correspondence concerning a specialized activity, such as a phase of engineering, when the addressee is not a professional colleague; neither may a "popular" manner of expression be warranted unless the addressee is wholly outside the industry. Many books, articles, and public lectures bring the scientific knowledge of experts to mature readers and audiences who have a good general education but little, if any, training in the subject under discussion. Efficient communication then depends upon a "middle" range of technical style.
Characteristics. On the whole, the structures of language in this style are more normal than in the two other basic technical styles. The extreme simplification and the sometimes awkward repetition required in popular treatments of science are not necessary. Reliance is placed less on avoidance of the proper idiom and nomenclature of the subject than upon definition and explanation. Occasional reference to a dictionary may be expected of the reader, but of course the writer does not display rare words by preference. Although such purely technical devices as equations, drawings, and graphs may be indispensable, they are not allowed to push the text altogether aside. Nearly always, a point made symbolically is also expressed in ordinary sentences.
Advantage for the course in technical English. The middle style is particularly advantageous for a course in technical English. It meets the frequent complaint by students of the sciences that their language teachers, being mainly interested in aesthetic literature, slight the subjects of most vital concern to the class. On the other hand, it does not confront an instructor with the task of marking papers that sometimes consist chiefiy of symbols rather than of ordinary language. The average student in a professional curriculum receives ample training in purely technical communication, such as the preparation of routine laboratory reports. The purpose of the class in technical English is to reinforce - not to duplicate - that work by concentrating effort upon general principles of logic, sound composition, and correct language in the service of scientific and technological subject matters. Very often, too, sections are not composed exclusively of students enrolled in the same departments of engineering or theoretical science. Through the medium of a middle technical style, members of a mixed group can improve their proficiency in English by writing and speaking, with full intelligibility to one another (and to the instructor), on topics within their respective fields of specialization.
J. D. Thomas, Composition for Technical Students (1965)
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Mayor Martin J. Walsh is vowing to ramp up the city's crackdown on gun violence in the wake of the worst one-night crime spree since he took office — three shootings in a seven-hour period that left four men hospitalized, with two in critical condition.
Walsh told the Herald it was the most violent night he's seen "in the past six months," while noting Boston police have taken approximately 715 firearms off the city's streets in the same period of time — 48 more than in all of last year.
Gross said the majority of guns collected have been through the department's buyback program.
The outbreak of gunplay started in Jamaica Plain at 10:28 p.m. Saturday and ended at 5:29 a.m. yesterday with the shooting of two males on Lawrence Avenue in Dorchester. Those injuries were not life-threatening.
"While the officers were canvassing the neighborhood they located two firearms in Coleus Park, which is directly across the street" from the triple-decker where one victim was shot in the bicep and the other in the shoulder, Gross told the Herald.
Boston police spokeswoman Officer Neva Coakley said one gun was a loaded .38-caliber Ruger and the other a .22-caliber Glock. She said ballistics testing will determine whether the firearms were used in the Lawrence Avenue shootings.
About two hours later, at a home on Burrell Street in Roxbury, Gross said, a man "was in the house with his companion" when he was shot and critically injured by an unknown suspect.