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Post by motrucker on Aug 22, 2015 17:22:26 GMT
Strangely (IMHO), many US states have/are suffering from severe drought and forest fires (like Alaska, California, and Texas), yet where I live (Kentucky) we are "suffering" from excess rain and floods. Hah, we are not REALLY suffering... occasional floods are actually typical, and a good rainy season means a bumper crop for all the farmers! Hey, I ain't a farmer so don't trust me on this... but if I had to predict the economic impact, I would guess the extra income of a robust harvest would/will offset losses from flooding. What about you guys? A drought? A flood? Rain as usual? It is now the middle of August (22nd to be exact) and we are having pretty nice weather here. I can offer another thread on this subject to help give you all an indea of what's going on: www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57606Yahoo news seems to think we are all in serious trouble with the Global Warming problem: news.yahoo.com/feeling-heat-earth-july-hottest-month-record-150129081.html#But we haven't seen this problem around the Washington D.C., Baltimore Maryland area. There is a member of Lemon 64 who lives up in Baltimore MD, and he confirms their weather is much like mine here in Annapolis, MD. This morning at 9:00 am it was sunny, Partly cloudy, and 73 F. Right now it is 1:30 pm and it is 78 F and sunny. The last week has been like this. Damn nice weather.
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Post by motrucker on Aug 22, 2015 16:53:34 GMT
I know I'm late to all this... but just know that your 1084 monitor can be used for both 40-column video (C64/C128) and 80-column video (C128). Hopefully you can find the right cable(s) from prior posts of forum members... but if in doubt, just ask... we'll answer! We are all here to help, if we can. I actually use a 1080, which is similar to the 1084. The 1084 usually has stereo sound, but I have better luck using the 1080 (they just say Amiga on the front of the monitor) living longer, without any problems. I have found that the 1084 can have problems with the on/off switch - they are actually famous for this problem - and they can have internal troubles too. Right now I use the 1080 with my C-128 in both 40 & 80 column modes. I know there are better options, but this works, so I can use the 128.
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Post by motrucker on Aug 17, 2015 18:13:42 GMT
Thanks for sharing your images Pyrofer! Motrucker, I don't know where you are located... in Europe (PAL countires) then S-Video may be rare... But at least in USA, S-Video was very common (about 5 or 10 years ago). S-Video simply puts both Luma and Chroma signals into a single cable... our Vintage montitors (1084, 1702, 1904) use two seperate cables. An alternative, Composite, mixes both Luma and Chroma into a single wire ... sadly, most modern (c.2015) TVs allow Composite but not S-Video. (The bad think, IMHO, with Composite is low quality: the TV/monitor must unscramble the single wire into 2 seperate signals... and the process is not perfect [thus, lower quality].) So I can understand why you might no like S-Video (not popular with modern US/NTSC hardware, and never popular with PAL), but it gives the best video quality, in my opinion, aside from pure R,G,B. Pure R,G,B is not possible with modern TVs (my USA experience)... closest would be VGA-compatible TVs. You can simply convert 80-column (VDC) video into VGA-type signals, but it is very complex to convert VIC-II into VGA-type signals. Because both VDC and VIC-II signals can easily be transformed into S-Video, I think S-Video is a good standard... in the USA... in Europe, I think SCART would be better... but I don't actually live in Europe, so I could be wrong. I am in the US, in Maryland, close to Washington D.C., so my retro computers are all NTSC. I have tried S video, and never could seem to get it right, so I am using a CRT on my C-128 right now - an Amiga 1080 monitor - untill I get a new RGB interface for it. I have several monitors I hope to use, one that is an AOC LED monitor that should work fine.
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Post by motrucker on Aug 17, 2015 17:57:19 GMT
donno128, I like your positive attitude... (plus the Pinky and the Brain)! However, I am confused about your thoughts on implementing a software/emulated solution... you seem to say it would be nice to have but also needless/irrelevant. Can you clarify? MFM is rather obscure on the 1571, so I agree it is not a great concern/priority for emulators. On the other hand, the 1571 is the only floppy drive in history (my limited experience) that supports 2 hardware encoding methods... So I think emulating all the 1571 possibilities would be great for educational/historical purposes. But it takes a lot of effort, and I don't think I'll find the time to complete my X71 format (anytime soon) unless there is large demand from the CBM community... (I like to think when I retire, I will finish all my incomplete projects... but can we wait? and will I be compentent in the end?) These days I only use 1571 drives. But I use them with real hardware. I don't care for vice, never did. These disks, whether flippy or not, are almost irrelevant themselves these days. I just recently bought one of these devices, the UK1541 which really makes it so the real disks are used only to archive the software for the SD cards. www.retrocollect.com/News/sd-card-loading-uk1541-adapter-announced-for-commodore-64.html
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Post by motrucker on Aug 17, 2015 17:46:51 GMT
Thanks motrucker, glad to hear I am not alone. My problem resolved itself after about 24 hours... I did not need to call... but I still think the Xfinity software/firmware should be smart enough to "escalate" the issue after you try their recommendation (please try again) five or more times. I can understand lame, repetitive, computer-generated messages for a "free" website/app... but when you pay $50+ every month, the computer "diagnosis" should be more helpful... Personally, I like to think Comcast/Infinity does not have many "vintage" hackers working in their software department... I truly believe any "vintage" hacker who gets to work on 32/64-bit systems could work miracles! They seem to work garbage. You are surely not alone. I have used Comcast off & on for years. It use to be pretty good around here - our local Comcast office used to have a small studio where they broadcast local shows from. We used to use that feature, with a show on computers (Commodore and Amiga, obviously) that our local user group helped put on. The Comcast Studio even their own Video Toaster setups, and let us use them, and bring in our own computers and set them up for the show. That was the good old days, for sure. Glad to hear you current issue has been resolved. So has ours. Maybe everything (cable wise) will be getting better.
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Post by motrucker on Aug 15, 2015 14:26:33 GMT
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Post by motrucker on Aug 15, 2015 3:12:38 GMT
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Post by motrucker on Aug 13, 2015 20:06:22 GMT
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Post by motrucker on Aug 13, 2015 19:43:46 GMT
Yeah, S-Video is much sharper than composite. But with composite, I don't see any vertical lines that people complain about with 40-column on the C128, so I actually prefer it... reminds me of the old days playing on a C64 at my friend's house using a TV, but he was using the horrible RF signal (thankfully composite is much better than RF). I don't mind updating the webpage, so thanks again for the feedback. Edit Oh, yeah, I hate soldering pins for cables too! I prefer to buy a cable and cut it in half (or cut off one end) whenever I can get one... not sure how easy it would be to find a DIN-8 cable, however. I am not a big fan of s-video. I want a better quality display, plus I hate fiddling with cables! I am interested in this project, which is just about to be available now. It was initially released at CommVEx v11 2015, but will be (either now, or any day) released to the Commodore 128 community. Here is the information on this project: www.commodore.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12436
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Post by motrucker on Aug 13, 2015 19:27:09 GMT
Thanks for your post, motrucker! I need to investigate your link, but a simple 16MB REU expansion would be awesome! (Better than 2MB hack, and simpler than 1541 Ultimate) [Edit]Your Lemon link is very lengthy... still reading it to understand all the possibilities... anyway, thanks again! [/Edit]Here is another thread on a different forum. This one is newer, there fore somewhat shorter. I don't believe Jens has joined this one yet, that was a big reason I posted the thread from Lemon 64. You can a feel for this project here too however: www.melon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2376&start=20
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