Jazzcat started a cracker's map. He collected information about the well known cracking groups and their members. You can read about how they started, what they did and why they are remembered. The information is dug-up from the depths of times, but also directly from the people involved.

In the month January you can enter the RetroChallenge 2012 competition. You can submit anything that has to do with computers from the pre-Pentium era. Everything is allowed, hardware project, programs, multi media etc. Visit the RetroChallenge web page for more details.

C and A Fan is a Polish .pdf magazine including a diskette. In this edition the following articles: Editorial, News, Contest, Let's play like in the old days, Universal Cartridge, Interviews with Commer'em and Michael Tomczyk (Home Computer Wars), C64 SID file, Silesia Party V, Amiga Local Weather, Multimedia in Arosa, PPA 4-6, Commodore MAX Machine and the pongs 2000K and 3000H.

Unseen (Ingo Korb) has released a new version of the sd2iec firmware. Changes in this version: Improved the raw directory generation. An improved emulation when fast loaders are disabled. ULoad M3 automatically exits when ATN becomes active. And a new fast loader - ELoad v1 (EasyProg) - is implemented. The sd2iec is a controller / interface system that makes it possible to use SD memory cards as a storage device on the CBM serial bus.

Arthur Jordison released a new version of CBM prg Studio. Changes in this version: Dockable windows, assembler macros, local labels and some zero page optimizations. This is a beta version, if you find an error, please contact Arthur.

A new edition of the German pdf magazine Lotek64 is now available. The articles in this edition: News, Prince of Persia - C64, Covert Action, Rise and Fall of Commodore, Kunst, Coder und Maschine, Commodore-Weihnachtsfeiern, Super Wario Land, Psycho Waluigi, Atari Force Comics, Interview mit dem Colasoft-Gründer, Hobby und Elektronik 2011, Vier Fäuste, acht Bit: C64-Prügelspielspecial, Commander Keen and Chipmusik.

The Rear Admiral ThunderDrive is now available for sale. It is a modern replica of the CMD HD. It gives you up to 4 GByte of storage with 1541, 1571 and 1581 partition capability. Besides a serial interface it has also a parallel interface and an a external SCSI connection. Visit the ThunderDrive web page for more pictures and information.

You can now read more than 180 interviews on the Recollection web page. The interviews are from older disk magazines and include a photo. A few examples are: Antitrack, Bacchus, Deff, EVS, Gremlin, HCL, iAN CooG, Jeroen Tel, King Fisher, Laxity, Mermaid, Orc, Puterman, Reyn Owehand, Skate, Tristan, Vizz and Zapp. And there will be more interviews added in the future.

Highretrogamelord89 has a YouTube video channel where you can see many videos of retro games. He plays games from the Apple II, DOS, Atari 2600, PC and now also games from the Commodore PET / CBM. A few examples are: Battleship, Bart, Atlantic Patrol, Artillery, Ambush!, Andriod Nim, Acey-deucey, 17 und 4, Arrow, etc.

Edition 57 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64, html and Ebook magazine is now available. In this edition the following: Editorial, Readers comments, News: The Last VIC, DualSID - C64, Commodore OS Vision, ACE128TOS, Beret - a 2D Puzzle-Platformer, FCUG Meeting - Bil Herd, TAPClean, Hand BASIC, Commodore 64 GS (Games System), C64GS Bundled Cart Games Review: Fiendish Freddy's Big Top o' Fun, Flimbo's quest, Klax and International Soccer. Slide Review and the Golden Age of Video Games.

Protovison was founded in 1996 and is now 15 years old. For this occasion, the 4 Player Games Compilation (Bomb Mania, Tanks 3000, Hockey Mania and Team Patrol) is now available for a special price. Other news from Protovision: Redesigned website, Jim Slim on 3.5" available. Jim Slim played through. Freelance helpers and members wanted. Pricelist updated.

The 6502 microprocessor was developed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. The chip was used in many computers like the Commodore PET, CBM and VIC-20, Atari, BBC, Apple etc. If you want to build your own computer with a 6502 you should look at the latest project from Blondihacks.

Demonstration video of the 6502 computer project.

You can now vote in the Minigame compo 2011. The categories are: 1, 2 and 4 kByte. You can vote for number 1,2 and 3 in each category and leave a comment if you want. The games for Commodore are: "Stop Stones" by Charles Grey (C64), "The Keep" by Kweepa (VIC20) and "Fickle" by Malcolm Tyrell (VIC-20). Other systems in the competition are Odyssey2 / Videopac, ZX 81 / Spectrum and the Oric Computer.

Edition 56 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64, html and Ebook magazine is now available. In this edition the following: Editorial, Readers comments, News: Theatre of War II: The Pacific, Amiga It's a Knockout!, Plus/4 - SID Chip, Chameleon, Slide, Out Space, Commodore eBook, P1565 Project, Retrogaming Times Monthly #90, CBM Command, CrossCrabTris 1.0, Jack 2.4, Commodore Video Collection, CBM PRG Studio v1.6.0, Komoda 5, USB Joystick Adapter, c128.com, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4, Mini SD 1541 Drive, Cinnamon Writer, Interview with Roberto Dillon, Reviews: Out Space and Prince of Persia.

Return magazine is a German print magazine about the 8-bit computers from A like Atari to Z like the ZX Spectrum. In this edition: Prince of Persia for C64, Forbidden Forest, Commodore 16, Rambo Grafix Compo, Joust, Joy and Mouse adapter for Atariport, NEC Super Grafx, Alien Crush for PC Engine, Virtual world: Alternate Reality, Epoch / Yenos Super Cassette Vision, The MSX standard (Part 2), Sega Power Strike 2, News, calendar and events.

In this English pdf and html magazine about the retro gaming computers the following articles: Interviews with Grant Thienemann and Brandon Cobb. CoCoLicious! AstroDodge. Christmas Craze. Commodore Du Jour - Toy Bizarre. Apple II Incider - Street Sports Basketball. Super Mario Bros. 3 MAME Reviews. A Better Christmas List Then Or Now. A Pixelated 21st Century and more!

The Flyer Internet Modem is a new hardware device for the Commodore 8 bit computer. The device is a disk drive emulator that is connected to the internet. You can store a disk inside the Flyer or online in the "cloud". The Flyer has a IEC and a IEEE-488 interface and supports a wide range of Commodore computers: PET / CBM, VIC-20, C16, Plus/4, C64 and the C128. The popular disk images D64, D71 and D81 are supported.

The mailing list of the CBM-hackers is used by 8-bit Commodore enthusiast for technical questions about the Commodore computers and peripherals. There is now a website available that gives you the possibility to search in this large archive of technical information. The archive holds all 16000 mailing-list messages from 1998 until now.

The title of the BitJam podcats number 144 is "Mitch and Dane". In this BitJam the following music: Dazzler, Listen And Learn, Archangel, Escape From Reality, Smashing, Morphing, Break The Cycle, Melissa D, Mashiare, Bondage II Intro, Dirty Pair, Lois Lane, The End, Crush, Live Forever, Bus, In Your Bed, Vertigo and Orbital. Playtime: 45:18min.

And for the CPC fans there is the BitJam #143.

The ZoomFloppy device can be used to read or write diskettes with a real Commodore disk drive and a modern PC via USB. A new project makes it possible to use ZoomFloppy to read and write cassettes with a datassette and a PC. Specifications: 16MHz sampling rate, CAP / TAP file format, C64, C16, VIC-20 and experimental Spectrum48K support. The project is in a Beta phase and you can send in your feedback to the developer.

Stefan is working on a replica of the Commodore 1565 disk drive for the C65. If production is not too expensive, a real item will be created. The original prototype can only be used with a C65, and the C65 needs a 8 pin 1565 floppy-port and a late version of the FDC F011 Floppy Disk Controller chip. The project is not finished yet but you can already see the 3D drawings of the 1565.

Commodore OS Vision is a Linux operating system for Commodore enthusiasts based on Linux Mint. Its look is inspired by the Commodore 64 and the Commodore Amiga Workbench, but with a modern appearance. The OS includes many other programs: Games (FPS, Racing, Retro etc.), Firefox, Chromium, LibreOffice, Scribus, GIMP, Blender, OpenShot, Cinellera, Ardour, Audacity and many more.

Introduction video for Commodore OS Vision.

TOSEC has been updated. TOSEC, or The Old School Emulation Center, is a group of people dedicated to the preservation of games and other programs for home computer and console systems. In this update: 174 new, 292 updated and 64 removed.

TAPClean is a Commodore tape preservation / restoration tool. It will check, repair, and remaster Commodore 64 and VIC 20 TAP or DC2N DMP files (tape images). Changes in this version: Improvements on the following loaders: Power Load, Gremlin F2, Visiload, Aces, Anirog, Atlantis, Burner, Chr, Firebird, Flashload, Hitec, Hitload, Ikloader, Jetload and Microload. Improvements on the file search function for Linux/Unix. The PRG filename now contains a block index for quick cross-reference.

Edition 55 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64, html and Ebook magazine is now available. In this edition the following: Editorial, Readers comments, News: Cottonwood BBS update, ImageFX, Prince of Persia, SID Symphony II, Bit Fox - Plus/4, NST Audio Extension, Dunjon Battler, Edge Grinder, Red Wizard Island - Amiga, Swords - Plus/4, Takeover - VIC20, Commodore Games Walk-Through, Micro-SD Card - PET, Fairy Well Preview, Dunjon Battler and a interview with Tokra.

Arthur Jordison released a new version of CBM prg Studio. Changes in this version: Improvements to the screen designer for the C64. Removed some errors in the VIC-20 section. And there is now support for the C128 with BASIC 7.

Payton Byrd released a new version of CBM Command. New features are: Support for CMD partitions and sd2iec's disk images. CBM 8050 and CBM 8250 (SFD-1001) disk copier. Improved help file. Better support for RELative files. Better layout for the VIC-20 screens and many other improvements.

Demonstration video of CBM Command.

In this English pdf and html magazine about the retro gaming computers the following articles: CoCoLicious! Apple II Incider, Gaming Tetralogies, Retro Collecting 101, Move 1 Space Forward - Q*Bert The Board Game, Bewitched Brews, Beyond The Plastic, Commodore Du Jour - Mail Order Monsters, Dual Perspective, MAME Reviews, Standalone Spew, A Pixelated 21st Century and more.

Bil Herd started a new web page. Bil worked, in the eighties, for Commodore and was the man responsible for C16, Plus/4, C128 and the C64 LCD. On this web page you can find information about commodore, news, videos, downloads, electronics, science and technology. There is a forum and you can start your own blog on the C128.com web page.

For the HxC floppy emulator is new firmware available. The HxC floppy emulator is a replacement of a 3.5 inch disk-drive in for example an Amiga or a Atari ST. With this device you can connect the original floppy controller in the computer to a SD memory card or a USB port on a PC. Recent changes in the firmware: File support for: .imz, .ghk, Roland W30, .krz, .ede, .sap and .ldf. Improvements for Oric, TI99/4A, Atari ST, Ensoniq SQ-80, CPC, Spectrum and MSX.

Radio Paralax is an Internet radio station with original or remixed music from computer games. The music is from the demo scene, from the C64, Amiga, NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive, Playstation etc. On the Radio Paralax web page you can also find a forum (German / English), chat, play list, program guide and downloads.

In this English pdf and html magazine about the retro gaming computers the following articles: Your Mom Was Wrong!, Retrogaming Turntable, Retro Collecting 101, Gaming Tetralogies, MAME Reviews, Commodore Du Jour - The Castles Of Dr. Creep, Apple II Incider, Vectrexenstein, Dual Perspective, NES'cade, The Pixelated Mage, A Pixelated 21st Century and more.

Edition 54 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64, html and Ebook magazine is now available. In this edition the following: News. 8 Bit Jungle music disk for Amiga. Dave Haynie interview - Insights On Future Technology. SCACOM. Chang's Adventure. Diamond Hunt VIC20. Club Info 123. Commodore File browser. Commodore 2 MHz accelerator. Amiga SD card adapter. Obligement. Mail Order Monsters. AmigaOne X1000. AmigaOS4.1 Update 3. Regenerator 1.2. Sidplay64 v0.7. XSidplay 2.1.1. Drumstudio. Interview with Chris (Kisiel) developer of the Turbo Card. Heroes of Midgard.

The last couple of months there have been updates for Kick Assembler. Changes are: Mnemonic extensions forces all addressing modes. You can now use the question mark as notation in expression. Added a fill-byte option. You can now cast values to a numbers or strings by using the .number() or .string() function. Characters now have the same functions as numbers (+,-,*,<,>,<=, etc.). Kick Assembler is a combination of an assembler for writing 6510 machine code and a high level script language.

Rik Magers made his own version of the Commodore 1541 disk drive. He started with a uIEC from Jim Brain Designs. The uIEC has JiffyDOS and the ability to store up to 32GB. Rik got hold of a small plastic box that looks similar to a real 1541. After cutting, tweaking and several tubes of glue, he had a mini version of the 1541 including working LEDs on the front.

The uIEC/SD from Jim Brain Designs.

Arthur Jordison released a new version of CBM prg Studio. Changes in this version: Improvements to the screen designer. A new sprite scratchpad allows you to position sprites on a larger area, overlap sprites, change priorities etc. And a few bugs were removed.

The web page C64.com interviewed Andy Jervis. Andy is a game developer, and he made games like: Moon Crystals, Deliverance, I-Alien and To Hell and Back. Andy started without any idea how to make games. He used Zoom, the machine code monitor, and learnt coding through other peoples code. Read the complete interview on the C64.com web page.

Edition 53 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64, html and Ebook magazine is now available. In this edition the following: Sceneworld #17, Vandalism News #57, Amiga Power Website, Amiganoid 2011, Snapshotter, Swamp Defense – Demo, Aladdin 4D, The SEUCK Vault, Ultimate Mag Archive, Timberwolf, A-EON, SID Recreated ACE128, Cloanto Amiga / C64 Forever, Jim Slim, PCI BUS - NETBSD/AMIGA, Forgotten Forest review, VIC-Doom, The Keep, Interview with Nafcom and the Edge Grinder cartridge.

MadCommodore is a YouTube channel with more than 300 videos of games from the Commodore C64, Plus/4, VIC-20, Amiga and Atari. A few example are: Space Harrier, Gorf, Skyfox, Hungaroring, Arena, Alleykat, Jumping Jack, The Equalizer, Starfire, Siege, Wizard Willy and many more.

Video van Suicide Strike - C64 (Tronix).

C64 Studio is a assembly development environment which is dependent on VICE. You can write assembly code and test this with the VICE emulator. Changes in this version: Added: Code font configuration. Notification for externally changed files. Intelligent dependency checks. Fixed: CT SCR mapping and the Watch / Compile Result views can be sorted.

Fabrizio Gennari released a new version of Audiotap, a program which creates TAP files from audio and plays TAP files to audio. New in this version: Improved handling of semiwave TAP files, needed for some C16/+4 loaders. The option "inverted waveform" is now also available for semiwave files.

Edition 52 of the English pdf, text, seq, d64 and html magazine is now available. In this edition the following: News: Regenerator, AROS AHCI SATA Driver Bounty, Ami-Lineapolis, Snapshoter, C128 VDC-IHFLI, Club Info #122, Vandalism News #56, AmigaOS 4.1, Amiga Mania #1, FFmpeg, DiscreetFX Project Metropolis, Digital Audio Concepts, Landing in the Village, BioTerror!, HybridSID, Loadrunner Plus/4. Reviews: Clone - C16, On The Farm, Chang's Adventure, Deff-Ender, Coins. Commodore Programming.

The Computer Collection Vienna web page from Stefan Egger has had an update. On this web page you can see his collection of Commodore, Amiga, Atari and other computers. You can read information about transferring data, emulators, joysticks, repair and other tips and tricks. Stefan also made many 3D models from computers.

Zagon released a new version of his Exomizer. Exomizer is a program that compresses files with efficient decompress time and file size. It can produce stand-alone self-decrunching files for the following targets: Commodore VIC20, C64, C16/plus4 and C128, Atari 400/800 XL/XE, Apple II+ and //e. Changes in this version: 6809 decruncher added, documentation updated and a few bug fixes.

Today I could take this spy photo with my mobile of a new emulator. This mysterious emulator was presented to a select group at the Dutch Commodore User Group. Some details are: Ethernet, USB, VGA, Video, IEC, 2 x Joystick, Datassette, keyboard connector and a unknown FPGA engine cartridge. On the PCB is printed: Made by Gideon...

Arthur Jordison released a new version of CBM prg Studio. Changes in this version: Improved the debugger by transferring the labels and breakpoints from the source code into the debugger. Added a simple screen editor that can generate assembly data or BASIC print statements.

Pet Me is a collection of true type fonts made by Rebecca Bettencourt. In this collection you will find the fonts of the Commodore PET, VIC-20, C64 and C128. As a bonus you can also download the GEOS and Giana Sisters fonts. Besides fonts for the Commodore, Rebecca made many more fonts including Apple II, Mattel, Atari, Gameboy, Spectrum and many more.

More fonts from Rebecca Bettencourt.

The web page Pirate's Portal is back online. The site, now hosted by cbm80.com, has more than 3000 pieces of software for the Commodore, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari, MSX, Amstrad, Nitendo and Sega computers. You can also find Demo's, Magazines, Tools and information about people from the retro computer community.

Mark Vergeer made a video review of the Web-it. The Web-it is a 486 PC that could be used to connect internet, with a built-in modem and a TV screen. To make the product more interesting it also had a Commodore C64 emululator installed. Mark shows the functions of the Web-it and also a couple of hacks.

Frank Buß started a project to connect a digital joystick to a PC using the USB interface. On his web page you can follow the step by step progress of building the interface. The interface uses Freescale microcontroller that will simulate a USB keyboard and translates the joystick signals to keyboard signals. The firmware and schematic of the interface can be downloaded from the web page. It will cost about 20 Euro to build the interface.

YouTube video of the C64 USB joystick adapter.