World of Commodore Toronto, December 1, 2007

6502dude · Post by **6502dude** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:58 pm

eslapion wrote:... how come I can't delete this redundant post???

You are not a moderator in General Topics area, so you cannot delete a post here.

The statement of stealing megacart content did not appear to be perceived as a joke at WOC show, thus my remarks above.

I do appreciate your efforts to supply joystick and 5-pin din cable earlier in the day.

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:01 pm

I neither wish to fan flames nor be drawn into a conflict that I may well end up having to moderate but since clarification is the order of the day, allow me this...

eslapion wrote:Golan and I made a deal in which I exchanged with him money and goods and what I got was a pile of keyboards and chips, part of which was originally supposed to go to the freebies table.

This is not accurate. I placed six boxes of VIC-20, 64 and 128 parts (amongst other things) on and under the freebie table and you helped yourself to them. I didn't object because that is what a free table is for. What you do with the things you take is your business although immediately offering them for sale is somewhat unconventional (no joke was intended but I made myself giggle). The tacit understanding about the freebie table is that one should take an item or two and leave some things for others. It was my intention that people who had broken Commodores in need of this part or that would be able to restore their machines without spending any money.

We did exchange money because you purchased from me a C= binder, a case of disks and several bags of chips which, by your own estimate, are worth ten to twenty times what you paid for them. I purchased from you a power supply for an Amiga A590 (which unfortunately doesn't work) and five EPROMs. If I'm forgetting anything, forgive me. It was a busy day.

The items that were on or under the freebie table had absolutely nothing to do with our commerce.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:10 pm

gklinger wrote:We did exchange money because you purchased from me a C= binder, a case of disks and several bags of chips which, by your own estimate, are worth ten to twenty times what you paid for them.

It is my own understanding 6502dude accuses me of taking free chips and then offering them for sale...

I would like to point out I donated one of these chips to help repair Jim Butterfield's C128.

As for the faulty A590 PSU, I will gladly fix it for free.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:12 pm

6502dude wrote:I do appreciate your efforts to supply joystick and 5-pin din cable earlier in the day.

Thank you.

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:28 pm

eslapion wrote:It is my own understanding 6502dude accuses me of taking free chips and then offering them for sale...

Didn't you take motherboards from the free table, remove chips and then offer them for sale? I'm quite sure you offered for sale the keyboards you had taken from the free table. Regardless, I think the issue that warrants some discussion would be your plans for your cartridge and the curious statements you made during the demo.

would like to point out I donated one of these chips to help repair Jim Butterfield's C128.

I'm so glad you did because the 128 I hastily purchased for spare parts didn't work. It didn't have the 64K VDC it was suppose to contain either but that's a rant for another day.

As for the faulty A590 PSU, I will gladly fix it for free.

I suspect it would cost more to ship it back and forth than I paid for it so don't worry about it. I'll keep my eyes peeled for another or I'll use the plug that connects to the 590 to jury rig some other power supply.

Centallica · Post by **Centallica** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:36 pm

Leif found a VIC-20 with a keyboard unlike any we had ever seen and I was thinking that you should buy it from TPUG and put that board in it and have a real oddball for your collection. It would make an excellent conversation piece.

I will PM him and inquire as oddball suits my style

I got the SuperPET to boot to 32K again...now onto the remaining K on the balcony board....you're welcome to come visit anytime before Geekfest 2008 also

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:27 pm

Centallica wrote:
Leif found a VIC-20 with a keyboard unlike any we had ever seen and I was thinking that you should buy it from TPUG and put that board in it and have a real oddball for your collection. It would make an excellent conversation piece.
I will PM him and inquire as oddball suits my style

He didn't buy it so it went back to the TPUG locker. I would have to go out there to get it if you want to see it. The printing on the keys was thinner than any we had ever seen.

I got the SuperPET to boot to 32K again...now onto the remaining K on the balcony board....you're welcome to come visit anytime before Geekfest 2008 also

Good stuff. I'm quite convinced you'll get it working.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:37 pm

eslapion wrote: Also, what I said about the flashcart's content was said as a joke because quite frankly, I don't see much people having a huge interest in it.

ok so was a joke, clear.

why would I be shy in taking your software and adapt it to my hardware.

For the respect for me.

Talking about software, with the respect for Brian, i wish to remember you that is not the Brian's software but is my work and Carlsson made a great work on music side too, hours and hours of hard work and a lot of nights awake until 2:00 am to develop new features, to fix carts for PAL/NTSC, to adapt Tape/Disk games etc etc.

You may have rancour with Brian but you cannot use my work as reward.

My english is not perfect but i hope you understand me, if you need software help for the flashcart i may help you, if i can and i'm able, but only when i finish the MegaCart Project and this because i'm really busy with real life and because for a lot of reasons i started to work with MegaCart before and normally i use to finish a work to start another, is difficult for me to follow 2 hard project like Mega and flash Carts jointly, i need to work on "real world" too

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:44 pm

nbla000 wrote:My english is not perfect but i hope you understand me, if you need software help for the flashcart i may help you, if i can and i'm able, but only when i finish the MegaCart Project and this because i'm really busy with real life and because for a lot of reasons i started to work with MegaCart before and normally i use to finish a work to start another, is difficult for me to follow 2 hard project like Mega and flash Carts jointly, i need to work on "real world" too

The point I wanted to get across is that the Flashcart and the Megacart are in fact so close to each other from a software point of view that it would only require me to do 2 or 3 rewirings on the Flashcart to make it perfectly compatible with the Megacart's software.

So, yes, technically, it would be very easy to make a few change to the Flashcart's hardware so that the software from the Megacart runs on it without any alteration whatsoever.

The only ONE thing that is substantially different is the reset system which is triggered on the Flashcart as soon as you choose a new cell for BLK2/5 while it is triggered by a poke to a control register on the Megacart. But even that is not something I could call a major hurdle.

In the past, I remember Brian saying that it was rather presomptuous of me to assume something like I just said. However, for example, if you look at the differences between the 2 prong VIC and the VIC cr, these differences, even if they are quite substantial, do not prevent a complete software compatibility.

AFAIK, there is no software that works well on the older VIC and not on the newer one or vice versa.

So yes, I could simply wait for you guys to complete the work on the Megacart, see if its either possible to modify the hardware to work with the software as is or to modify the software to work on the hardware as is.

And that is up to you guys to decide wether its something that you would like to see or not.

KilrPilr said in the past that the reason why Brian started the Megacart project is because I was doing nothing and going nowhere with the project. In fact, I did show up mith an operational multicart that more or less matched what I first envisioned as a multicart. It did what I first claimed it could do and it turned out to have double the number of games I first anticipated.

The Behr-Bonz cart is not the Megacart and it doesn't pretend to do all the Megacart does but its a project thats a lot dearer to my heart than the Flashcart and it works right here right now.

And if you really want to do a minicart well, there you have it... its there, its done and it works. If you ordered 100 of them today, I could have them for you just before christmas! It sure could benefit from having both PAL and NTSC support which right now it does not have and perhaps a much better looking and sounding menu.

In other words, this project could benefit from your implication. I put in it pretty much everything I could given my availability and my knowledge. I can also assure you that given my personnal philosophy of anti leet, I will make the plans and the ROM content public.

Are you going to see the opportunity and make positive contributions to it or reject it as worthless? Are you going to allow that the PAL/NTSC fixed games originally intended for the Megacart be used in it or are you going to shove me aside in my little corner?

Now the ball is on your side.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:50 pm

6502dude wrote:You are not a moderator in General Topics area, so you cannot delete a post here.

On other forums that appear to be based on the same software as Denial, such as Lemon64, I can delete my own posts even if I am not a moderator as long as nobody posted after me...

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:14 am

To anyone who knows Ernie Chorny, can you thank him for the beautiful VIC-20 button he gave me?

Very highly appreciated. Thank you!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:49 am

On the retro meetings I've been to, almost nobody is giving out free goods, so that was never a problem. Sometimes you may ask for a seemingly useless item and get it for free, but that is another thing.

As for the multi-megacart business, as I remember it Schema was sketching on a menu software but didn't get far. Brian was working on his "renegade" solution which almost nobody wanted to touch with a pair of pliers. He posted publically asking for someone who was willing to write software for his project. I replied, and in one evening pasted together a very basic menu system that NBLA000 has improved upon (perhaps to the point that not a single instruction exists of my original work) and suddenly tables were turned: Brian's cart both had working hardware and a team of software developers, while the other collaborate effort didn't get anywhere. I admit that in the early stages, I was fairly disinterested in the traditional multicart approach and suggested some flash or memory card based solution instead, to which I was flamed by Eslapion for breaking the spirit in the VIC-20 community. Now, he has shifted gears and is working on a flashable solution. Add a SD card interface on your cartridge, and I'm on the bandwagon again.

It can't be rocket science, a lot of other 8-bit computers already have such and other interfaces, running at various speeds and technologies.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:39 am

carlsson wrote:I was flamed by Eslapion for breaking the spirit in the VIC-20 community. Now, he has shifted gears and is working on a flashable solution. Add a SD card interface on your cartridge, and I'm on the bandwagon again.

Yes, is exactly what i've asked Eslapion some months ago, it is a much more motivating work, btw time and knowledge required anyway.

I have an MMC64 cart and an MMC20 version was really nice, why to spend time for a thing similar to an existing thing when you Eslapion may spend your talent for other useful projects ?
My opinion is that is better for a Vic user to have 2 different and useful projects instead to have a mini and a mega cart, i'm not motivated to spend time on a mini cart, without 16k carts, ram expansion, tape/disk games, favorites etc etc, sorry.

Please remember that this is an hobby, and i wish to spend my little time that now i have on my "real life" with nice, motivating and newer things....

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:51 am

gklinger wrote:
Centallica wrote:
Leif found a VIC-20 with a keyboard unlike any we had ever seen and I was thinking that you should buy it from TPUG and put that board in it and have a real oddball for your collection. It would make an excellent conversation piece.
I will PM him and inquire as oddball suits my style
He didn't buy it so it went back to the TPUG locker. I would have to go out there to get it if you want to see it. The printing on the keys was thinner than any we had ever seen.

Would love to see a photo of this. Also very jealous of the SuperPET!

Oh, and I would probably buy BOTH the MEGAcart and a Flashcart, as I see they do different things. The MEGAcart holds tons of games, but the Flashcart could store my own programs and aid with transferring software from a PC to VIC (if it had an SD socket).

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:57 am

And then there was one. I hope it doesn't get lonely...