6502 Illegal Opcodes in the Siemens PC 100 Assembly Manual (1980)
The 6502’s “illegal” opcodes were of intense interest to home computer enthusiasts, and analyses were published in various magazines. But one would have never expected a company like Siemens to document illegal opcodes in a programming manual from 1980.
Siemens Personal Computer PC 100 Bedienungsanleitung, Ausgabe 1981/1982
The Siemens PC 100 was a version of the 6502-based “AIM-65” SBC in a case and with slightly modified ROMs. Siemens offered a set of German-language manuals, which included translated Assembler (MOS Resident Assembler) and BASIC (Microsoft BASIC) manuals, but also a general manual (“Bedienungsanleitung”).
Das Titelbild vom 64’er Sonderheft 2/85
Am 25. März 1985 kam das zweite 64’er Sonderheft mit dem Thema Abenteuerspiele raus. Genau 40 Jahre später ist es nun als HTML und PDF online verfügbar – im Kontext des Projekts 64er-magazin.de. Der Drachenreiter auf dem Original-Titelblatt ist der damals 18jährige Boris Schneider-Johne – wer genau schaut, wird auf der Website erkennen, dass wir das Bild aktualisiert haben:
64'er Magazin – mit 40 Jahren Verzögerung jetzt monatlich im Web
Zum 40jährigen Jubiläum des 64’er Magazins präsentieren wir das Kunstprojekt www.64er-magazin.de: eine Website, die so tut, als wäre 1984. Exakt 40 Jahre nach der ursprünglichen Veröffentlichung erscheint hier jeden Monat eine neue Ausgabe:
Scanntronik Manuals
The German company “Scanntronik” offered a lot of high-quality hardware and software for the Commodore 64 series computers, most in the space of graphics and desktop publishing. They are well-known for their Pagefox and Printfox software as well as their Handyscanner 64 hardware. This page offers most of the German-language manuals from across their product range as searchable PDFs.
The Commodore AUTOMODEM (Model 1650)
The Commodore 1650, also known as the “AUTOMODEM”, is Commodore’s first full modem directly connected to the phone line. It supports pulse dialing in software and 300 baud duplex connections.
The Commodore VICMODEM (Model 1600)
The Commodore 1600, also known as the “VICMODEM”, is Commodore’s very first modem (1982): It supports 300 baud duplex connections, and is connected to an existing telephone’s handset connector instead of the phone line. This kept the price down, but required the user to dial manually through the phone.
The Commodore Modem/1200 (Model 1670)
The Commodore 1670, also known as the “Modem/1200”, is Commodore’s first Hayes-compatible modem: It connects directly to the phone line and supports pulse and tone dialing for 1200 and 300 baud duplex connections. There were two revisions, the original 1670 and the “new” 1670, a.k.a. CR-1670. (The unit in this article is the later revision.)
The Commodore Modem/300 (Model 1660)
The Commodore 1660, also known as the “Modem/300”, is Commodore’s first full-featured modem: It connects directly to the phone line and supports pulse and tone dialing for 300 baud duplex connections.
Commodore 264 Series Preliminary Users Manual [PDF]
This is the previously unpublished “Commodore 264 Series Preliminary Users Manual”, a prerelease version of the manual of what came to be the Commodore Plus/4.
Third Party Disk Drives for the C64: The "Technica"
I have previously analyzed the ROM images of some third party disk drives for the Commodore 64: The result was that most of them were just using the original binaries with some obfuscation, and some with some added features. This time, let’s look at another drive, the “Technica”, which is a little special in this regard.
Das Maschinensprache-Buch zum Commodore 64 [PDF]
Making of the Book "Anatomy of the 4040 Disk Drive"
To my surprise, Hilaire Gagne, the author of “Anatomy of the 4040 Disk Drive”, commented on my blog post about the reconstruction of his book.
Book "Anatomy of the 4040 Disk Drive" by Hilaire Gagne
Hilaire Gagne: Anatomy of the 4040 Disk Drive
(HTML, 632K)
Das neue Commodore 64 Intern Buch [PDF]
INPUT 64 Magazine Complete Archive
The complete archive of the German Commodore 64 magazine INPUT 64 (PDF, tapes, disks) is now available here.
C64-Artikel in der c't Retro 2018
This post is about articles I wrote for the c’t magazine in German language. The post is therefore in German.
