######## ################## ###### ###### ##### ##### #### #### ## ##### #### #### #### #### #### ##### ##### ## ## #### ## ## ## ### ## #### ## ## ## ##### ######## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ######## ## ## ## ### ## ## #### ## ## ##### #### #### #### #### ##### #### #### #### #### #### ###### ##### ## ###### ###### Issue #9 ################## Jan. 24, 1995 ######## ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Editor's Notes by Craig Taylor And *drum beat please* here's another issue of Commodore Hacking!! We've lasted longer and had more issues put out than some other magazines I won't discuss (*wondering where issue 39 of that mag is*). Not many Commodore notes this time - things have gotten a little bit more montatenous(sp - it's late) on the Commodore front. I was unable to get an article by Craig Bruce in time but I got the next best thing: An interview with him!! Users of his software may find this interview interesting in how he looks at programming. Right now I'm entertaining the thought of dropping C= Hacking after I graduate which will be sometime around July 1st of this year. I'm interested in somebody who would "carry the reign" so to speak, and take over my job of nagging, bugging people etc :-) to write articles. I've got my system fairly automated in handling requests here - if that person has a VAX account then I could set them up with a mailserver, if a UNIX account then there's oodles of them floating on the net that could be used. _PLEASE_ write to me and lemme know if you're interested. I'm going to try to get one more issue of Commodore Hacking out before July 1st. =========================================================================== Please note that this issue and prior ones are available via anonymous FTP from ccosun.caltech.edu (amongunders) under /pub/cbm/hacking.mag and via a mailserver which documentation can be obtained by sending mail to "duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu" with a subject line of "mailserver" and the lines of "help" and "catalog" in the body of the message. =========================================================================== Legal Mumbo-Jumbo Permission is granted to re-distribut3e this "net-magazine", in whole, freely for non-profit use. However, please contact individual authors for permission to publish or re-distribute articles seperately. A charge of no greater than 5 US dollars or equivlent may be charged for library service / diskettte costs for this "net-magazine". =========================================================================== In This Issue: Commodore Trivia Corner This edition of Commodore Trivia Corner contains the answers to the July edition of trivia ($070 - $07F), the questions and answers for August ($080 - $08F), September ($090 - $09F), October ($0A0 - $0AF), November ($0B0 - $0BF), and the questions for the December edition ($0C0 - $0CF). Enjoy them! A Different Perspective, part II This month George and Steve continue their series on 3D graphics on the C-64 with a look at hidden faces and filled faces. In addition to adding these features into last month's program some other improvements to the old program will be discussed, such as fast multiplication (around 24 cycles) and various bug fixes -- for instance, the program now works on older C-64's which initialize color RAM to the background color when the screen is cleared (sorry about that ;-). A very primitive form of texture mapping is also included. As usual, full source and executables are included. The native C64 files are in a Lynx archive, so you will obviously need Lynx to get at them -- check your favorite BBS or FTP site. 2D Graphics Toolbox: Circles To augment three-dimensional algorithms this series will focus on two-dimensional drawing algortihms. Circles are the subject this time around (heh -- get it?), and a very fast algorithm for drawing them on your C64 is presented, with examples in assembly and BASIC7.0. How fast is fast? How does 11 cycles per pixel without the use of tables grab ya? AFLI=specs v1.0 In AFLI we can get 120 colors in theory (counted like this 16!/(2!*14!)=120). When we put red and blue hires pixels close to each other we get a vision of purple - thanks the television. This article details what AFLI is, how it's used and done. Coding Tricks Included are a series of postings to comp.sys.cbm about neat coding tricks (in machine language) that are interesting and useful. C.S.Bruce Interview An interview with the author of Zed, the ACE os and many other numerous utilities for the Commodore 64/128. Aligning 1541 Drives A discussion regarding Commodore 1541 disk drive alignment procedures, with suggestions. =========================================================================== Commodore Trivia Corner by Jim Brain (brain@mail.msen.com) Well, it is a new year, and I am sending up a new collection of the Commodore rivia for all to enjoy. If you haven't seen this already, the following is a collection of trivia questions that I post to various networks every month. I have collected Trivia Edition #8-13 in this article. As you may know, these questions form part of a contest in which the monthly winner gets a prize (Thanks to my various prize donators). The whole thing is mainly just for fun, so please enjoy. As the new year rolls in, I am happy to report the following: 1) As I have gained access to FIDONet, the trivia is now posted to both the USENET newsgroup COMP.SYS.CBM on the Internet AND the FIDONet echo CBM every month. 2) A number of publications have started publishing the trivia, including Commodore World, and a variety of club newsletters. 3) I have moved into my new house (See new address at bottom). While this may not seem important, the extra room I now have means I can now bring all of my old CBM machine to the new house and work with them. Working with them gives me fodder for more trivia. As always, I welcome any questions (with answers), and encourage people to enter their responses to the trivia, now at #13. Be sure you get the responses to me by January 12th at noon. Jim. The following article contains the answers to the July edition of trivia ($070 - $07F), the questions and answers for August ($080 - $08F), September ($090 - $09F), October ($0A0 - $0AF), November ($0B0 - $0BF), and the questions for the December edition ($0C0 - $0CF). Enjoy them! Here are the answers to Commodore Trivia Edition #8 for July, 1994 Q $070) On a PET series computer, what visual power-on indication will tell the user whether the computer has Revision 2 or Revision 3 ROMs? A $070) Revision Level 2 ROMS (the ones with more bugs) power up with: *** COMMODORE BASIC ***, with '*' in place of the more familiar '#' character. Q $071) The IEEE-488 interface is sometimes called the GPIB interface. What does GPIB stand for? A $071) General Purpose Interface Bus. Another name is Hewlett Packard Interface Bus (HPIB), since HP developed this standard for its istrumentation device networking. Q $072) Commodore manufactured at least two hard drives with IEEE-488 interfaces. Can you name them? A $072) The Commodore D9060 and D9090. From the cbmmodel.txt file: * CBM D9060 5 MB Hard Drive, DOS3.0, Off-White, IEEE-488. GP * CBM D9090 7.5 MB Hard Drive, DOS3.0, Off-White, IEEE-488. GP The following model has been said to be in existence, though no one has one on hand to prove it: * CBM D9065 7.5 MB Hard Drive And this model may never have made it past the prototype stage: CBM D9062 Dual D9065. Q $073) Why didn't buyers like the original PET-64? A $073) It looked just like a old-style C-64. It had a "home" computer look that the schools didn't care for. They liked the "business" look of the PET series, so Commodore put refurbished and new 64 motherboards in PET cases and sold them as PET 64s. The repackaging suited the schools. Q $074) On a PET Revision 2 ROM, what was the largest single array size that BASIC could handle? A $074) An array can have a cumulative total of 256 elements. For single dimension arrays, that means D(0) to D(255), but a 2D array can only go from DD(0,0) to DD(1,127) etc. All types of arrays had this limitation. Q $075) On the stock 1541, data is transmitted one bit at a time. How many bits are transferred at a time on the Commodore 1551 disk drive? A $075) 3 bits were transmitted at a time. I assume that each byte had a parity bit tacked on for error detection, so it would have taken 3 transfers to transmit a byte of information from the drives. Q $076) On all Commodore floppy disk drives, how fast does the disk spin? A $076) 300 RPM. Q $077) Upon first reading the Commodore 1541 Error channel after turning on the disk drive, what error number and text is returned? A $077) 73, CBM DOS V2.6 1541, 0, 0 Q $078) What error number and text is returned on a 1551? A $078) 73, CBM DOS V2.6TDISK, 0, 0 Notice that the new text JUST fits! Q $079) Commodore printers are normally assigned to device #4, but they can be also used as device #? A $079) #5. The Commodore 1525 has a switch to do this, but not all printers have such a switch. Q $07A) What microprocessor is used in the Commodore 1551 disk drive? A $07A) the 6510T. It i...
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