PDXCUG Meeting Highlights
Vol. 1, No. 1 - May 13, 2010
Our first meeting was a success and a blast! It was great getting together and talking about Commodore projects and games. Here are the meeting notes from our initial get-together.
Group Project Idea
One of the immediate features of the Portland Commodore Users Group was to create a group project. After playing some games on an SX-64 and realizing how difficult it was to change joystick ports, the group decided to create a Commodore Joystick Switch.
Multi-Player Zork
Agent Friday came up with an idea to create a multi-player Zork game where players from around the globe could participate in playing the classic game, but with a new spin - multiple players running around in the same world, picking up and dropping off items along the way. We found the source code for the game and will possibly work on this as a group project in the future.
Presentation: KERNAL and BASIC ROM Disassembly
Agent Friday discussed a project he was working on to annotate the KERNAL and BASIC ROMs. There are other annotated disassemblies out there, but Agent Friday is taking it a step further:
- Fully commenting sections of code
- Each routine contains a block header describing the intent of the routine and its functionality in human-readable form
- Each routine contains hyperlinks to JMPs and JSRs so you can easily follow the code
- Each routine contains a list of known places that call the routine (back references)
- Links to non-ROM locations, such as zero page. This has never been done in any other disassembly project, as far as he knows
For full details on his project, please visit the Commodore 64 BASIC and KERNAL ROM Disassembly page.
Show & Tell - Commodore SX-64
GeekWithSocialSkills showed off his "almost 100% complete" Commodore SX-64 computer which includes the following:
- foam insert that protects the keyboard and screen when stored - this item is super rare to find
- Pouch for manual and cord, which is very rare
- manual - also rare
- missing: box
He modded his SX with switches on the inside of the storage bay to:
- turn off the monitor so that you can have an external monitor and not have to run both
- change disk drive device number (after switching, the drive must be reset to recognize the new number)
- a reset switch to reset the 64
Show & Tell - Games
GeekWithSocialSkills also showed off some other games:
- Zork I
- Zone Ranger
- Various Activision Games (River Raid, Pitfall, etc.)
- Pole Position
Show & Tell - ShareData Utility Cartridge
Goog allowed everyone to check out his nifty, yet not-very-useful Sharedata Utility cartridge:
- It had one or two neat things that it could do that set it apart from other carts, but overall was pretty lame.
- Funny thing, the manual "listed" some "unlisted commands" - see photos below
Game Time
Members enjoyed playing the following games:
- Zone Ranger
- Pitstop
- Pitfall
- River Raid
- Crossfire
