######## ################## ###### ###### ##### ##### #### #### ## ##### #### #### #### #### #### ##### ##### ## ## #### ## ## ## ### ## #### ## ## ## ##### ######## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ######## ## ## ## ### ## ## #### ## ## ##### #### #### #### #### ##### #### #### #### #### #### ###### ##### ## ###### ###### Issue #10 ################## ########

Editor's Notes

by Craig Taylor

This is my last issue of Commodore Hacking (having finally gotten out the door, but I couldn't break tradition and get it out on time :-) ). I'm having to give it up because I've gradually lost interest in Commodore computers over the years and with the search for a job (anyone wanna hire a csc graduate?) and as I get older I seem to have less and less time.

I'm gonna be handing the reigns of Commodore Hacking over to Jim Brain, who is a very active member of the Commodore Internet community. He will also be running a mailserver that will take the place of mine (Mine will become unavailable after July 1st and will send pointers to Jim Brain's mailserver).

It's been interesting to watch the Commodore computers evolve, take off like a rocket and then have Commodore go into liquidation. Commodore computers have been and still are, (with some exceptions - 1541 head-banging comes to mind), technologically sound. For a "hacking" machine they're wonderful.

My email address has changed to duck@nando.net. I periodically still check mail at duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu but only every 2 weeks or so. I am still going to try to be in the Commodore community but time will govern my ability to do that. I'm going to miss editing this rag....

And here is Jim Brain:

Mail Server Changes:

With Issue 10, the address for the Commodore Hacking mail server has changed. The new address is brain@mail.msen.com The commands are the same as before. Not all of the files have been moved yet, so please email the administrator (Jim Brain, brain@mail.msen.com) if a file you need is not on the new site.

Howdy:

Howdy, my name is Jim Brain, and I will be taking over the position of editor for Commodore Hacking starting with Issue 11. Some of you may know me as the Commodore Trivia Contest administrator, the USENET newsgroup comp.sys.cbm FAQ Manitainer, or the keeper of a Commodore Information WWW Site at http://www.msen.com/~brain/cbmhome.html. Wherever you have heard of me from, or even if you haven't, I will state that I plan on handling Commodore Hacking in the following way. The next issue will possibly look different cosmetically, as I edit somewhat differently than Craig, but the content and basic layout will remain the same. The types of material will not change, and the structure for submitting articles will change only in the address to mail them to: brain@mail.msen.com. However, I do have a few changes in mind:

  1. Try to stabilize the issue generation so that Commodore Hacking will become a quarterly publication.

  2. Attempt a fully "HTML"ized version of the magazine, while still providing a text version.

  3. Pursue the possibility of providing a printed version of these issues for those who have no online access to them.

  4. Encourage User Groups and other CBM related organizations to carry this magazine for their members.

So, again I say howdy. As always, Commodore Hacking will accept your articles at any time, so please help us keep this quality magazine running. If you have any questions or comments about the change in editorship, the possible changes, or other matters, please feel free to drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and publishing your articles.

Jim Brain
brain@mail.msen.com

Legal Mumbo-Jumbo

Permission is granted to re-distribute 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".
Please note that this issue and prior ones are available via anonymous FTP from ccnga.uwaterloo.ca (among others) under /pub/cbm/hacking.mag and via a mailserver which documentation can be obtained by sending mail to "brain@mail.msen.com" with a subject line of "mailserver" and the lines of "help" and "catalog" in the body of the message.
In This Issue:

Commodore Trivia

 Trivia Edition #13-18 are 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. Try your hand at Commodore trivia!!

BFLI - New graphics modes 2

FLI gave us more color to the screen, AFLI increased the horizontal resolution and color selection by using the hires mode. BFLI stands for 'Big FLI' and gives us 400 lines instead of the usual two hundred. AFLI and BFLI can be combined, but we are not going into that.

Making stable raster routines (C64 and VIC-20)

In this article, I document two methods of creating stable raster routines on Commodore computers. The principles apply for most 8-bit computers, not only Commodores, but raster effects are very rarely seen on other computers.

A Differant Perspective - Part III.

Yes!!! It's yet another article on 3D graphics! Even if you haven't been following this series, you can use this program. This time around we will write a completely general polygon plotter -- if you can type basic data statements, you can create a three-dimensional object out of polygons and rotate and project it to your heart's content. For the more technically inclined we will look at optimizations to the line routine, EOR-buffer filling, and more! Yow!

Second SID Chip Installation

This article describes how to add a second sid chip for use in SidPlayer and other programs. As always, be extra careful when making modifications to your computer.

SOLVING LARGE SYSTEMS OF LINEAR EQUATIONS ON A C64 WITHOUT MEMORY

OK, now that I have your attention, I lied. You can't solve dense linear systems of equations by direct methods without using memory to store the problem data. However, I'll come back to this memory free assertion later. The main purpose of this article is to rescue a usefull numerical algorithm, "Quartersolve", and also to provide a brief look at the COMAL programming language and BLAS routines.

The World of IRC - A New Life for the C64/128

I've heard people talking about IRC. What is it? Why is it useful to me as a Commodore user? Bill "Coolhand" Lueck explains the hows and whys in this article.

SwiftLink-232 Application Notes (version 1.0b)

This information is made available from a paper document published by CMD, with CMD's permission.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SIMPLE/EFFICIANT Upload/Download Protocol

This article details how to implement a custom upload/download protocol that is faster than most of the ones common to the C64/128 computers.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A 'REAL' OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE 128: PART II

There has been a slight change in plans. I originally intended this article to give the design of a theoretical distributed multitasking microkernel operating systemfor the C128. I have decided to go a different route: to take out the distributed component for now and implement a real multitasking microkernel OS for a single machine and extend the system to be distributed later. The implementation so far is, of course, only in the prototype stage and the application for it is only a demo. Part III of this series will extend this demo system into, perhaps, a usable distributed operating system.