Commodore 128 motherboard in high resolution

Here’s a high-resolution photo of C128 motherboard for no particular reason:

Click for more pixels

This one has a Scandinavian character set, that’s why the three paper labeled EPROM chips.

One point worthy of note, though; You often find being said that the Commodore 128 has the “new SID”, 8580. That’s not the case however.

Maniac Mansion bootleg cartridge

Here’s what I made as a 30 year birthday present for a friend of mine. Maniac Mansion cartridge for the Commodore 64!

Of course a cartridge like this never existed back in the day, as the original Manic Mansion released for the C64 was disk only game. It’s only thanks to the crackers, patchers and hardware developers of recent years who we can thank for the possibility to have this much acclaimed and loved game in a C64 cartridge format today.

You’ve probably guessed already that it’s an EasyFlash cartridge in a ‘custom’ Maniac Mansion themed cartridge case. And on the EasyFlash, there is written the excellent EasyFlash-patched Maniac Mansion Mercury by Onslaught. 

I’ve got awesome friends!

Just check out these awesome self-made cards I got for my 30th anniversary! Big shout-outs to my dear study- and workmates! I was totally blown away :)

 

 

Revealing Stats

People search for funny things on the Internet. Every now and then even my blog statistics display some curious search phrases. Today, when I had a look on my blog’s stats, this is what I saw:

I can only wonder why someone looking for Jeri Ellsworth nude has landed on my site. It must have been disappointment though, as I can assure that I don’t have any risky pictures of Jeri around.

Instead I can present you with some metaphoric retro nerd-porn involving Jeri in a different context. Behold, my C64 DTV signatured by Jeri – the creator herself!

C64 DTV hidden file showing the DTV-team.

How’s that for ya?

Also, I hope that the person trying to figure out if Commodore Amiga CD32 and Amiga CD32 are the same thing found an answer.

Zagreb street art

I’m back from a refreshing holiday in Croatia! In Zagreb there was a cool, nearly half a kilometer long wall completely covered in street art. Many of the pieces were awesome, but one in particular caught my attention – it featured a C64 and Datassette and the startup screen.

The pictures are crappy, I know, but they were taken from a fast-moving tram. Also the traffic was blocking the works. I think there has been beveled buttons in that painted C64, but they have got stolen or something. Also, I’m not sure if the piece on the left to the C64 one is Spectrum inspired or just a coincidence.

Cultural act

Yesterday there was an unusual story in Finnish newspaper Kymen Sanomat and also few other cooperating subnational newspapers. It was about Commodore 64 and sports games. That’s right.

How this came to be?  A friend of mine, Juha Rika – who has found C64 again after years, is working in that newspaper. He got this idea together with his collegue – a sports editor – to arrange a gaming session with their C64-nostalgic workmates and to have a story written of it in the newspaper. Of course this counted as work time. Getting paid having fun playing C64 is quite unusual – I salute you guys!

Sony plays you for a fool?

Sony Computer Entertainment released this April Fools’ Day a firmware “update” for Playstation 3 that will only disable a feature – the possibility to run other operating system on PS3. I’m angry and concerned about what this April Fools’ Day joke represents.

There is nothing new in that some features will be removed from a gaming system over its lifetime. Audio/Video connectors and -options, expansion ports and slots, hardware backwards compatibility, storage media options etc. There are not many systems that have lived for several years but wouldn’t have lost anything like that over time. All that for cost savings and profit seeking from the manufacturer.

But Playstation 3 has to be the first system that loses a feature after you have purchased the machine! A feature that was well promoted at the first place and gave the system added value. And how does this help Sony? “Security concerns” they say. Has restricting user freedom ever prevented piracy? Attack the users before someone harms the business? Hackers won’t be stopped by this kind of move – more like the contrary.

I’m not saying that the possibility to install Linux on a PS3 would be important for me, but I’m against this action on the principal level. They are disabling an interesting feature from my PS3 that had it when I purchased the system.

In practice they are forcing this downgrade as the online services, new games and likely other media as well will require always the latest system updates. So choosing not to update is not really an option.

There has been a lot of commenting over Internet like “who cares”. Why wouldn’t you care? What if the feature they were removing was something else like DVD playback, backwards compatibility (well, that was lost for PS2 already) or support for external storage media? There is nothing that would prevent them doing so if those features possessed a “security concern” and could be considered to be disabled without financial losses.

I think it is stupid to give the message that “I’m fine with this – do what ever with the system I (think I) own”.

Sony Computer Entertainment like any corporate is interested only in their market share – not in you as their customer. This action from them demonstrates that very well. I for one will protest with my wallet – that is a feedback channel that a corporate will listen.

Sports Documentary feat. C64

I recently came accross this short documentary on YouTube, that portrays  a young man who is clearly stuck in the 80’s and who has a passion for sports. Sports on Commodore 64 that is…

Of course the documentary is made-up and made for humor. It’s still very well made and makes you wonder for a while if it’s real, which really adds up for its value. The video has been gaining popylarity very fast considering it’s in Finnish, and now the author has added English subtitles (you have to turn them on). Sure the video loses a lot of it’s appeal if you can’t understand Finnish and especially the dialect that the portrayed character speaks, but it’s still well worth checking out with the English subtitles!

Learning to blog!

First entry ever.

So I decided to try and maintain a blog as my personal web page has been unupdated for so many years. Contributing to the Internet should be quite a lot easier and faster this way until I have the time and motivation to build up a completely new website – if ever…

So blog it is for now! This is not going to be a blog about my personal life. Instead I’m planning to share my thoughts and findings related to my hobbies and intrests – mainly retrocomputing and -gaming, chipmusic and such. Could be that I’ll be covering some other topics aswell.

I chose to write in English despite my love for my mother tongue Finnish in hopes to get a little wider audience. I’m glad if you have found my blog and find it worth reading!

Until the first actual post,
ilesj