C=Hacking

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Issues

• Issue 1 Feb 1992
• Issue 2 April 1992
• Issue 3 July 1992
• Issue 4 October 1992
• Issue 5 March 1993
• Issue 6 September 1993
• Issue 7 February 1994
• Issue 8 August 1994
• Issue 9 January 1995
• Issue 10 June 1995
• Issue 11 December 1995
• Issue 12 March 1996
• Issue 13 July 1996
• Issue 14 November 1996
• Issue 15 April 1998
• Issue 16 April 1998
• Issue 17 November 1998
• Issue 18 July 1999
• Issue 19 May 2000
• Issue 20 April 2001 -- see ADDENDUM at the bottom of this web page!
• Issue 21 February 2002

• Issue #1
  • "Beginning ML -- Part 1", Craig Taylor. Documented and undocumented opcodes
  • "Simple Hires Line Drawing Package for the C-128 80-Column Screen", Craig Bruce. Routines to move pixel/draw line, activate graphics/clear screen, restore old character set, desc. of some VDC registers, floating point numbers.
• Issue #2
  • "Beginning ML -- Part 2", Craig Taylor. Indexed addressing.
  • "An in-depth look at the 8563 Video Chip on the C= 128", Craig Taylor. VDC schematics, register descriptions, programming descriptions.
  • "FILE SPLIITER", Mark Lawrence. Turbo Pascal code to split a file.
  • "Banking on GEOS", Robert Knop. Memory management, programming under GEOS 128.
  • "DYNAMIC MEMORY ALLOCATION FOR THE 128: Breaking the 64K barrier", Craig Bruce. Like the title says :). Includes memory management kernal from ZED 128, sorting routine, etc.
• Issue #3
  • "Learning ML -- Part 3", Craig Taylor. Kernal routines, reading the directory, reading the error channel.
  • "The Demo Corner: Missing Cycles", Pasi 'Albert' Ojala. Raster timings, bad lines, sprites, demonstration program.
  • "Kernal 64/128", Craig Taylor. Kernal routines, listing and description.
  • "64K VDC RAM and an alternate GEOS128 Background Screen", Robert Knop. Programming GEOS128.
  • "GeoPaint File Format", Bruce Vrieling. Self explanatory.
  • "Rasters: What They Are And How To Use Them", Bruce Vrieling. Interrupts, rasters, example code.
  • "Bursting your 128: The Fastload Burst Command", Craig Bruce. Programming 1571 and 1581 drives, bust code library.
• Issue #4
  • "Learning ML -- Part 4", Craig Taylor. Development of a Space Invaders game (for the 64 and 128), part 1. Organization, custom characters (VIC and VDC), title screen, debugging, memory considerations.
  • "FLI -- More Color To The Screen", Pasi Ojala. VIC info, and of course an explanation of FLI graphics.
  • "RS-232 Converter", Warren Tustin. Build a userport->RS-232 converter.
  • "Introduction to the VIC-II", Pasi Ojala. VIC features and registers.
  • "LITTLE RED READER: MS-DOS file reader for the 128 and 1571/81 drives", Craig Bruce. Like the title says :) All source included/explained or course.
• Issue #5
  • "Mail Server Documentation", Craig Taylor. Outdated.
  • "The Demo Corner: Stretching Sprites", Pasi Ojala. How to trick VIC into making some very large sprites.
  • "Rob Hubbard's Music: Disassembled, Commented, and Explained", Anthony McSweeny. Yet another self-explanatory title.
  • "ZPM3 and ZCCP Enhancements for CP/M Plus from Simeon Cran", Randy Winchester. Nice BIOS and BDOS enhancements for CP/M folks.
  • "Multitasking on the C=128 Part 1", Craig Taylor. Description of a multitasking kernal for the 128.
  • "LITTLE READ READER: MS-DOS file reader/WRITER for the C128 and 1571/81", Craig Bruce. Expanding the program with the capability to write files.
• Issue #6
  • "The Demo Corner: DYCP -- Horizontal Scrolling", Pasi Ojala of course :). Making character go up and down as well as right to left in scrolls, along with some awfully nice ASCII diagrams.
  • "Opening the Borders", Pasi Ojala. How to remove the borders: top, bottom, and sides. Good stuff.
  • "A Heavy-Duty Power Supply for the C=64", John Andrews. Schematics etc. for building -- guess what? :) -- a heavy duty power supply.
  • "LZW Compression", Bill Lucier. Another title to make my job easy. Description+source.
  • "THREE-KEY ROLLOVER for the C=128 and C=64", Craig Bruce. Modifying the KERNAL to use 3-key rollover (for you fast typists); gets rid of port #1 extraneous input, too. Neat!
• Issue #7
  • "Commodore Trivia Corner", Jim Brain.
  • "Internet Resources for the Commodore 64/128", Craig Taylor. Intro to the internet; old ftp list.
  • "Hiding Kilobytes", Marko Mäkelä Memory management and different memory configurations on the C=64, and lots of subtobics: hiding underneath I/O, sitting in the stack, freezer cartridges.
  • "FLD -- Scrolling the screen", Mark Klampar. Code to demonstrate FLD.
  • "Tech-tech -- More resolution to vertical shift", Pasi Ojala. Cool.
  • "ACE 128/64 PROGRAMMER'S REFERENCE GUIDE", Craig Bruce. Title explains it all.
• Issue #8
  • "Trivia Corner", Jim Brain.
  • "RS232 Convertor", Walter Wickersham. Another RS-232 interface for you to build.
  • "Programming the Commodore RAM Expansion Units (REUs)", Richard Hable. Description of REUs and how to program them.
  • "A Different Perspective: Three Dimensional Graphics on the C=64", Stephen Judd, George Taylor. Rotations, projections, drawing lines, etc. and an awful lot of text and crappily formatted code.
  • "DESIGN OF A 'REAL' OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE 128: PART I", Craig Bruce. Laying the groundwork for a new OS.
• Issue #9
  • "Trivia Corner", Jim Brain.
  • "A Different Perspective, Part II", Stephen Judd, George Taylor. Hidden faces, filled faces, mega-fast multiply, and some reasonably formatted code.
  • "2D Graphics Toolbox -- Circles", Stephen Judd. An awfully neat circle drawing algorithm, if I do say so myself. (See also issue 10 or 11).
  • "AFLI-specs v1.0", D'Arc/Topaz for Chief/Padua. Build upon FLI to get even more colors.
  • "Coding Tricks", compiled from comp.sys.cbm. Neat. Includes stable raster code.
  • "C.S. Bruce Interview", Craig Taylor. Neat.
  • "Aligning 1541 Drives", Ward Shrake. Lots of good info.
• Issue #10 (Craig Taylor's last issue!)
  • "Trivia", Jim Brain.
  • "BFLI -- New Graphics Modes 2", Pasi Ojala. Another FLI spinoff trick.
  • "Making stable raster routines (C64 and VIC-20)", Marko Mäkelä How to make raster effects exactly where you want them (and how to mask an NMI too! :)
  • "A Different Perspective, part III", by two old bums. Neat-o line drawing enhancement, general polygon routine, general hidden face removal, alternative filling method, and a misplaced and important addendum to the Circle routine in issue 9.
  • "Second SID Chip Installation", Mark Dickenson. Add another SID to your setup.
  • "SOLVING LARGE SYSTEMS OF EQUATIONS ON A C64 WITHOUT MEMORY", Alan Jones. "Quartersolve" routine.
  • "The World of IRC -- A new life for the C64/128", Bill Lueck. What every 64 user should know about IRC.
  • "Swiftlink-232 Application Notes v1.0b", CMD with source code by Craig Bruce. All about Swiftlink and how to program it.
  • "Design and implementation of a simple/efficient upload/download protocol", Craig Bruce. Pretty neat protocol (FX) used by ACE.
  • "DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A 'REAL' OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE 128: Part II", Craig Bruce. Further laying the groundwork for a multitasking microkernal OS.
• Issue #11
  • "Hi Tech Trickery: Sample Dither", George Taylor. Dither a digital sample to gain higher resolution.
  • "Speed up RAMLink transfers with the Double-DMA technique", Doug Cotton. Super-fast RAMlink programming.
  • "The Graphics Toolbox: Ellipses", Stephen L. Judd. Follow-up to the circle drawing algorithm, logarithmic division.
  • "Design and Implementation of an Advanced Text Editor", Craig Bruce. Design and implementation of the very powerful ZED text editor used with ACE.
  • "Hacking Graphics: Let's get graphical", Rick Mosdell. Hires file formats: DOODLE!, Koala.
  • "Errata", fixes for 2nd SID chip and linear algebra article.
• Issue #12
  • "RUN64: Moving to 64 Mode", Doug Cotton. How to switch from 128 mode to 64 mode (and expect it to work on just about any machine).
  • "Polygonamy: A Study in Three Dimensions", Stephen L. Judd. High speed 3D virtual worlds for the 64. (Binary up above).
  • "Underneath the hood of the SuperCPU", Jim Brain. Description and details of the SuperCPU.
  • "Talking to TED: The MOS 7360/8360 Display IC's", Levente Harsfalvi. Programming TED on the +4 and C-16 (reg. desc., etc.)
• Issue #13
  • "HEAVY MATH -- Part 0: History, Arithemtic, and Simple Algorithms", Alan Jones. History, introduction, etc.
  • "OS/A65 -- A Multitasking/Multithreading Operating System for 6502 Computers", Andre Fachat. Design and implementation.
  • "Using UQWK with QWKRR128", Gaelyne Moranec. Self-explanatory.
  • "Brad Templeton: The Programmer's Friend", by Jim Lawless. An interview with Brad Templeton.
  • "Dim4: A Mind-Expanding Experience", Stephen L. Judd. 4D graphics from a 4k contest. See above for source (all 115k of it) and executables (all 4k of it :).
  • "Exploiting the 65C816S CPU", Jim Brain. Description of chip design, regs, addressing modes, etc. and some SuperCPU programming info.
  • "Using HTML on the Commodore, Part 1", Jim Brain. Introduction to HTML and description of an HTML viewer for the 64.
  • "Creating 3D Dungeon Crawls", Todd Elliott. How to do 3D dungeons a-la Bard's Tale.
  • "The Error Channel", updates to Double-DMA article, TED programming, extra Polygonamy info.
• Issue #14
  • "The Commodore Telnet BBS", Bo Zimmerman. Make your C= telnettable.
  • "Menu Toolbox III", Jeff Jones. User interface subroutines: menus, disk io, etc.
  • "The CMD Nirvana: The Guts and Glory", Todd Elliott. Todd's souped-up 128D.
  • "Jim Butterfield: The Commodore Guru - An Interview", Jim Lawless.
  • "Hi Tech Trickery", Alan Jones. More descriptions of Linear Programming.
  • "Hacking BASICs", Richard T. Cunningham. Detecting drives and selective goto in BASIC.
  • "Twiddling the Bits", Ward Shrake. VIC-20 cartridge exploration and archiving.
• Issue #15 (Jim Brain's last issue!)
  • "Click to Mode Switch: The 40-80 Mouse switch", Michael Nausch. Hardware mouse mod, mollifying monitor madness.
  • "The Canonical List of Commodore Produced Products", Jim Brain. v2.0
  • "Scott Ballantyne : Blazing into Forth", Jim Lawless. Interview with author of Blazin' FORTH.
  • "Technical Information on the VIC-20", Ward Shrake. Pinouts and technical notes.
  • "Hacking BASICs", Dick Cunningham. BASIC tips on 64/128 compatibility.
  • "Twiddling the Bits", Frank Kontros. Update of the DataPump UART project.
• Issue #16 (S. Judd's 1st issue)
  • "PAL VIC20 goes NTSC", by Timo Raita and Pasi 'Albert' Ojala. How to turn your PAL VIC20 into an NTSC VIC20.
  • "Starfields", S. Judd. Making simple hires starfields.
  • "Milestones of C64 Data Compression", by Pontus Berg. A short history of data compression on the 64.
  • "Compression Basics", by Pasi Ojala. Part one of a two-part article on data compression, giving an introduction to and overview of data compression and related issues.
  • "3D for the Masses: Cool World and the 3D Library", S. Judd. The mother of all 3D articles.
• Issue #17
  • "SuperCPU software repair", by S. Judd. SuperCPU-fixing.
  • "Pucrunch, part 2", by Pasi Ojala. Continuation of article in issue 16. Discussion of pucrunch compression and decompression methods and code.
  • "VIC20 Disassembly Project", by Richard Cini. First part of a complete ROM disassembly.
  • "NTSC/PAL-fixing, part 1", Russel Reed, Robin Harbron, S. Judd. Robin and Steve fix a demo.
  • "The Herd Mentality", Bil Herd. Lusty stories regaling the design and development of the C128.
  • Files:
    • slowideas-ntsc.gz NTSC fixed demo
• Issue #18
  • "Data Structures 101", by Pasi Ojala and S. Judd. Linked lists and a nifty insertion sort.
  • "Counting Sort", Pasi Ojala. Discussion of the counting sort!
  • "VIC20 Disassembly Project", by Richard Cini. Part II: Interrupts.
  • "GeoWrite128 disassembly notes", Todd Elliot. Discussion of GEOS, Todd's patches to geoWrite128 to work with more modern setups, and list of major geoWrite routines and entry points.
  • "NTSC/PAL-fixing, part 2: FLI and IFLI", Russel Reed, Robin Harbron, S. Judd. Interactive tutorial on fixing FLI and IFLI graphics.
  • "Obj3d: The 3D object library", S. Judd. Discussion of obj3d routines and example programs.
  • Files:
    • symgfx-ntsc.zip NTSC fixed gfx
• Issue #19
  • "Burst fastloader for the C64", by Pasi Ojala. Hardware modification and code for burst-loading on a 64.
  • "8000's User Port and Centronics Printers", by Ken Ross. The PET 8000's user port, and how to use it to drive printers.
  • "Sex, lies, and microkernal-based 65816 native OSes, part 1", by Jolse Maginnis. OS design in general and JOS design in detail.
  • "VIC20 Disassembly Project", by Richard Cini. Part III: Interrupts, continued (UDTIM, SCNKEY, etc.)
  • "Decoding JPEGs", by S. Judd. Description of JPEG decoding process, especially IDCT.
  • "Bringing 'true-color' images to the 64", by Adrian Gonzalez. Floyd-Steinberg dithering and the IFLI renderer used in JPZ.
• Issue #20
  • "Super/Turbo CPU VDC Hack", Henry Sopko. Hardware mod to access the VDC using a SuperCPU64 or TurboCPU.
  • "16K Memory Expansion for the VIC-20", Per Olofsson. Hardware mod to add memory to the VIC-20.
  • "Quick Quadratic Splines", S. Judd. Algorithms to add curves and animations to programs.
  • "VIC-20 Kernal ROM Disassembly Project", Richard Cini. Part IV: device I/O routines.
  • "MODs and Digital Mixing", Jolse Maginnis. How to play MODs on a 64.
  • "The C64 Digi", Robin Harbron, Levente Hársfalvi, Stephen Judd. Playing digis on the 64: theory, SID internals, $d418 digis, and Pulse Width Modulation.
  • Files:
    • slab.zip Spline lab
    • digibin.zip Digi stuff
  • ADDENDUM: After releasing the issue, Levente came up with a brilliant idea for playing high-resolution digis on a stock machine, using PWM.
    • ch20addendum.txt Explanation
    • play.zip Example code
• Issue #21
  • "Pulse Width Modulation, continued", Various. Tying up some loose ends.
  • "Introducing Full-Screen IFLI Mode With a SuperCPU", Todd Elliot. Making those first three columns with FLI available.
  • "VIC-20 Kernal Disassembly Project, Part IV", Richard Cini. Making sense out of the tape drive code.
  • "The Art of the Minigame", various. Six articles discussing and disassembling some nifty minigames:
    • Codebreaker, by David Holz
    • TinyPlay, by S. Judd
    • MagerTris, by Per Olofsson
    • Compressing Tiny Programs, by S. Judd
    • Tinyrinth, by Mark Seelye
    • Tetrattack!, by S. Judd