With a BME280 module and a DS3231 or DS1307 RTC module is possible to equip your C64 with a real time clock and a termometer barometer
You can take a look to this link…shortly I update this post to show how to build it
To be continue …
I have bough this excellent device from RetroInnovations
In this guide, I’will try to explain the easy and fast way to connect to a BBS or a telnet server or use your c64 as a web server.
The heart of the cartridge is Crystal CS8900a 10 megabit Ethernet interface processor. The interface emulates the RR-NET solution as well as the NET64 and TFE systems.
In addition to Ethernet capabilities, the system also includes an on board ROM socket that can be loaded with up to 16 cartridge images. With the appropriate ROM, the 64NIC+ can autoboot and load your favorite games and utilities via TCP/IP, no disk drive required.
As you can see in the picture above, you will notice on the left side of the cartridge 4 switch.
Follow are the description of these switch starting from top to down (near c64 expansion port) position:
In the top left corner of the cartridge you notice a small 16 position rotary switch, this can be used (with an appropriately programmed EPROM) to select 1 of 16 ROM images.
Connect a RJ45 cable to the ethernet socket then using ie sd2iec device, load and run a program like KipperTerm64 .
The network configuration will take place automatically in the presence of DHCP (which is the most common situation). Otherwise, youhave to set manually the IP, netmask, gateway and DNS server.
After network is configured, press F1 key and enter a telnet or BBS domain. A good example of 80 column telnet server is telehack.com port 23.
Then a question is asked about the encoding to be used:
If we want to use UN * X machines, the protocol to be used is VT100, while if we connect to BBS dedicated to Commodore computers, we choose PETSCII. Telehack.com uses VT100.
An example of BBS server is afterelife.dynu.com port 6400 encoding PETSCII. To download or upload files, after staring download/upload from ie BBS, press F1 then chose to download (F1) or upload (F3) a file. KipperTerm use Xmodem as file tranfer protocol.
By installing a telnet server (telnetd) on a machine on your local network you can connect to it and “control” i.e x64 PC by your little 8bit C64.
For more resouces about 64NIC+ visit this link
As you have read before, you can put 16k cartridge programs or games in an EEPROM. You can use 64Kb eprom like 27C512 28pins or 256kb eeprom like 27C020 32pins (default).
You can put up to 16x16kb commodore64 compatible .crt images in a 256kb (2Mbit) EEPROM. You can use .bin images and put all in one file using for example HxD or you can use this tools Games Cart Creator (unfortunately not compatible with windows 10)
To be continue …
I have discovered this very interesting project by Jorge Castillo that permit to surf HiRes image (Art Studio format), download games, streaming audio at 4 bit and more.
You have to use a ESP8266 or ESP32 WiFi modem with zimodem firmware by Bo Zimmerman
The client run only at 57600 bps so you have configure the proper baud rate in another terminal (I use CCGMSU). The project is a work in progress and in this video you can see a demostration.
I try to show how to buid and configure WiFi modem.
Bellow some pictures that show the final result
I have take some content from an italian website by Manuel Conti.
Hardware is based on the NodeMCU development board module which mounts the integrated ESP8266-12E.
ESP8266 is a chip with integrated low-cost Wi-Fi, with full support for the TCP / IP protocol and microcontroller functionality produced by the Chinese company from Shanghai Espressif Systems.
Features (from wikipedia)
From here you can download th firmware.
The software for flashing ESP8266 runs in a Windows OS.
Once you have unzipped the file you will find the esp8266_flasher.exe program and 2 binary files.
Run the esp8266_flasher.exe program and load the juno12.ino.generic.bin or C64WiFi_w_OLED_BBv7.ino.bin file. Connect the nodeMCU card to a USB port on your computer, if you have installed the drivers correctly, a COM port will be assigned to your card, select the latter in the COMport field and click Flash.
Below are a couple of exemplary screenshots
At this point you just have to make the connections according to the following scheme taken from the Alwyz website which is the author of the CCGMS term software that we will use to connect to a BBS.
You can buy an ssd1306 OLED from here .
In order to connect the oled display, it is first necessary to switch the position of Vcc and GND by inverting the position of resistors R4 and R3 (see figure). Then you can directly solder the display on the Node MCU board or by a female socket respecting this pinout:
Before connecting your card to the user port of the commodore64 I advise you to carefully check all the connections. Then connect the nodeMCU card to the user port of the commodore with the computer off, then switch it on and load the CCGMSUltimate program. For this last step there are many solutions, the simplest is to buy an SD2IEC card or you can build it yourself (on the net there are numerous resources in this regard).
When starting the program for the first time, follow the steps below (from the author’s website )
Also from the Alwyz website you can download a quick guide in pdf format and the gerber file for the realization of the PCB. For convenience you can also download them from this link
In the screenshots aside you can see the commands available to the user. After configuring the modem as described above, simply press enter on the initial screen and if everything is successful, the SSID and the IP address will appear with some advise regards the author of the firmware.
At this point you can issue the command atdt followed by the address of the BBS to which you want to connect i.e. atdt afterlife.dynu.com:6400
However if we do not want to enter the address of our BBS every time we can create a sort of telephone book with BBS addresses.
Hit F7 and open the Dialer/Parameters menu then press ‘A’ key to accesses the Autodialer/Phone book menu.
Press E (edit) to edit the field selected by arrow .
To save the phonebook go back in Dialer/Parameters menu and hit ‘S’ than ‘Return’ key.
Next time you run the CCGMS program, the address books and configuration parameters are loaded automatically.
My experience as a BBS commodore user is not very long, however I can suggest some good rules. In the BBS message board the same rules apply as for any forum. The moderator in this case is called SiSop comparable to a system administrator of a modern internet network. In a BBS the following sections can normally be found: mail service, forum, download area, online games, news area, text file archive etc.
If you would like to read these documents offline you can do it!
The simplest thing is to download the entire file but this is not always possible, an alternative method is to activate a storage space in the c64 ram called buffer using the F4 key.
If you have a REU (ram expansion unit) the CCGMS Ultimate recognize it and use the REU as memory buffer.
Once the buffer is activated, anything that is displayed on the screen is stored into the buffer. When we have finished viewing the contents that interest us, press the ‘F4’ to return to the buffer menu and and ‘S’ to save the buffer on disk or on SD by means an SD2IEC or other exotic devices like 1541Ultimate.
You can optionally use the same buffer menu to retrieve previously saved ascii files simply by using the ‘L’ key.
The buffer menu also offers other options including that of being able to clear the data stored in the buffer or if you are lucky enough to have an old dot matrix printer for commodore 64 you can print the entire contents of the buffer on paper.
There is also a way to make a screenshots of the actual screen.
You can store in ram up to 4 screenshot by pressing ‘commodore+ctrl+1-4’ and recall it by pressing ‘shift+ctrl+1-4’.
If the buffer is active, we could save our screens in the buffer area using ‘comodore+F7’ and subsequently store it on disk.
When you are in the Dealer/Parametres menu, press ‘V’ to view other useful commands (see below)
This picture show the connection to Retroacademy BBS that offer to watch some online daily news and RAI teletext (an Italian main TV).
The CCGMS ultimate program supports three types of protocols for download: Punter, Xmodem, Xmodem-CRC.
The punter protocol provides the ability to perform multiple downloads or uploads. Until recently it was the recommended one. At the moment it is preferable to use the Xmodem-CRC protocol as it performs a more accurate error check, the only disadvantage is that it does not support multi download or multi upload.
I remember to change the protocol both client side (CCGMS) and server side (BBS).
One of the most popular ways to compress C64 files was to have them Zip Coded. This is the format most often used when dealing with disks full of multiple files. The disk is compressed, and split into files which were less than 64k, so they could be used in a C64 for real-time decompression
The split files are headed with a number, showing which section of the disk it has the data of, and then an exclamation point to separate the number from the name of the archive.
Many BBS users will have certainly run into the problem of how to unzip files that come in the form of 1!filename, 2!filename, 3!filename, 4!filename. First of all let’s define what we are talking about, these are a image d64 that are splitted and zipped in 4 files in order to be downloaded more quickly from the BBS servers. To be able to decompress them in the original d64 file, we have various software. If we have an SD2IEC card, I recommend using Unzip2018Beta1 by Alwyz.
Another way is to use a PC: remove the SD card from your SD2IEC and connect it to USB by an adapter then use Dirmaster to unzip and recreate the original d64 image.
Another kind of file is lynx (extension lnx). It was one of the most popular archive formats for the C64, especially for data transfer over a modem. The Lynx format is just a collection of files joined together, with a small C64 basic program as the header, and when run, would produce the message ‘Use Lynx‘ to dissolve this file. The files aren’t compressed, and it’s worthless if there are many files on the disk.
In order to decompress files with lnx extension we can use the Ultimate lynx3 or Lynx17 programs which, however, as far as I know, are not compatible with SD2IEC peripherals. On the CCGMSultimate release disc there are all these programs. Even for lynx files it will be possible to use the PC to decompress them with the usual dirmaster program.
That’s all! If you have comments or find errors in the text, do not hesitate to report them to me.
See you soon!
Matteo