Commodore Shares...

From: Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk <(Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk)>
Date: Mon Jul 21 11:08:19 1997

> > >>Would this be for proffit or non-proffit purposes?
> >
> > Well, if we have to pay real $ for the info, we should try to make a
> > reasonable return. I'm not really considering remanufacturing anything in
> > any quantities, but just in case we need to, we can.
>
> I agree. Why would anyone pay ANY money for shares if they knew that
> everything would ultimately become public domain.

For the same reason that they put money in collecting tins - not just
for charities but for other organisations - it's a good cause. I'll
subscribe!

> > Since the rights would be purchased by the computing community, they'd
> belong to the computing
> > community.<<
> >
> > I don't necessarily have a problem with this. If this ever comes to pass (a
> > slim chance at best), we can make provisions for emulator licenses.
>
> The keyword being licenses here. No one asks anyone on here to work for
> free and likewise, no one should be expected to shell out their hard
> earned cash for the "greater computing good." Sure, Commodore went
> bye-bye a LONG time ago but the rights to some of that stuff still won't
> be cheap...

No-one should be expected to, but I think you'll find more people are
prepared to than you expect. I'm prepared to - I get my money's worth
anyway (technical data for my several PETs, VICs and my 64), and I would
be quite happy to see the stuff go PD thereafter.

Returning briefly to the Commodore B series, how do the 8200 series
machines fit in? I see old documents refering to the B and P series,
and older ones refering to the 500 and 700 series (I think
respectively), but the machines I've actually seen from that period are
called 8296. There were two models that I've seen - the 8296D (with
internal disk drives) and the 8296 (without). The motherboard is
identical - two banks of 64k RAM, (I think) a high speed (2MHz?) 6502,
and a couple of chips which you unsolder and move to adjacent positions
for 40 column mode. The case is similar to the 8032SK - rounded,
plasticky PET case with large green screen and separate keyboard, but
returns to the edge connectors for the IEEE488 and user ports. The
internal disk drive - which I have now added to my 8296 to make a D
machine - is an 8252 (?) which plugs into the IEEE488 internally.
Ironically, 8296 had a linear power supply and 8296D a switchmode!

So how do the 8296 and the B/P machines relate? Anyone know? Also, how
do you do the bank switching to get at the full 96K of RAM? (I think
you lose 32K to the screen - very inefficient!)

Philip.
Received on Mon Jul 21 1997 - 11:08:19 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:30:27 BST