30/12/2004...

Upgrade your Wheels system.

Maurice Randall writes:
The files needed for upgrading your Wheels 64 and/or Wheels 128 system are now available for free downloading from my web site.
The upgrade consists of  a new Toolbox, Dashboard and files for upgrading your Wheels kernel and the MakeSysDisk utility, the Docs are also online.

http://cmdrkey.com


I wish everyone who drops by this site a Very Happy new Year :)

Colin

03/11/2004...
geoPublish Tutorial Part 17 now online.
Bruce Thomas writes:
Installment #17, Corrections & Continuations, of the geoPublish Tutorial is now available at http://www.edmc.net/cue

Follow the geoPublish Tutorial link and enGEOy!

Along with the HTML version of the article that can be read online there are two CONVERTed geoWrite files to download. One is the actual article and the
second one contains directions on how to set up the text regions, import the file into the geoPublish Document and add the Graphics and Special Text.

Follow along and create your own printable copy of the Tutorial.

Bruce

27/09/2004...
PROTOVISION'S September Update.
Protovision T-Shirts available! Be the height of sartorial elegance as Protovision release their autumn collection ;-) Photos are available in our online shop:

http://www.protovision-online.de/catalog

Our pricelist was updated today:

http://www.protovision-online.de/pricelist.htm

JTR, MacGyver and Thunderblade from Protovision (visit our "about" section for more information about our members) travelled to the Classic Gaming Expo
(CGE-UK) in Croydon/United Kingdom. http://www.cgexpo-uk.com Thunderblade has taken lots of photos, and you can have a look at them here:

http://www.protovision-online.de/london_cge_fotos

For more photos from the event follow this link:

 http://www.cgeuk.com/gallery/2004

Protovision was also mentioned in the biggest German console magazine "Maniac", issue 10/2004: http://www.maniac.de
Btw., the Protovision Previews Site http://www.protovision-previews.de is currently beeing translated, an English version is going to be available in not too distant future.

Milo aka MacGyver/DMAgic/Protovision

26/06/2004...
News from PROTOVISION
DISTRIBUTION OF CRAZY NEWS
If you are looking for an economic simulation of a different kind, with great graphics and a good sense of humour, then Crazy News by V.O. Productions is for you!
Manage a newspaper publishing empire and earn enough money to finance the search for the seven oldest people of your village! Crazy News can now be obtained from Protovision.
A printed manual with colour cover is included. Please note that Crazy News is only available in German language. Find more information about the game at the Protovision-Homepage.

RETRO GAMER INTERVIEW
We recently had a chat with Retro Gamer, the fast growing retro magazine from the UK. The detailed interview will be published in issue five, which will be released in just a few days. Get it at http://www.retrogamer.net !

PROTOVISION AT CGE UK
The Classic Gaming Expo UK will take place on 24th to 25th July 2004 in London. Protovision will be one of the exhibitors, presenting the finest in C64 games, hardware and demos. Please visit http://www.cgexpo-uk.com for more information on the event.

VISION STATEMENT
Unfortunately there won't be a VISION Party Conference this year. Courage, organizer of the VISION parties, recently bought a house and is now busy with renovating it.
But don't worry: The first preparations for VISION 2005 are already beeing made - stay tuned!

STEREOINSID
Due to a Windows crash, Thunder.Bird has lost the orders made over the last 2 or 3 months for the StereoINsid, if you ordered within this period please contact him.
The StereoSID Mailinglist is down due to provider problems so please use the forum at Thunder.Bird's page, at http://www.athomebymalte.de

PRICELIST
Our pricelist was updated earlier this month. The new pricelist is now also available as a notefile in D64 format.

http://www.protovision-online.de

03/06/2004...
Some "Snippets" of news from the Expo posted by Bruce Thomas and Greg Nacu.
GEOS Games Series of disks now Public Domain.
Bruce Thomas Writes:

I have now got files and web pages updated and am happy to pass along somenews that was announced on Saturday May 29 at the LUCKY Spring EXPO 2004.

After nearly 3 years of searching and dealing with numerous people the GEOS Games Series of 4 disks containing 17 games for GEOS users has been released to the Public Domain. There are Card Games, Logic Games, Strategy Games, Brain Teasers and Action Games.
Many of the games have built in Editors so you can create your own levels. A number of the games maintain High Score lists. There are single player and two player games and some provide computer opponents. While some are familiar almost all of them present very interesting and unique feats of GEOS programming.

These disks were previously available in the early 90's as Commercial Software in Germany in a format similar to the ReRUN disks with an accompanying manual.

The original disks can be downloaded in D64 format from the CUE web site :
(http://www.edmc.net/cue)
Follow the link under the News section or go to the GEOS Games Download Page.

With the help of Arndt Dettke and Werner Weicht (who was assisted by Colin J. Thomson) there is now English Documentation available for these games. The documentation is included on the geoSpecific CD available on the CUE website.

Also on the CD is a patched version of one of the games. Todd Elliott patched Missile Defense to switch a SuperCPU down to 1 MHz so it would be playable without having to manually reduce the speed. Under Wheels, the SCPU switches back to 20 MHz when you exit the game. Todd also added color to the game to increase its appeal. This patched version of Missile DefenCe is only available on the geoSpecific CD which is available for a limited time at a 10% reduction in price.

All of these games and their documentation will also be available on future issues of Loadstar - The Premier Monthly Software Digest for the Commodore 64 and 128.

enGEOy!

Bruce Thomas

geoPublish V1.1
If you were at the LUCKY Commodore Spring EXPO 2004 in Louisville on the weekend and you saw my demo of Todd Elliott's updated geoPublish V1.1 you have an idea of what it can do. For those of you who weren't there here are the new features.

Keep in mind that this is a working initial release from Todd. He has plans to add more features and functionality - including an installer utility to make it easy to upgrade a copy of your geoPublish Version 1.0 to the new V1.1.

1. You must have at least 128 KB of AVAILABLE RAM expansion under Wheels to use V1.1. This is a requirement as geoPublish V1.1 loads itself entirely into RAM when it starts up. This virtually eliminates lag times when different modules have to be loaded (moving from Page Layout to Page
Graphics mode).

2. V1.1 now supports 4 drives. You can run geoPublish V1.1 from any drive (A - D) and access your datafiles on any drive (A - D). There is still the Program Drive (for fonts, desk accessories, etc) and Data Drive (for geoWrite files, etc) issue but now you aren't limited to being able to work on only certain drives. You can also double click a geoPublish Document on Drive D (for example) and geoPublish V1.1 will load no matter what drive it is located on.

3. There is now a Page Graphics Library function that works the same way as the Library in Master Pages and Page Layout modes. You can create a Page Graphics Layout with lines, boxes, special text, save it to a Library file and then load that Page Graphics layout back onto another page in the same
or different geoPublish Document.

4. You can now paste JPEG and EPS files directly onto a Master Page Mode or Page Graphics Mode page in geoPublish V1.1.
Previously we could incorporate these images in our Printouts if we created PostPrint Projects. Now we can paste them directly onto the page in geoPublish V1.1.

5. Up to 104 JPEG or EPS files can be placed on a Page Graphics mode page.
Up to 8 such objects can be pasted onto a Master Page mode page.

6. JPEG and EPS images can be constrained or scaled (as opposed to opaque or transparent for other object types) and can also be rotated in 90 degree increments.

7. If you draw a rectangle or a circle on the page you can use its attributes to then assign a JPEG or EPS file to that object.

8. The pattern attribute can be used to set the color of the frame around a JPEG or EPS file

9. Printing is no longer supported under geoPublish V1.1. You must use Maurice Randall's PostPrint to print the geoPublish V1.1 files as geoPublish does not have the routines to print JPEG and EPS files whereas PostPrint does.
The version of PostPrint that Maurice released in March handles most of what V1.1 can do at the moment. A new version was created on May 25 to facilitate the demo at EXPO.

10. if you create a document with V1.1 and incorporate JPEG and EPS images you cannot give that document to a user of geoPublish V1.0 and expect them to be able to use it since the object support isn't there. If you don't use JPEGs or EPS files then there is no compatibility issue.

Todd Elliott will continue to work on geoPublish and add features and improvements. His focus in the immediate future will be to create an installer program so that users can order V1.1 and start using it. V1.1 was available at the EXPO with proof of ownership of geoPublish V1.0 and a number of users bought the upgrade from Todd. Todd will announce when he has the installer completed and how to get the upgrade.

Both Todd Elliott and Maurice Randall will add features to their respective programs and make them available to registered owners as time progresses.

Bruce Thomas

I would like to thank Bruce Thomas for allowing me to post this GREAT News! here, this News was originally posted on the COPS and Homestead Mailing Lists soon after the Expo and from what I have read it was one amazing Expo!!

Another interest of mine that was talked/Demo'd at the Expo was WiNGs

Greg Nacu writes:
The LUCKI Spring Commodore Expo 2004 went exceptionally well. Modernity Grp was given two demos. The first Showed off the Micromys PS/2 Mouse adaptor, and the IDE64. Including a CD-rom native access demonstration, and a raw speed demo for transfering a 980 block .mod file from a CD to a Compact Flash card.

The Second demo, which happened after dinner on Saturday showed the latest developments in the Fileman, Wavestream, and Movie Tools for WiNGs.

The full transcript of the two demos, combined, should appear in Gregs News section over the next few days, so keep and eye on wings.webhop.org

Colin.

28/04/2004...
The launch of the completely revamped and updated Official WiNGs website
Greg Nacu writes:
Greetings Fellow Commodore Users; I have two important announcements.

I'm very pleased to announce the launch of the completely revamped, and updated Official WiNGs website:  http://wings.webhop.org.   Same address, totally new site.  The new wings.webhop.org aims at making it much easier to see and get to the information about WiNGs that you
need.

The site offers new tutorials, new downloads page, indexed IRC log files, application synopses, and for the first time a hardware ordering section.  The site is accessible to both people with modern graphical browsers, and people using text browsers through a shell account or on their C64, such as
The Wave.  To view the text browser friendly site surf to http://wings.webhop.org/simpleindex.html

This leads us to my second announcement which I think is going to be very exciting.  A new group has formed today by the name of "Modernity Grp."  We are a hardware distribution, and software development group, along a similar vein as Protovision.  Our goal is to support and further the usefulness and accessibility of the WiNGs Operating System, by providing key software and hardware to provide the best experience possible.

Today we announce that we are importing the brand new version of the IDE64 from the Czech Republic into North America.  The IDE64 version 3.4 is the newest and best incarnation of the IDE64 to date, and was just released to the world for the first last month.  This version of the IDE64, like the versions before it is able to interface an assortment of modern hardware devices to the Commodore64 and 128, including ATA harddrives, ATAPI CD-roms, Dual HighSpeed RS232 serial ports, and a 10 Megabit ethernet adaptor, ETH64. 
But the most important new development for the IDE64 is the built in Compact Flash Card port.  This allows for high capacity, ultra compact, non-volatile, Compact Flash Cards to be plugged directly into a C64 and is accessible directly from the Ready Prompt just like any other storage device.

With the IDE64 and a Compact Flash card, you get very fast, WiNGs and commodore kernal compatible, high capacity storage (partition sizes range from 32 Megabytes upto a Gigabyte) all contained in a single cartridge that does not require any external power supply.  The compact flash cards can be swapped in and out to expand your capacity to fit your needs.

More information about this newest IDE64 interface adaptor can be found at http://wings.webhop.org under the Modernity Grp. section. 
A complete demonstration of all the features and capabilities of this amazing hardware, and how well it works with wings, will be shown off in exactly one month, at the up and coming LUCKI Spring Commodore Expo in New Albany Indiana.

The complete IDE64 package, which includes the Interface Cartridge, a color 18 Page User Guide, a CR2032 RTC battery, double sided 1541 Utilities disk and a bonus CDrom will be on sale at the LUCKI Spring Commodore Expo for $149.  Be there to find out about Special Introductory offers.  
We will begin taking mail orders for the IDE64 package and other products to come, starting on June 1st 2004.

        The Commodore World Just Got Better.

                - Modernity Grp.
                - Greg Nacu.

What can I say...
The hardware is out there, the Software, the very helpfull users/programmers and even an IRC Channel...
Come join us an feel the WiNGs experience.

Colin

08/04/2004...
a bug in The Waves font list file
Maurice Randall writes:
Today I noticed a bug in the font list file that is used with The Wave. It's easy to fix and everyone can
do it themselves.
Load up geoWrite and then load in the file "FontList64" or "FontList128" depending on which version you use.
Scroll down the page a little until you find the line that says:

fontname=monospaced

That needs to be changed to:

fontname=monospace

Some web sites are designed with portions using a fixed pitch font. This little bug caused The Wave to
always use a proportional font even when the page called for a fixed pitch font.

-Maurice

04/03/2004...
CMD Utilities featuring WCOPY+ released
Maurice Randall writes:
CMD Utilities now featuring WCOPY+, an all-new filecopier designed for copying files to and from IBM-formatted disks. The CMD Utilities disk has been around for over 10 years, and now it gets an added bonus with the addition of WCOPY+.
This is the only filecopier of its type ever for the Commodore that supports the Windows long-filenames. Transfer files between your Commodore and your PC the easy way, just pop the disk in, copy the files, and you're done.

You can read all about it at the following link and also download the free stripped down version, but why would you do that.. buy the FULL version and support Maurice for all his hard work.

http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/prodinfo/cmdut.html

Colin

25/02/2004...
geoPublish Tutorial online (Just incase you missed this last year ;)
Bruce Thomas writes:
Installment #10, Importing Graphics Part 1, of the geoPublish Tutorial is now
available at:

http://www.edmc.net/cue

Follow the GeoPublish Tutorial link and enGEOy!

Bruce

12/02/2004...
GEOS 64 and GEOS 128 V2.0 are now available for free downloading
Maurice Randall writes:
You now have a choice... if you don't need the manual, you can download GEOS along with all the files normally included with it or you can still purchase it at a reduced price of $25 plus shipping. This price includes the complete manual along with 3 original disks which saves you the trouble of downloading and setting up your disks. Call 1-866-CMDRKEY to order.

Maurice also posted this on Homestead:
Also, I'd like not to get flooded with personal email from new users on how to do this or how to do that in GEOS. I hope you understand. But that's what the Homestead list is for.
Please post your help questions on the Homestead list, there are many, many, experienced GEOS users here just waiting to help.
I'll still post answers to questions if I have time, but most likely there is already someone else here with the answers and maybe even better answers than I can provide.

Click here to get your free download and start enjoying GEOS .

####NOTE####
This news is quite old now, I held back putting it here because some fool put the News on /. and it caused Rod and Gaelyne a lot of expense, data charges etc.. To support Rod and Gaelyne why not send them a donation if you download GEOS..

Colin

31/01/2004...
Maurice Randalls Wave Page back online.
Maurice writes:
Since closing up my old personal website at www.ia4u.net, The Wave hasn't been available for downloading. I have now put it on the cmdrkey.com website to make it available once again.

You can go to http://cmdrkey.com and if you click on the Wave image, you'll go straight to the correct page. Or you can select "Software Info" in the table at the left and you'll find a link to The Wave page.

After a "very" quiet 2003 on this site due to many many reasons, I hope that things will improve for everyone in the Commodore/Geos World. There is a lot of "behind the scene" stuff going on as I type this, especially with Wings and also I have heard that Wolfgang Grimm has started work again on MegaPatch3 on checking Wolfgang's site it shows an update which, for me is very exciting!

This site will still mainly be for Geos and Wave related news (depending on activity) as all the other Projects that interest me have there own News sections which is Great!! and all the links can be found HERE