New Stuff For Old Stuff :: Blog

E arlier in the week I commented on Twitter that I was grateful to someone for mentioning that the Master contains a battery, because I didn't think anything I had in the attic had a battery inside. Well now I feel silly:  There it is.  Looks like we may have got away with it! There is leakage but it appears to be contained.  Shall I call Acorn and ask what part they would approve?  After a rudimentary clean, it's looking very nice indeed. The cartridge contains Wordwise Plus, as the f-key strip hints: I think I've been lucky not to have had to deal with alkali spills. But the computer is well-designed, even if any had got out, it would have been contained within the plastic of the case as long as the thing is stored at a reasonable angle. This job is essential when there are potentially 30-year-old batteries in there. It's important not to just replace the old pack with alkaline batteries, because the Master tries to charge them when switched on. T

I 'd like to send thanks and kudos to icon64, the team behind Rocky Memphis - The Legend Of Atlantis. That's Stuart Collier, Trevor Storey and Saul Cross. I'm a great starter of games but not a great finisher. The short list of games that I've become obsessed with through to the end include Portal 1 and Day of the Tentacle. I'll spend days trying to figure out a puzzle and I don't like too much pixel-perfect-platform-jumping or battling enemies. Legend of Atlantis fits the bill perfectly. There have been similar games but for a native C64 game this looks and sounds so good and plays so well. The puzzles are perfect. You don't want them to be too obvious and just go through the motions. Nor do you want them to be impossible or unfair. In LOA you collect items as you go along (which aren't too easy to find because you can't see them on the screen and have to search) and you have to work out how those interact with devices you find in the room

I  must mention that I'm very pleased to have taken delivery of this power brick which will power a C64 and a Vic20. I have a collection of Commodore power supplies (I'm sure we all do). It bothers me that they get hot, I can usually smell the one I've been using when it's been on for a while. I believe that there's also a risk of it failing and frying the board of a valuable computer. This one is from Electroware, aka c64psu.com . They're in Poland but the shipping was reasonable and quick. The item itself was very reasonable too, coming in at well under fifty quid with taxes and shipping. It doesn't run totally cool but gets as warm as any transformer you plug into the wall, because it has a regular step-down transformer for the 9vAC. For the 5vDC it has a modern switching circuit. They make a version that feeds your computer and your 1541, one that has the right connector for the C128 and one for powering an Amiga. They all come with a choice of