Author: 8GB

  • BreakpointTV LIVE from BP2009

    Watch it now, they already played some awesome demos.

    They’re a bit late on schedule though, the official inauguration finished minutes ago!

    BreakpointTV.

  • Breakpoint 2009 about to start!

     

    demoparty in the making!
    demoparty in the making!

    In little more than 12 hours everyone’s favourite -PURE DEMOSCENE- (no gaming fuckers) party is about to commence.

     

    After a bad start generated by the global crisis, sceners worldwide have helped the party to be a reality and it might be, as they say, its finest hour! Corporate twats, take notice!

    We’ll be looking forward to the oldschool competitions: usually the best Amiga demo of the year is released at Breakpoint (probably by TBL), so it’s going to be a busy weekend.

    Those lucky party-goers attending the venue are in for a good weather treat: the forecast looks promising, so you will have the chance to spend good time outside of the place and your screens. Remember, this party doesn’t accept remote entries, so if you want to be part of the competitions, your only choice is to go to the party!

    For us who can’t go, it seems this year, despite the economic problems, we’ll get the stream again. Yipee!

    Schedule, Compo rules and more? Head over to the official site of Breakpoint 2009.

  • C64 Laptop – for real

    c64_heroMr Benjamin Heckendorn is well known among the hacking community for his obsession of making portables out of almost any system we can think of. Gamecubes, Playstations, NES, he’s done the lot. The forums of his website are the number one spot for tech references in case you want to build your own portable machine. I have used a lot of info from there, for example, to create my Commodore SX-64 LCD screen mod.

    Today I found about one of his latest creations: a real hardware-based Commodore 64 laptop! it’s got a 16″ LCD screen and a 1541-III DTV unit, and it’s pretty damn cool. It’s brilliant that it’s based off an original C64C, and not a small form factor clone like the DTV or emulation. Also I really like that he used the original keyboard. This could be a pretty awesome composing machine, probably lighter than my SX-64 :P

    All the “gory” details can be found at The Official Site of Benjamin J Heckendorn.

  • Stone Oakvalley’s Authentic Music Collections

    server_xeon2009Stein Eikesdal (a.k.a. Stone Oakvalley) is a guy that you will learn to love because of two of his latest projects.

    Allegedly the “largest MP3 archives in the world of Commodore Amiga and Commodore 64 music” (a bold claim which is probably true!), the SOASC (Stone Oakvalley’s Authetic SID Collection) and SOAMC (Stone Oakvalley’s Amiga Music Collection) are a huge music repository for lovers of these two cool oldschool platforms, as well as two cool domain names :D

    Recorded with meticulous detail, from real machines and using the best replaying software possible (you can read details of the process here and here.
    ), these archives contain thousands of songs for your lascivious delectation and you don’t need special tools to play good old MP3s. In the case of the Amiga he even blended the hard panned stereo nature of the machine’s audio channels. You are saved!

    The C64 archive has everything the High Voltage SID collecion has, each tune recorded in 3 or 4 flavours (different 6581 revisions, and 8580). The Amiga archive has been formed from places like Exotica, Modland and AMP, recorded using Eagleplayer, depending on the replayer that was needed. Everything was calculated precisely to get the best recording possible. In both cases, he also coded some tools to automate the process and leave it running literally for MONTHS until all music was accounted for.

    I leave you with a video introduction of the Amiga archive:
    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/brFLSz66ULM" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

  • Individual Computers news!

    logosIndividual Computers is an awesome firm from Germany, that produces new hardware for oldschool platforms. They are the makers of brilliant accessories like the Retro Replay cartridge for the C64 and the Indivision 24-bit flicker fixer/videocard for the A1200. Jens Schönfeld, the head and main brain behind it, brings us the latest news about new version of the Indivision, a new Amiga 600 RAM expansion and a brilliant new C64 development called Chameleon, which is a multifunction cart that has as many features as even a flickrfixer!!! Continue reading for the official press release and more info…