Commodore 128 Alive!

I've been frustrated by the fact that though there is a lot of C128 information available online, much of it is in the form of page scans or 'dirty' PDFs. For example, one of the books I found in PDF format consisted of scans of two-page spreads. There was no way to print this out cleanly.

Well, I've taken the time (quite a lot of it, as it turns out) to clean up some of these old PDFs, and to convert many of the page scans into PDF format as well. You should be able to print and 3-hole punch any of these books and manuals to have your own work copy without having to shell out a bunch of bucks for one on eBay or AbeBooks. A few (very few)  were okay just as I found them, but I've mirrored them here just to have them all in one place.

I've trimmed, fixed, and organized pages, but I haven't edited any of the information. If there was a bad OCR, then it's still bad. If the scan was fuzzy, it's still fuzzy. Maybe someday I'll tackle cleaning these up as well. As it is, I have way too much time in this.

So, without further ado, here are the links to the books I've posted. Enjoy.

The C128 Service Manual (converted from images) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/C128_Service_Manual.pdf
The 1571 Service Manual (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/1571_Service.pdf
The 6526 CIA Spec Sheet (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/6526_Spec.pdf
Mapping the C128 (pages split and reordered) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/Mapping_the_C128.pdf
Machine Language for Beginners (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/ml-bgnr.pdf
Machine Language for the C64 and Other Commodore Computers (unfortunately NOT the updated one with C128 info) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/mlcom.pdf
BASIC 8 Manual -(converted from text)  http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Basic8.pdf
How to Get the Most Out of BASIC 8 (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Most_Basic8.pdf
COMAL Reference Guide (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/comal.pdf
Ray Carlsen's Technical Notes for the C128 (compiled and converted from text) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/Carlsen.pdf

The last one is a NEW compilation, consisting of all the Ray Carlsen technical notes I could find that pertain in any way to the C128. It's nice to have them all in one place, and in PDF format.

I also have the following, but have no more room on my server. Anyone interested in hosting them?

The C128 Programmer's Reference Guide (trimmed and reordered) - 41MB
Machine Language Routines for the C64/C128  (reordered a bit) - 28MB
The Transactor on the C128 (new compilation from images) - 80MB

The last item in this list is a NEW 280-page anthology of all of the feature articles ever printed in The Transactor on the C128. Though this took the lion's share of my time to put together, and though some of the page scans are far from perfect, I think it turned out to be a wonderful reference for the C128.

I hope you enjoy these. Please snuff them up quickly and spread them across the InterTubes, as I need the space back for other projects.

(Lance, if you'd like to take over hosting any or all of these, especially the ones I don't have room for, it would be great for me. The ones that are up there are taking up a lot of space, and I'm limited to five 20MB chunks, so I can't even find room for the others. Even splitting them leaves me with some pretty big files.)

That's great, Mark! Thanks for going to all that effort!

I have plenty of transfer going unused, so I'd be happy to mirror any or all of them. If you'd like I can set you up with an FTP account on my server and send you a PM with details on how to use it. For now I'll go ahead and get up copies of the files you already have up.

Also, I've already been working on a few of these titles for online browsing, something of a cross between the Open Library and Google Books for Commodore books, so if you don't mind I'd love to draw from your cleaned up versions in cases where they're better than my copies. Would that be okay with you?

Mirror here: http://furthervoyages.com/books

Sorry, didn't feel like typing up 10 different links at the moment. :)

Added some more books from my own PDF collection:

The Visible Computer: 6502
154x Service Manual
1541 Troubleshooting and Repair Guide
Machine Code Master
Machine Code Games Routines for the C64
40 Best Machine Code Routines for the C64
Impossible Routines for the C64
Mapping the C64
VIC-20 and C64 Toolkit: Kernal
What's Really Inside the C64
Dr Watson Assembler docs (C64)
Electronic Computer Projects for Commodore and Atari Personal Computers
Inside Commodore DOS
The Undocumented Z80 Documented
Programming the Z80, 3rd ed., Rodney Zaks
The Z80 Microcomputer Handbook

Hey! We have the beginnings of a real library here!

Thanks for the space offer. I'll get uploading ASAP.

Sadly, a lot of the ones I added suffer from the problems you've been trying to fix, but for the moment it's better than not having them available at all.

By the way, feel free to rename, reorganize and create subfolders if I don't get around to it soon enough. :)

So, everyone go to Nikoniko's link above. He's already slurped the ones I had up, and I'll try to get the others up there this weekend.

Look for the Transactor_C128 book. I think it's VERY useful.

This is just awesome stuff! Well done guys.
:hurra:

I've got around 30 more I can add (CP/M, PET stuff, BASIC stuff etc)

Lemme know where to put 'em.

cheers,

Lance

I've just added a BUNCH more books, including the Transactor one. Check 'em out!

http://furthervoyages.com/books

BTW, I'll be taking down my files soon. So go to nikoniko's site in the future.

I've been progressively adding stuff in (guess these'll need to be moved nikoniko ?) - I've around 2gigs worth to put up.....

Wow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your  contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

Quote from: nikonikoWow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your  contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

This one - > http://furthervoyages.com/books/Miscellaneous%208%20Bit/How%20to%20Program%20Microcomputers%20(1977)(Howard%20W%20Sams).pdf

needs to be deleted - the upload aborted, so it's o bytes.

Quote from: nikonikoWow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your  contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

Also - once you've got a nice pretty frontend, I'll link to it from here :)

Wow! This is cool! Look what I started! ;)

You are DEFINITELY going to want to snag my latest upload. I almost guarantee you've lost the originals in your collection, but my re-creation lets you have a 95% accurate reproduction to show off to your friends.

Just print on cardstock, cut out, and you're good to go.

See if you can figure out which file I'm talking about (as soon as nikoniko makes it live):

http://furthervoyages.com/books

Once everything is available in one place I'll go through and see what I have that isn't there. I have been squirreling away this kind of thing for years and I have a *lot* of Commodore-related books in electronic form. I've been meaning to organize my file pile for ages and this thread has motivated me.

Quote from: nikonikoMirror here: http://furthervoyages.com/books

Sorry, didn't feel like typing up 10 different links at the moment. :)

This link doesn't seem to be working...  Please tell me this is only temporary!  :förbryllad:

-Andrew

Things seem to be working now. My host's status page has a note posted about router problems, so I hope that's all straightened out.

Quote from: nikonikoThings seem to be working now. My host's status page has a note posted about router problems, so I hope that's all straightened out.

Looks good now.  Thanks!  :)

-Andrew

I really need to put up a proper interface, but I've been busy doing OCR so that I can replace non-searchable PDFs with searchable ones. Also, Chris over at c16chris (http://www.c16chris.danbike.de/z%20Komplett/Handbuecher/c16chris%20-%20Handbuecher.htm) is generously donating a great collection of c16 / 116 / Plus/4 -related TIFF scans for conversion to PDF and posting in the archive. Particularly handy is the Plus/4 Programmers Reference Guide, which is hard to find these days.

They actually wrote a PRG for that piece of doggie doo? :)

Just a quick note that the FULL, FIXED PDF version of the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide is now up on nikoniko's site at:

http://furthervoyages.com/books/download.php?Uncategorized/C128_PRG_fixed_full_version.pdf

If you have any other version printed out, toss it! If you have any other version as a file, delete it! This version fills in all the missing pages, reorders the ones that were mixed up, and trims off all the unnecessary white space on the oversize pages of the old one. You can actually download this, print it out, and have a nice, neat USABLE copy of the C128 PRG!

Post on all the other boards about this one. I'd like to see this version of the C128 PRG replace ALL of the screwed-up versions out there on the Intertubes!

I just won a copy of Mapping the Commodore 128 on  eBay. In a couple of weeks I'll start correcting the OCR version of this book that's been on the Intertubes. It's AWFUL!!! Lots and lots of OCR errors, which is murder when you're looking for detailed information.

No promises on when it will be available, but I'll post here when it is.

Quick opinion poll regarding organization (yeah, I know it's desperately needed and long overdue):

Is it more helpful to have a folder for each computer system (or family), with topics for programming, schematics and so on in its subfolders... or to have those topics as the main folders, with the computer systems as subcategories of those? I'm thinking the latter, but before I go and create dozens of folders and start shuffling files around I thought I'd see what you guys think.

Of course, I'm usually the last to have an opinion or say anything around here (...) but here's how I'd like to see it:

Chip Reference
     MOS Chips
          CPUs
          Others
     3rd Party Chips
C64
     Programming
          BASIC 2.0
                Reference
                     CBM
                     3rd Party
                Tutorials
                Sample Code
                Subroutine Library
          Other Languages
               COMAL
               Simons' Basic
               etc.
          Assembler
               CBM
               Buddy
               Merlin
               etc.
C128
     (same as C64, but BASIC 7.0, -Simons' Basic, +BASIC8, etc.)
Peripherals
     Disk Drives
          1541
          1571
          1581
     Monitors
          Commodore
               1702
               1902A
               etc.
          3rd Party
     REUs
          CBM
          3rd Party
     Modems
          ditto
     Interfaces
          etc.
     Printers
          etc.

and so on...

But then, that's just me. :)

I would say that instead of organizing the files into a tree that we do like a social bookmarking site and allow users to tag the documents and then show a cloud as the top level navigation.

I like that even better. I LOVE the tag cloud that LibraryThing creaes for my books:

http://www.librarything.com/tagcloud.php?view=airship

Fantastic idea, Payton. I'm testing something along those lines now.

If its not a static page, allow the user to sort/search by category.  That way the user constructs their own 'tree' (mine often looks like a table but anyway...).  Categories I'd recommend would be software, hardware, computer, peripheral, BASIC, Assembly, applications, games, and utitlities.

This works fantastic whenever you have a large collection but do some thought ahead of time!  The worst thing is to have 1000+ items and then decide you want another category (you'd have to assign EACH item to the new category or not as appropriate).

I've been trying to think of a way around the category approach, exactly because it would get to be a pain if a new one ever needed to be added to a large collection.

Here's what I'm thinking: when you click on a tag, you'll get back a results page which shows items which match. Off to the right of (or alternately, above) the results would be another tag cloud showing all tags that appear together with the previous selection. So if you chose C64 from the main cloud, you might see Programming, Games, BASIC 2.0, Gazette, and so on. Click on Programming, and your results will be refined to all items which match C64 + Programming. And so on. As long as people are tagging items in the library meaningfully, someone can probably find what they're looking for at least as quickly, and sometimes more quickly, than they would have navigating a normal file tree. Plus they might also discover things they would have missed in a traditional hierarchical organization. The search results themselves could be sorted (by user choice) according to name or date added, thus you'd pretty much end up with a customized file tree. I think that would be sufficiently functional as to avoid hard-coding for categories.

On every page, there will also be a search box so that those who prefer to type something like 'c64 cia programming' can do so without navigating the cloud.

I'm thinking it might be helpful to split some of our references like the PRGs and Mapping books into sections so that people can find more specific results. Perhaps someone would only want the memory map from the 128 PRG and doesn't want to download the whole thing. Of course, the full books would also be offered, too.

Regarding the tag clouds, how do you think they should be presented? Weighted according to number of items using that tag? Weighted according to popularity of files using that tag? Weighted according to the popularity of the tags themselves? (tags which are clicked or searched more often are displayed more prominently)

I would literally copy the way CodePlex works.  It's a thing of beauty.

http://www.codeplex.com

No need to split the PDF files to go to specific places within them. The following link, for example, goes directly to page 3 of the 1541 Service manual:


1541 Service Manual pg. 3 (http://furthervoyages.com/books/Uncategorized/1541_Service.pdf#page=3)

There are more options you can use for links to PDF. You can find the most useful ones documented here:

http://www.rdpslides.com/psfaq/FAQ00050.htm

Of course, with this approach they'd still have to download the whole document. They'd just end up at their page(s) of interest.

Quote from: Mangelore on January 17, 2008, 03:14 PM
I now have a PDF version of the CMD SuperCPU128 manual. However, it's 32MB in size.
Please drop me a PM you can host it.

Just a quick note...  Thanks to Mangelore, I've added the SuperCPU128 manual to my website (http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/wiskow).  In addition, I also still have the CMD HD and JiffyDOS manuals, as well as the collection of JiffyDOS ROM's.  Enjoy!  :)

BTW - Feel free to host any of the items on my website on your own servers if you have the ability to do so...  The more this stuff is spread around, the more "preserved" it'll be.  ;)

-Andrew

Where I can find those C128's pdf manual's you are talking from the very begining?
Sorry I am lost, I'm new here and relatively new at forums.
Thanks

That is a good question!  Nikoniko was hosting them on furthervoyages.com but now it's... a commercial travel website ?  (if we're lucky he might add them to his new 2MHz site). Airship was also hosting some PDFs but those links are now bad too.

Another member, Andrew Wiskow, is hosting several hardware related PDFs at http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/wiskow/ (http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/wiskow/).  The C128 User guide and some more hardware docs are at http://commodore128.org/hardware.html (http://commodore128.org/hardware.html).

Quote from: hydrophilic on March 09, 2008, 05:18 PM
That is a good question!  Nikoniko was hosting them on furthervoyages.com but now it's... a commercial travel website ?  (if we're lucky he might add them to his new 2MHz site). Airship was also hosting some PDFs but those links are now bad too.

Another member, Andrew Wiskow, is hosting several hardware related PDFs at http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/wiskow/ (http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/wiskow/).  The C128 User guide and some more hardware docs are at http://commodore128.org/hardware.html (http://commodore128.org/hardware.html).

Why don't we try to get them hosted at ZIMMERS with all the other Commodore files? Last time I emailed Bo he said he had lots of space....

Steve

I would be happy to host those PDF files at retroarchive.org as well.

g.

I'm just wondering if we can get a status update on the PDF archive.  None of the old links seem to be working.  If it's just a matter of where to host it, I'd be happy to host the files on my site (especially since there's some space cleared up now due to the vacancy left by the removal of the CMD ROMs and docs).

I have some of them here (http://ftp://landover.no-ip.com/Classic%20computer%20books%20(PDF))

Quote from: Blacklord on March 02, 2009, 12:09 AM
I have some of them here (http://ftp://landover.no-ip.com/Classic%20computer%20books%20(PDF))

Thanks, Lance...  But that link is broken.  This forum doesn't seem to like linking to FTP sites.

I think Lance used "Insert Hyperlink" instead of "Insert FTP Link". Try this (ftp://landover.no-ip.com/Classic%20computer%20books%20(PDF)) :)

I did :) my bad!

Quote from: SmallCleverDinosaur on March 02, 2009, 05:27 AM
I think Lance used "Insert Hyperlink" instead of "Insert FTP Link". Try this (ftp://landover.no-ip.com/Classic%20computer%20books%20(PDF)) :)

Much better.  :)

Quote from: airship on August 24, 2007, 06:53 AM

<Snip...>


So, without further ado, here are the links to the books I've posted. Enjoy.

The C128 Service Manual (converted from images) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/C128_Service_Manual.pdf
The 1571 Service Manual (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/1571_Service.pdf
The 6526 CIA Spec Sheet (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/6526_Spec.pdf
Mapping the C128 (pages split and reordered) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/Mapping_the_C128.pdf
Machine Language for Beginners (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/ml-bgnr.pdf
Machine Language for the C64 and Other Commodore Computers (unfortunately NOT the updated one with C128 info) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/mlcom.pdf
BASIC 8 Manual -(converted from text)  http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Basic8.pdf
How to Get the Most Out of BASIC 8 (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Most_Basic8.pdf
COMAL Reference Guide (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/comal.pdf
Ray Carlsen's Technical Notes for the C128 (compiled and converted from text) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/Carlsen.pdf

Can anyone tell me where to find these files? Just got back into the C= scene. Looks like they would be some good reading..
Any help/info would be great.

I also run an FTP server and would host these files IF they can be found...

TIA...

Quote from: dmackey828 on May 09, 2009, 10:53 AM

Quote from: airship on August 24, 2007, 06:53 AM

<Snip...>


So, without further ado, here are the links to the books I've posted. Enjoy.

The C128 Service Manual (converted from images) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/C128_Service_Manual.pdf
The 1571 Service Manual (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/1571_Service.pdf
The 6526 CIA Spec Sheet (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/6526_Spec.pdf
Mapping the C128 (pages split and reordered) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/Mapping_the_C128.pdf
Machine Language for Beginners (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/ml-bgnr.pdf
Machine Language for the C64 and Other Commodore Computers (unfortunately NOT the updated one with C128 info) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/mlcom.pdf
BASIC 8 Manual -(converted from text)  http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Basic8.pdf
How to Get the Most Out of BASIC 8 (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Most_Basic8.pdf
COMAL Reference Guide (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/comal.pdf
Ray Carlsen's Technical Notes for the C128 (compiled and converted from text) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/Carlsen.pdf

Can anyone tell me where to find these files? Just got back into the C= scene. Looks like they would be some good reading..
Any help/info would be great.

I also run an FTP server and would host these files IF they can be found...

TIA...

Some (along with others) are on our ftp server (ftp://landover.no-ip.com).

     dmackey 828 wrote about the following site on comp.sys.cbm --

                 http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/

                              Lots of stuff there,
                              Robert Bernardo
                              Fresno Commodore User Group
                              http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                              July 25-26 Commodore Vegas Expo - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex