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At the Netherlands Commodore Show... Cassiopei

At last Saturday's Netherlands Commodore Show in Maarssen, I went in, not having attended since 2011. Like any event that from which you have been away, you meet old friends, you meet friends who you try to remember their names, and you make new friends. :)
I was there for the Commodore and Amiga content. It also just so happened that I was showing off C= items from Rob Clarke (MultiMax multicart for the C64 and MAX machine) and for Tim Harris (http://blog.sharewareplus.co.uk).
As usual, the show was crowded with 80-100 attendees squeezed into one meeting room, and as usual, there was plenty of Commodore and Amiga to see, use, and buy. However, I do not remember seeing any C128 at the show. :( (Must review photos and video...)
There was one new hardware device that is being prepped for the C128 in both 40 and 80-columns. It's the Cassiopei storage device which fits on the cassette port. Developed by Jan Derogee, I was skeptical that a cassette port device would be useful. I was wrong! It can load .prg files fast with its fast loader... faster than a standard serial disk drive. It can load .tap files. It has 8 megs of flash memory, and it has mini-USB and expansion connectors (the latter for I2C devices). Everything is controlled by a PIC. Jan showed how the one device worked on a VIC-20, a Plus/4 (with adapter for its cassette port), a C64, and a PET 3032 - the device giving the same functionality to all those computers. I was particularly impressed by how the Cassiopei gave additional functionality with the C= 8-bits in control. Want to play an 8-bit WAV file? No problem with Cassiopei and its audio player and itsamount of storage. Want to control your lights and motors? No problem with Cassiopei, some BASIC programming, and its I2C interface. Want to run a PETSCII video? No problem with Cassiopei, its video player, and its amount of storage.
As mentioned above, Jan is working on the C128 firmware. Also he is working on the PET 4032 and PET 8032 versions.
Naturally, I bought one and will give a presentation on it at this year's CommVEx.

Writing from Velbert, Germany,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 26-27 Commodore Vegas Expo v10 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

Video from fast-serial bus is

Video from fast-serial bus is questionable (well my implementation), but the fast-serial hardware makes it at least feasible.  But the cassette?  Wow!  It would be very interesting to see what passes for video that way!  I mean, the bits have to be assembled by the CPU, no hardware support.  Which of course means very little time to decompress video or play audio.  I tried using JiffyDOS for video (long ago) but it used so much CPU time that there was no time for audio and the frame rate was really low.
Anyway, just saying that is very impressive and wish I had been there to see it.
By your description, this is completely different video technology than PETPix ?? Whatever that special user-port adapter is called that you (I believe) reported about last year.
So you'll be giving a presentation of Cassiopei?  Sounds cool, looking forward to that.


I'm kupo for Kupo nuts!

Re: Video from fast-serial bus is

Hydrophilic wrote:

> By your description, this is completely different video technology than PETpix?

No, it's the same as PETpix in that it uses PETSCII characters.

Back from Europe,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 26-27 Commodore Vegas Expo v10 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

But the hardware is different

But the hardware is different right?  From watching video presentation of PET Pix, it was using the user port.  I assume this is so it could transfer 8 bits in parallel.
While this new Casseiopei uses the cassette?  So it must be software-serial.  Or 8x slower in theory... which is why I find it particularly amazing.
Of course I never saw hardware details about PET Pix, so maybe it was using only serial transfer on user port?  In that case they would be about the same speed.
Hopefully I'll get to see your presentation and learn more about the hardware details.


I'm kupo for Kupo nuts!

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