Further update

An update following my previous post: I have now relocated to another flat. Although things aren’t ideal, I can get on with my job and life pretty unimpaired.
However, I haven’t got my development PC with me so I won’t be available to develop anything between now and the last week of January, when I plan to move back to my previous flat.

I shall take the chance to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Long time

I thought to take a moment and reassure my readers that I am fine, but just dealing with personal stuff and being overly busy at work. For the month of November 2019, as example, there are just 21 working days in UK and I was requested for project work for a total of about 80 days…

There will be some major maintenance carried out at the flat where I live, due to water damage, so at some point I will have to relocate elsewhere and then relocate back. It’s likely to be a nightmare. The worst bit is that I am not being told much about logistics or timescales, which has been quite disruptive. As example, I planned to have a holiday in the last trimester of 2019 but I had to put that thought away as I was led to believe works would start sooner than later. I was also wanting to invite my mom to visit but putting that away too. However, I eventually had her visit anyway so we are spending quite some time sightseeing in the region where I live.

Stay tuned for more updates!

WarpCopy64 client: further development

As part of the effort to support RR-Net and the WarpCopy64 server in IECHost, a while back I was developing a WarpCopy PC client. As I am delving into the WarpCopy protocol further, I expanded such client to fetch the directory listing.

Here’s an example of the resulting output:

>wc64-client.exe 192.168.254.64:6644
Remote address: 192.168.254.64:6644
Local address: 192.168.254.8:54998

0 ."2001 UTILITIES  " BARRY
9    "MENU"             PRG
4    "HEAD ALIGN"       PRG
34   "WIZARD"           PRG
57   "PIC LINK O8OB"    PRG
27   "GCR NYBBLE C/HOK" PRG
2    "NOTE 2 BARRY/HOK" PRG
11   "CRAZY CURSOR (E)" PRG
26   "UN-ZIP"           PRG
27   "ZIP"              PRG
81   "LYNX"             PRG
15   "SER.FORMAT V2.1"  PRG
8    "DISK UNSCRATCH"   PRG
15   "XTC-PACKER V2.1+" PRG
16   "M.CRUNCH/FAST+FX" PRG
15   "MEGA CRUNCH V6.0" PRG
10   "NSU (EASY INPUT)" PRG
25   "FILE COPIER"      PRG
37   "FASTCRUEL V7/ILS" PRG
42   "FILE COPIER /ILS" PRG
12   "C-64 COPIER  /DR" PRG
22   "FILE COPIER  /DR" PRG
11   "MENU LOAD    /DR" PRG
14   "TIMECRUN'4.42/DR" PRG
11   "BYG C.SPECIAL/DR" PRG
14   "FS EDITOR V4/REM" PRG
85 BLOCKS FREE.

Closing socket

It’s still quite early in the process, but this client implementation is helping me to understand the finer details of the protocol.

Stay tuned for more!

Pondering the protocol change for IEChost

As part of the roadmap/plan for release 4.0 of the IECHost client I was thinking of rewriting the communication protocol over the USB connection, using WarpCopy64’s one as reference. Just to recap, doing so would facilitate adding support in the IECHost client for communicating with WarpServer on a networked C64.

I am now at a stage where I have coded a robust binary data protocol handler, which means I could start the rewrite any time. However, I am not exactly convinced I want to do so directly for IECHost. Perhaps I should try to test my implementation with the C64 Cartridge Dumper as it’s not yet in a mature stage. Besides, there aren’t many prototypes out there that would need a firmware update.

Stay tuned for further development!

More d64parse binaries available

Here are the binaries I prepared:

• Mac OSX 64-bit
• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
• Linux 64-bit
• Windows portable

If you get a chance to try any of these and feel like it, then please leave a comment below!

DC2N4-LC devices available again

For those wanting one, I now have 10 fully-built DC2N4-LC devices for sale.

If interested, simply contact me.

Good News, Everyone

Beta version of d64parse available for testing!

I did some testing today for d64parse and I am happy to share binaries for Windows and Linux for end-user testing.

One neat feature I added in version 1.4 is the ability to search for a filename pattern in all D64 files within a folder. As example:

d64parse.exe -f "nova*" "."

d64parse v1.4 - (C) 2019 Luigi Di Fraia

Processing all D64 files in "."

Parsing: "0020A_-MR FOX-TRACER 2.D64"
Match: "novatrans       "

Parsing: "0024A_-MR FOX-TRACER 2.D64"
Match: "novatrans       "

Parsing: "0024B_-MR FOX-TRACER 3.D64"
Match: "nova to disk    "

Parsing: "Barbarian_II_IFFL_1541_by_Luigi_Di_Fraia_1_2.d64"

Parsing: "PlanetX2_V1.1_IFFL+3D[EX].d64"

Download links:

• Windows portable package
• Linux package

If you get a chance to test, leave a comment below!