Tag Archives: IECHost

IECHost GUI client version 3.8.8 released

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Luigi Di Fraia

Version 3.8.8 of the IECHost GUI client is now available within my Software page. This is a minor release for a few enhancements and bug fixes. Details of the changes are available through the issue tracker.

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

IECHost GUI client updates

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Luigi Di Fraia

While I was checking the recently integrated directory listing preview in CBM Flux Studio, I noticed that a few characters were not displaying properly. After checking things in CCS64, I came to the conclusion that I was not using an … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

IECHost Tools updates

Posted on June 22, 2022 by Luigi Di Fraia

A few days back I was working at a few updates to the IECHost NIB Tools, as requested by Mads from The Transfer Team. Let’s have a look at the changelog: The directory listing decoding I added in version 1.4 is quite … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fat tracks on Commodore disks: myth or truth? Investigating the case of Maniac Mansion

Posted on December 6, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

Maniac Mansion, the 1987 version, is protected against copies using what is often referred to as a “fat track”: data perfectly identical and aligned across multiple tracks and half tracks. As Pete Rittwage’s website suggests, Maniac Mansion uses a fat … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Reverse Engineering, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Another donation from Ruben: a custom IECHost enclosure!

Posted on December 5, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

I can’t overstate how much effort Ruben has put into helping me to get the IECHost project to the next level, i.e. nibbling protected disks with a 1571: donations, testing, motivation, and now even a cool acrylic enclosure for my … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Flux Studio: an evolution of my recent work on NIB Display

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

I decided that due to the circular nature of track data in G64 files, these are most suited to be drawn on a circle. I also figured out that, in order to be able to resolve flux reversals in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

NIB viewer: circular display

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

After work today I was putting together the components that I will need to display nibbled data on a circular surface. I have all bits drafted so I thought to just generate a preview image for the NIB file I … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NIB viewer: track alignment option

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

As I prepare to add horizontal scrolling for my NIB viewer tool, I thought it would be useful to have an option to align tracks for visual comparison. At the moment the operation is rather simplistic and doesn’t take into … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NIB file viewer in progress

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

Looking at NIB files for custom formats in a hex editor can be a little bit alienating at times. Therefore I decided to code a viewer that should make it simpler to recognize custom formats. Here’s a screenshot of what … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More on Vorpal

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Luigi Di Fraia

I got a few G64 files from SLC today, including the ones for Summer Games II, which uses the same version of Vorpal used in Boulder Dash Construction Kit. There are slight differences in where the drive code is laid … Continue reading →

Posted in Retrocomputing, Reverse Engineering, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment