HolgiB's Blog

Goodbye Steve!

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:52:16 GMT

He, the father of the iMac, iPhone, iPad and of course the Macintosh, has annouced to step back as a CEO for Apple. I read some people arguing on the web, that he can't buy health for all his money. Yes, thats true. But what people don't understand is, that it was for him not about the money. Steve loved what he was doing. He always invested 150% of his energy into his product and added all of his passion. Thats why his products have been that successful. I was never a big Apple fan, but they did a good job by most of their products. On the wintel side, you can't find anything designed with passion. Its just economic which rules. Too many manufacturers still have to understand, that these days the people looking for more than just simple functionality and the "ability to do the job". 100 years ago, it was enough for a car to 4 wheels and an engine. It would drive. But then the people, after getting used to cars, they looked for the special plus. Apple understood that.

I just can hope the worst will not happen, Steve's health improves and we are not losing the biggest (and last) IT visionary of our time.

A harddrive give me a hard time

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:40:15 GMT

The last two evenings I was fighting with the Megafile 30 harddrive of the Atari ST. The wiring is perfect and "something" happens between the ST and the Megafile but I don't have any access yet.
Pretty fast it became clear, that I might need some drivers and tools to further investigate. I am a complete noob on Atari ST. So the Megafile probably does not show up, just by connecting it. It took me hours to find the necessary files! Another obstacle was, that there was no "bootdisk" image I just could have written to a floppy. So I had to install an Atari ST emulator (Steem) and get an empty image. Download the AHDI driver and necessary acient archivers (Zoo, Lha) to unpack them. The linux versions of them, faced difficulties even unpacking the driver archives I have found.
On Steem with Zoo and LHA for Atari, it worked. This way I managed to create disk images with all tools and drivers I was able to find. At least I get a message, that there is some harddrive connected. But thats all. I can't look on it, can't format it or even partition it. What mean I have to dive deeper into the Megafile/ST topic...
The impression I have gained, besides the furstrations with the Megafile, are not that convincing. Now I know, why Amiga was more succesfull and how huge the difference is, between Amiga OS and TOS. More to come...

My latest catch

h.banko@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:04:30 GMT

Since I have moved from Germany to Malaysia, my collection of old games and systems grows a lot slower. However, I managed to get an ATARI 520 STfm for RM 125 (~ 30 Euro). It came with SC1224 color screen and Megafile 30 harddrive. Unfortunately the harddrive cable and the mouse was missing. An original ATARI ST mouse is already on its way from Australia, but very difficult to get that damn harddrive cable. The ST can be operated without mouse, using the keyboard, so I played around with it a bit. The condition is quite good, the pictures shows how it looks after dis-/reassemble to clean it properly. The screen is small and seems to lack a power switch(?!). Wasn't the GEM (TOS) operating system a real beauty? In the standard low resulution, the green/white colored desktop looks even compared to a C64 with Geos - really ugly! But my first thought was "Wow, it really looks like Geos".

As you can see in one of the pictures below, I managed to write an image file to a floppy disk - to play Tom & Jerry. Not the greatest game, but for unknown reason its the only disk the ST was able to read. All the images I have downloaded are in the ".ST" format. Different solutions are available to copy them from Linux or Windows back to a physical floppy disk. My first attempts with FloImg were not successful at all. What I can recommend is OmniFlop. It comes with an own floppy driver and supports an incredible amount of formats. After writing Tom & Jerry with OmniFlop to a DD disk, the ST booted the game without complaining. Then only drawback with OmniFlop - it can not work with USB floppy drives!

Now I am starting to wonder, what might be on that Megafile drive? Without a cable or a proper "workaround", the question would remain unanswered. But everybody who is interested in retro comuter and collecting know, that sometimes you have to look for uncommon ways to get things working. After giving up, looking for a cable, I started to search for the DB19 pin connector in any electronic online shop I know - without success.
Its not easier to get, than the cable itself. So I decided to rather build my own DB19 connectors, abusing two DB29 and cut them. It was easier than I thought, to disassemble them. Once I get back from work tonight, I will finish the job.

Another remaining problem is the floppy drive. For some reason it refuses to read double sided disks, but it is a double sided drive. Strange! Cleaning the heads didn't help.

Hopefully tomorrow, I can show some screenshots regarding the content of the Megafile.
Cliffhanger until tomorrow, for everybody else than me, who is curious :-).

On the right picture the result of my cruelty to two male DB25 connectors.
After removing the casing, some pins and cutting them.

Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh in 1984

h.banko@gmail.com — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:23:58 GMT

Currently I am reading an biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs. About two years back, I already read iWoz, the autobiography of the other part of the famous Apple duo. The difference between both books is the fact, that there actually is no authorized biography of Steve Jobs. It seem he doesn't like to be revealed too much about himself. Thats strange, as we know him these days as probably the most charismatic visionary in IT world. He is the opposite of shy, talking to his crowd at Macworld or other occasions, showing the latest Apple products who (might) change the world.

The picture drawn in the book, I am currently on page 136 of more than 450, is a charismatic and very smart guy with the power to influence people. He also got a vision and the belief, that he got the understanding, what the people, the Apple customers, really want. But sometimes in a way with just a too big ego, not listening to anybody - because he knows it better. Some love him, but many at Apple start to hate him at this point. The chapter I have finished, ended with the presentation of the Apple Macintosh. Steve delivered a great show to his audience ( or was it the Mac?). Everybody after watching this, will confirm that - Apple fan or not. I got goose bumps watching this.

Today Steve is of course not the same, people do change. But he is still brilliant as he was at that days. Or even more? In my opinion, Apple got a vision and the products are all well designed. Something I have difficulties to say about Microsoft.

Publikationen in der Amiga Spezial

h.banko@gmail.com — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 06:21:56 GMT

Emulatoren sind wohl die Programme, die eine Vielzahl von neuen Möglickeiten zu eröffnen scheinen, aber eher eine Vielzahl von neuen Enttäuschungen hervorrufen. Über Sinn und Zweck von Emulatoren wurde auch schon viel Diskutiert, der der Programmieraufwand und somit der Preis ist kein geringer. Hier soll nun, nach erscheinden des "C64 Emulators" und des "Transformer" , die ganze Thematik nocheimal kritisch betrachtet werden.

Der Transformer
Bei Erscheinen war wohl begeisterten MS-Dos Fans schon nach kurzer Zeit klar, das mit 0.18% der Original PC-Geschwindigkeit, die er erreichte, nicht gerade für einen Geschwindigkeitsrausch reichen würde. Dennoch wäre es schön gewesen, wenn das von Commodore viel gepriesene Produkt...

Diese Zeilen schrieb ich für die Mai/Juni Ausgabe 1989 der AMIGA Spezial. Emulation war auf den AMIGAs der damaligen Zeit ja ein spannendes aber eher ernüchterndes Thema. So hab ich mir sozusagen den Frust vom Leib geschrieben.
Damals ende der 80ziger und den frühen 90zigern habe ich ein paar Artikel für die AS geschrieben und einiges an Software getestet. Ich möchte hier Scans von zwei Artikeln einfach mal auf meine Webseite legen. Vielleicht mag der Eine oder Andere ihn ja lesen. Wobei es sich bei dem Zweiten eher um ein Listing handelt. Vermutlich wird es bald eine Rubrik "Publikationen" einführen und es werden sich noch ein paar mehr Scans aus der Zeit dazugesellen.

	Amiga Spezial 5-6/1989 - Emulatoren 41 KB PDF Format (deutsch/german)
	Amiga Spezial 3/1989 - Copper Spielereien 350 KB PDF Format (deutsch/german)

(This is an article related to my publications in the german magazine AMIGA Special, where I wrote in 1989 - 1991 a few articles for.)

A Story to tell your children...

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:21:42 GMT

Once upon a time, in the Valley of Silicon, the two headed Wizard of Apples went for a walk. The two heads, both of which were named Steve, looked around, and spied a beautiful PARC.

"This is truly a beautiful PARC~ Steve exclaimed.

Yes, it is' agreed Steve. "It is very graphic. And do you see how happy the mice are!" For indeed, the joyful Indents scampered about, running in and out of windows, around icons, and leaping over the garbage cans.

"Do you think we could make a PARC as beautiful as this?" Steve asked.

"Nay", said Steve. Not a PARC, but perhaps we can let this inspire us to build a woman and we could call her, Gertrude.

And so they fashioned their woman, but instead of Gertrude, they called her Lisa and she, too, was nice to mice. But alas, the User rejected Lisa, for it was said her price was too high

"But this will never do," the User cried. "Do you understand me, Mack?

And when his two heads heard that word, the Wizard of Apples smiled 'Of course," the Steves exclaimed in unison, "we must make a Mac"

Now as the Wizard of apples worked on his Mac, two things happened. First of all, The Wizard grew a third head, which was called the Skull of E. And second, the Gates Keeper, whose minions were both micro and soft, was in to look at Mac, son of Lisa and grandson of the PARC.

Now the Gates Keeper was a man whose tastes were most basic. But when he saw the Mac he was pleased, and he said to the Wizard of Apples, "You too, I see, have seen the wondrous PARC"

And the three heads of the Wizard of Apples looked at each other, and they all said, "PARC! What PARC?".

The Gates Keeper turned his head toward the window. But he did not see the PARC or Lisa, or even the Wizard's parking lot. No, he saw only the window, and it too, was nice to mice.

On the day that Mac was brought forth for the whole world to admire, people laughed, and people cried, and a woman threw a sledgehammer through a large TV screen. For the User could now draw, and paint, and like john Wayne, all he need do is point and shoot.

But though the User was interested, he was still suspicious, and he asked if Mac had anything soft to wear. And lo, the Gates Keeper stepped forward and clothed Mac in words and numbers.

And the Wizard of Apples was most grateful to the Gates Keeper. But then the Gates Keeper cried out upon the User, "Behold, for I have opened the Window, and you need not Mac to get your hands on GUI." But the User looked though the Window, and saw that it made the world move slow.

By this time, the Skull of E had grown quite large on the shoulders of the Wizard of Apples, and the two Steves had been removed. The Wizard had gone down to the Adobe Village where all letters end in a postscript. The Wizard liked what he saw, and he told Mac that he could write a postscript, but that one must never appear on his face.

Now the world of the User had speeded up, so that it no longer looked quite as slow through the Gates Keeper's Window. The users all looked through the Window again, and said that perhaps the Wizard of Apples was no longer needed. And besides, the Gates Keeper was promising to Manage Presentations.

The Wizard of Apples looked upon this and was sore annoyed. He cried, "No one shall take what I stole from the PARC" and he opened his dungeon, and from there emerged a hideous and enormous lawyer. The Wizard pointed a glowing joystick at his lawyer and gave the incantation:

Eye of mole and feet of eel;
Go bring back my look and feel!

When the Gates Keeps saw the giant lawyer approach, he was afraid and angry. And he went down to his own dungeon and let his own lawyer out. The two clashed and the Valley shook!

The Wizard of Apples went up onto a mountain top to
watch the battle, and there he saw the Gates Keeper. 'The two greeted each other warmly, and the Wizard said, "While my lawyer fights your lawyer, shall we not go together to the Adobe Village, and see what we can steal there?

Now, while all this was going on, the ZearOx, whose job it was to guard PARC had slept. But such beasts are often woken bythe sotmds of lawyers fighting. And the ZearOx looked out upon the valley, and rubbed his sleepy eyes, and asked the User what was going on.

The User told him that the Wizard of Apples had let loose his lawyer against the Gates Keeps, claiming that only he had the right to the GUI interface. This annoyed the ZearOx, who cried that the Wizard "had no right to be gooey in my face"

So the ZearOx returned to his PARC, which he found be in disrepair. The mice were gone, the windows were boarded up, and the garbage can had not been emptied in years. And the ZearOx cried, this is the work of the wizard of Apples! He must pay!" And he called forth his own lawyer, who was more hideous that the others, and set him to attack.

The Wizard of Apples was deep in discussion with the Gates Keeps when he saw the ZearOx lawyer. He called forth his own lawyer, but alas, his monster was on the ground, where the Gates Keepers attorney was standing on his chest. The Wizard of Apples turned to the Gates Keeper and cried, let my lawyer go, so that I may defend myself" But the Gates Keeper doubled up in laughter.

The Wizard turned to the ZearOx and cried, "You would not dare attack me, for the User dot love me! Don't you, User?" But the User had, of late, been hearing the seductive cries of the Window, the Presentation of Managers, and seemingly hundreds of flavored Eunuchs, and he was sore confused.

Thus the Wizard of Apples found himself friendless, hopeless, and surrounded by lawyers. And the moral of this story is:

Be generous with what you steal, or you may find yourself gooey in the face.
---

Thanks to Ravi for sharing this with me! Have never found this before so I am sharing it here on my blog with all my readers. This fairytale tells a true story.

Who is interested in the Alto, the first computer with a GUI and operated with mouse, might want to check this link out

Alto restauration

The website itself is already gone, luckily there is archive.org and the content of the site was preserved. No better pictures are know and/or Alto I in a better condition as displayed there.

Retro pearls on android

h.banko@gmail.com — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:28:16 GMT

It has been a while, since I wrote my last posting and I have to apologize. Right now I am sitting in a hotel in Beijing and enjoying a day off. So no work to do and no family, I have to pay attention to, taking the opportunity writing something I kept in mind already for weeks.
In February I finally bought a new phone, the level of frustration with Windows Mobile on my Samsung i780 was pretty high. I can't recommend to buy a phone using Winodws Mobile, with a screen sized different than QVGA (320x240), this can be the source of plenty of problems. Emulators I would have loved to use, I've got never to work because of that. But I don't want to talk to much about Windows Mobile and its numerous problems, lack of user friendliness and so on... For me it became clear, that I should get a new phone, serving better my needs of a mobile device putting more emphasis on internet related tasks. The iPhone was very tempting, but I had all the discussion in mind, about the so much controlled app store and the C64 emulator, which was "too risky" for Apple and finally banned. So most you might got it already, I went for an Android powered device. It was the Motorola Milestone. The big screen and the hardware keyboard really convinced me. So I started to dream of coding for fun on a C64 emulator using the Milestone.

For Google Android there are two different C64 emulators are available. One is Java based and his compatibility and speed limited. The other one is a port of Frodo from the developer Shagrath and called "Frodo 64". Ist quite convincing, performs well and you can use it to play all this beloved games on your phone. But the hardware keyboard is not fully functioning. Numbers for example are not working. Most of the users are might be just interested in playing games, but I am missing options like displaying the border, the drive status, ability to use cartridges and/or expansions. Its a bit sad, the emulator wasn't updated for the last 6 month. Maybe Vice will be ported from somebody and we get something with more features for the geek s like me :-).

But this is not the only program I want to suggest to the Android users being retro fans. Everybody who is a C64 fan loves the sound of the SID soundchip. There are so many tunes I love to hear 'til today. So what could be better, to be able to listen to them anytime, anywhere? With "SID Player" you can do exactly that. Its a quite accurate player for the original tunes and uses libsidaply which is the base for many players supporting SID tunes. The GUI is just nice and its doing a perfect job. A nice little program, I can really recommend.

Well and thats all from me, what I have found so far, after being 6 months on Android. I hope more will come and will also try my best, to port some interesting projects to Android.

Who was Gary Kildall

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:30:12 GMT

Recenty I stumpled multipe times upon a certain name. It was Gary Kildall. Gary was the one, who founded Digital Research. The company who was well known for its operating system CP/M, designed for smaller computers. In a time where mainframes were more common, than a personal computer. Some people might rember til today DR DOS, which was an interesting alternative to MS Dos. Many people called it wrongly Dr. Dos, because they never heard about a company named Digital Research.

I have learned a lot about Microsoft and Apples history, but never looked into the history of CP/M and the company/people who created it. After some webresearch I found an interesting episode of the TV show Computer Chronicles. It was a Gary Kildall special, which was broadcasted 1994 after his sudden death and gave an overview about his life and all his achievements.
Computer Chronicles and Archive.org itself are already quite interesting finds. I never used Archive.org before. There are tons of ancient episodes of Computer Chronicles. It was exciting to watch reviews about C64, AMIGA 1000 or the Apple II. A lot of celebrities from the Bits & Bytes world have shown up at Computer Chronicles. So its a must see for everybody who is interested in computer history. Gary was always a part of Computer Chronicles as being the co-host. He was one of the most important inventors in Computer history. But most people don't know him.

For Gary, it was not easy not to be recognized for his work from the world. Especially because others did a lot. One of them of course still is Bill Gates. When Gates started the deal with IBM, selling MS-Dos to big blue, he basically sold a 1:1 copy of CP/M. I knew that a copy of the CP/M manual from Radio Shack, was the germ cell of QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which Gates sold as MS-Dos. What I didn't kew was, that MS-Dos 1.0 was binary compatible to CP/M! At that time and maybe even later, Gary didn't complain about that. That Microsoft was able to get QDos from Seattle Computer Products, all credit goes to the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Yes, its not only Gates who made Microsoft.

Later Microsoft was not excited about DR Dos. So they successfully managed to put some obstacles into Digital Resarchs way. They integrated a "bug" into Windows 3.1/3.11, to ensure that Windows can't run in it's 386 extend mode, when its launched from DR Dos. Gary was later not the one, who was going into court to fight. It was the new owner of all DR rights Caldera, who did and they won. Here is the complete ugly story, as an official document covering every detail. DR Dos was the force behind the "inventions" in MS Dos version 5 and 6. Because DR Dos supported disk compression, memory management and so on, Microsoft had no option to improve their own product. Gates was furious, DR Dos cheaper and more powerful than MS Dos.

I was motivated to look at this ancient CP/M stuff again and my Commodorer 128D is quite a good system for that. Fun to play around with CP/M and really old software.

Thats how it looks, when my C128D is booted into CP/M 3.0 in 80 column mode.

This disk was shipped with every Commodore 128. It was a low density flip disk. On side A the basic system, on B the utilities.
There is an enhanced Version of this disk available called "ZP/M". Its Z80 instead of 8080 coded and runs faster. You can find it with other Commodore CP/M stuff here.

Its not difficult to find CP/M software on the web. Like MS Cobol, Turbo Pascal, Algol and other programming languages here. But not only programming languages, you can get there Wordstar, Dbase or other business related stuff as well.
If you are curious and don't own some CP/M hardware, don't worry. Emulator with ready made harddisk images are available.

Aleitung MMC2IEC

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:42:05 GMT

Mehr zu meiner eigenen Referenz und Bequemlichkeit hier die Anleitung zu
MMC2IEC. Die Projekt-Webseite findet ihr hier.

USAGE GUIDE:
------------
The MMC2IEC device implements accessing FAT16/32 filesystems on MMC or SD
flash media. The CBM IEC protocol is implemented and the kernel load and save
routines on the C64 works, loading from either PRG, D64 or T64 files, and
saving only to PRG type files in FAT.

Selecting directories and images is possible through LOAD"xxx" commands
issued on the CBM.

This is a quick overview of the commands, say MMC2IEC is IEC device 8:

LOAD"<<",8 Reset SD card state. Do this if the SD card is exchanged.
Read < as the petscii back-arrow.
If SDCARD_DETECT signals is available, this operation is
rarely needed.

In FAT mode: (the default mode)

LOAD"___FCKpd___0quot;,8 Gets directory listing, equivalent to LOAD".",8
LOAD"gamesdir",8 Enter the "gamesdir" directory, and get listing.
LOAD"..",8 Up one directory and get directory listing.
LOAD"tetris.prg",8 Loads the "tetris.prg" program file.
SAVE"example.prg",8 Save into "example.prg" which is a FAT file.
LOAD"disk.d64",8 Loads the disk.d64 image and enters D64 mode.
LOAD"tape.t64",8 Loads the tape.t64 image and enters T64 mode.

In D64 mode:

Load "___FCKpd___0quot;, "*", wildcards, filenames works (almost) as espected on a 1541.
LOAD"<",8 (back-arrow). Escape D64 mode, and back to FAT mode.
SAVE"abc",8 Fools the CBM, but has no effect. Saves in D64 are
not implemented

In T64 mode:

Load "___FCKpd___0quot;, "*", wildcards, filenames works as if it was a D64.
LOAD"<",8 (back-arrow). Escape T64 mode, and back to FAT mode.
SAVE"abc",8 Fools the CBM, but has no effect.

Die original Anleiting in englisch

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:21:39 GMT

Ich habe in der Vergangenheit immer wieder Fragen zu diesen Thema erhalten. Ich möchte nochmals auf die Original Anleitunge verweisen. Mein Artikel hier ist nicht komplett und ist als Ergänzung gedacht. Hier der Link zu der original Anleitung

http://pc2jamma.mameworld.info/

Sie ist nach wie vor online. Heute, Januar 2010, gecheckt.

Happy new Year!

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:52:36 GMT

Yes, its 2010, the year where I hopefully spent more time on the projects, I am writing about here in my blog. No real progress with Lincade development, but its on my todo, to finalise the changes to the image and release one with SATA and updated Kernel.

Recently I spend some time for my hobby, with modding my XBOX 360. Right now I am owning two XBOX 360. The first box (XENON model) I have bought here in Kuala Lumpur, came already with modified DVD drive. But the drive gave me some headache. Often the games stopped, due to reading errors. Later, the DVD tray refused to open after reading problems. After punching the 360, turning it off and on, I was able to remove the DVD. Sometimes it took me 15 minutes, to get the tray open. So I decided (the box was now already 2 years old), to open the box and update the firmwar and/or calibrate the laser. I found out, that the SATA plug was somewhat broken of the drive. The plastic brdige in the middle of the SATA plug, was lose. Maybe that causes the problem? Any tries with super glue failed. I calibrated the laser and it was better, but the problem returned. I was desperate and thought I should try a firmware upgrade. That Samsung ms-28 should be easy to update, but I struggled with even reading the flash. Probably because of the broken SATA plug. At one point, I must have bricked it. The drive was dead, the DVD key lost. It was not me who flashed it in the first place. So I had no copy of the original ROM. The dashboard Version was to new, the known King Kong exploit didn't work. I bought a RROD box with a working Hitachi. But with wrong DVD key, I was unable to play any game. That's why I decided in March 2009, to buy a new XBOX 360 (JASPER) with HDMI. But kept the old one, hoping one day I would be able to fix it.
Then, I think in December 2009, I read at hack-a-day, the 360 was hacked already 2 months ago. There was the "JTAG Hack" descrided, as a way to flash XELL into the flash of the box and make it boot e.g. Linux. When XELL starts, it displays the CPU Key on the screen. With the CPU key I would be able to extract the DVD key from a dump of my 360 flash memory. The Jtack Hack gives you full read/write access to the nand flash. Certain tools help, to get what I want.
So after sacrifying an old printer cable and soldering the wires into the old XENON, I was able to dump the nand and flash it with XELL. To get the DVD key was now a piece of cake. The next challenge was, to make the Hitachi work. I need to re-flash it with up-to-date firmware, change the DVD key and spoof a Samsung. Well, I never flashed a 360 drive before. A lot of things you need to know. Different drive versions and different procedures, depending on the state of the drive (flashed/unflashed). Here "Jungleflasher" was of big help. The tool itself is great, but even greater is the PDF document which works like an expert system, you can download there as well. In the PDF are links and it will guide you depending on many criterias through the right way, for your drive type/version, state and even helps you to solve Windows related issues if you can't access/flash the drive.
After flashing the drive, I had to get the 360 back into the state, where it starts with a dashboard, instead of XELL loader. At that time, XBREBOOT just became available. With XBREBOOT you can run unsigned code (homebrew) and its a patched dashboard. So I flashed it and what I've got is a 360, homebrew enabled with spoofed and working Hitachi drive. Its back to life! A sweet success after all that hassle and work on it!

Slow progress, still tied up with web projects

h.banko@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:49:11 GMT

I already feel sad, since the move to Malaysia, not much time was left for my blog and the Lincade project. For the blog I decided to post more related to retro and interesting computer stuff, like in the past. Last months in germany, it became more and more a Lincade Blog, which should be just a part of this site.
Lincade got some progress with an updated Linux Kernel. Users asked for SATA support and better compatibility. The new kernel will do the job better. But it will involve a lot of testing too. Old kernel will remain in Lincade. Users will get the choice in the installation.

The web projects I am working on are planned to become kind second income. For this we founded a company called Lightspeed-Networks, which is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Our slogan is "We create online worlds!" and we are doing exactly that. Our first project is called Carworld.my and is a website related to free car advertising. You can compare with the german website Mobile.de or Autoscount24.de. There are already sites here in Malaysia doing it, but we are the leading one, when it comes to features. Everything was written from scratch. I even built a small content management system, to publish news and articles. In the last 6 months I started to learn a lot about search engine optimisation, usability and Ajax. Running a website seems to mean, that you are never finished. And when its not a programming task, you have to make strategies or find ways to promote it. But its fun and it will be even more, when it starts to earn money!

Hiatus is over, Thanks for the patience

h.banko@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:14:39 GMT

Sorry for the deveopment downtime everyone.

I have recently begun a major rework of the admin script which requires some additional programs on the backend of the system. This will necessitate a new ISO to be released.

The design phase is about 30% done at the moment.

Primary focus has been placed on the below listed points.

The admin script should run in both the X window system and at the text console
- In theory this will allow the customization of the cabinet while using the arcade monitor (will need testers)
The admin script should have a backup function to allow any or All of the following:
- Basic system configuration
  - Machine name
  - Network Configuration
- Emulators
  - Configuration
  - Application
  - Data files
- Monitor
  - Configuration
    - Refresh Rates
    - Xorg config
    - Custom Modelines
- Menu Systems
  - Configuration
  - Application
  - Data Files
The Current Config should be easily visible from the admin script
There should be a restore to Defaults setting for each section of the system
The Import Emulators Should (finally) allow for Internet installation of new Emulators
A New Import Menu Systems will be created for the possible addition of different Menu programs
The Import Roms Section will be revamped to try to improve the way Roms are handled
- This will include the ability of the Imported Emulator to include scripts to process and validate imported ROM files.
All Configuration data will be stored in an easliy searchable datastore
- As of this writing, SQLite3 will be used to manage this.

Quite a bit going on I know. The eventual goal for me in doing this is to support SDLMame in it's most current version. While still allowing for the use of AdvMAME.

Thank you all for your patience.

John

Lincade development continues

h.banko@gmail.com — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:12:10 GMT

Despite a lack of time, the development will be continued by me and John. We had an email conversation about a roadmap and the goals for the next version.
One bigger issue to deal with, is that the development of advmame was stopped already a while ago. We might switch to SDLmame and try to use advmenu together with that. Next option is to use Wahcade! instead of advmenu. Lets see.
Besides everything emulation related, the kernel and support of more hardware is a topic which will be covered. Quick results can't be expected, but at least we are again working on it!

Let me introduce: LINCADE.ORG

h.banko@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:57:08 GMT

After beeing now for 2 months in KL, I am almost settled down. My office is usable, internet is working and my cab got a place in my living room. In other words, now I will continue working on this project. Luckily we have JIcemanL, who answered many many question in our forum and kept developing the admin and setup script.
I am looking forward to have a new version of Lincade with some improvements very soon.
Before I moved, I bought the domain lincade.org. Now I have created a forwarding to our lincade forum, when visiting www.lincade.org. Nothing special, I just thought the project, which is basically just a part of pc2jamma.org, became so big that it deserves its own domain.

Arrived in Kuala Lumpur

h.banko@gmail.com — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:04:54 GMT

We arrived in KL und now already 10 days here. Just finished my first work week and on this weekend we will continue looking for a new home.

If everything runs fine, our furniture arrives on the 23. of december and I will be back at the project early in January.

Preparing my move to Kuala Lumpur

h.banko@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:56:52 GMT

We are here in the last preperations for the move to Malaysia. All contracts are cancelled, both cars and my motorcycle are sold. Got rid of a lot of stuff with the help of ebay. I even sold some parts of my Commodore collection.

The countdown is running now. Just a few days left until the 25th of November when we are leaving germany.

I hope to be back at the project around the end of december!

I created a german blog about our move: www.banko-kl.com. So if you are interested what we are doing, you will get an idea on that website.

500 Lincade 0.040 downloads !

h.banko@gmail.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:58:14 GMT

This is a reason to party. We have today exactly 500 Lincade 0.040 downloads. When I started the project I wouldn't mind that so many people will using it.

Good news for all users, there is a new release planned within the next weeks.

New toy: Linux based Internet tablet

h.banko@gmail.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:53:06 GMT

A week ago i stumbled over the Nokia 770 Internet tablet on ebay. More than a year ago I have read some news around this device. But it was with 379,- Euro quite expensive. Nokia already released a successor (N800) with more RAM and a little bit faster CPU. So the price now was lowered to 159,- Euro and the device is still available. The lowered price made it very interesting to me.

The Nokia 770 is equipped with a 800x480 pixel display, WLAN, Bluetooth and (the most important part) it runs on Linux. The operating system is a Debian derivate and the GUI was built with GTK+. Its easy to port applications because there is a real X-Server running. This is a big advanagte in my eyes compared to the Zarus, where Qtopias was running.

I already installed addtional software like a X-term, SSH client/server, Ebook reade, played a lot with it and love it. The battery runs with intensive WLAN usage nearly 4 hours. A lot of time to surf and read in the world wide web, while lying in a bed.

Specifications

Dimensions: 141×79×19 mm (5.5×3.1×0.7 in)
Weight: 230 g (8.1 oz) with protective cover or 185 g (6.5 oz) without.

Processor: Texas Instruments OMAP 1710 CPU running at 252 MHz. It combines the ARM architecture of the ARM926TEJ core subsystem with a Texas Instruments TMS320C55x digital signal processor.
Memory: 64MB of DDR RAM, and 128MB of internal FLASH memory, of which about 64MB should be available to the user. Option for extended virtual memory (RS-MMC up to 1 GB (2GB after flash upgrade))

Display and resolution: 4.1 inches, 800×480 pixels at 225 pixels per inch with up to 65,536 colors
Connectivity: WLAN (IEEE 802.11b/g), Bluetooth 1.2, dial-up access, USB (both user-mode, and non powered host-mode)
Expansion: RS-MMC (both RS-MMC and DV-RS-MMC cards are supported).
Audio: speaker and a microphone

Planning to leave germany

h.banko@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:23:50 GMT

In the last 6 weeks all my attention went to a not computer related topic. We plan to move from Germany to Malaysia. I got a job offer and applied successfully. It was a lot of work to get all the paperworks done, which are necessary to request for a work permit. Its still unsure if we move or not., because we dont know if I will get the permit or not. We hope to get this information on the 26th.

If we really move be sure, that all my arcade stuff will go together with me to Kuala Lumpur. The project is still alive but there won't be much progress in the next two months then...

I plan to use this here in the near future (including the next weeks) more as a personal blog that everybody will be able to get an idea, when I will be back in business.