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Post by virtualsky on Jan 5, 2019 21:22:28 GMT
For the real nostalgia seekers out there, I thought I'd pass along the information that the classic disk magazine, Loadstar, works with the C64Mini. You can purchase all of the back issues of the Loadstar floppy disk magazine from Ramble House, in both .d64 and .d81 disk images, burned on to a single CD; all at a very reasonable price. In order to save on the disk swapping (as just about each issue of Loadstar was on multiple disks), I load up the .d81 version on the Mini. So far, the issues that I've tried all worked (but having a USB keyboard plugged into the Mini helps a lot) and the games and programs I've tried all seem to run just fine. So, if you really want to experience what computing was like on the C64 (or you may have even subscribed to them, back in the day), I suggest you give Loadstar a try. If you'd still like to give a disk magazine a try and not wish to spend a dime, you can always give Commodore Disk User a try. I don't think it's a good as Loadstar, but it still has some pretty interesting software to try out.
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Post by crispin on Jan 14, 2019 18:10:15 GMT
Loadstar is great, I have most of it in collection. Plenty of things to read, play, learn... really nice stuff. I managed to pull out half of .shp pictures from Loadstar and converted them to Koala / png format. It is more then 800 pics! It is really pity that there are only a few converters for that picture format, especially when it is a standard pic format for DotBASIC+.
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Post by gurce on May 8, 2019 6:09:11 GMT
Hehe, funny how google led me to this thread, when i wanted to learn how dotbasic drew graphic files. I saw brief mention of .shp files in the manual, and a brief mention of some "stb print" tool to convert from other formats into .shp, but not much else.
So I'm guessing the nitty-gritty details of .shp and this stb print tool reside within these loadstar disks somewhere? :-)
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Post by virtualsky on May 8, 2019 15:09:28 GMT
Hehe, funny how google led me to this thread, when i wanted to learn how dotbasic drew graphic files. I saw brief mention of .shp files in the manual, and a brief mention of some "stb print" tool to convert from other formats into .shp, but not much else. So I'm guessing the nitty-gritty details of .shp and this stb print tool reside within these loadstar disks somewhere? :-) I think that Loadstar published most of the images they used in their disks in SHP format. For example, if you take a look at the Christmas Cantata disk I posted on my blog, you'll see that the images are in SHP format. STB Clone Print was published in Loadstar issue #160. It converts SHP formatted image files into other formats and vice-versa.
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Post by MitchD on Jun 1, 2019 23:43:16 GMT
My Loadstar cd arrived the other day. Highly recommended!
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Post by virtualsky on Jun 2, 2019 2:41:56 GMT
My Loadstar cd arrived the other day. Highly recommended! Hey, Fantastic! Glad you're enjoying this little piece of home computing history.
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Post by MitchD on Jun 2, 2019 12:04:41 GMT
My Loadstar cd arrived the other day. Highly recommended! Hey, Fantastic! Glad you're enjoying this little piece of home computing history. Brings back memories of going to the local bookstore to pick up a copy every month. I always looked forward to the new issue of Loadstar.
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