Author Topic: Commodore Book PDF Library now Online (Read 12126 times)

airship · « **on:** August 24, 2007, 05:53 AM »

I've been frustrated by the fact that though there is a lot of C128 information available online, much of it is in the form of page scans or 'dirty' PDFs. For example, one of the books I found in PDF format consisted of scans of two-page spreads. There was no way to print this out cleanly.

Well, I've taken the time (quite a lot of it, as it turns out) to clean up some of these old PDFs, and to convert many of the page scans into PDF format as well. You should be able to print and 3-hole punch any of these books and manuals to have your own work copy without having to shell out a bunch of bucks for one on eBay or AbeBooks. A few (very few) were okay just as I found them, but I've mirrored them here just to have them all in one place.

I've trimmed, fixed, and organized pages, but I haven't edited any of the information. If there was a bad OCR, then it's still bad. If the scan was fuzzy, it's still fuzzy. Maybe someday I'll tackle cleaning these up as well. As it is, I have way too much time in this.

So, without further ado, here are the links to the books I've posted. Enjoy.

The C128 Service Manual (converted from images) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/C128_Service_Manual.pdf
The 1571 Service Manual (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/1571_Service.pdf
The 6526 CIA Spec Sheet (converted from HTML) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/6526_Spec.pdf
Mapping the C128 (pages split and reordered) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/Mapping_the_C128.pdf
Machine Language for Beginners (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship3/ml-bgnr.pdf
Machine Language for the C64 and Other Commodore Computers (unfortunately NOT the updated one with C128 info) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/mlcom.pdf
BASIC 8 Manual -(converted from text) http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Basic8.pdf
How to Get the Most Out of BASIC 8 (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/Most_Basic8.pdf
COMAL Reference Guide (as found) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship4/comal.pdf
Ray Carlsen's Technical Notes for the C128 (compiled and converted from text) - http://home.mchsi.com/~airship1/Carlsen.pdf

The last one is a NEW compilation, consisting of all the Ray Carlsen technical notes I could find that pertain in any way to the C128. It's nice to have them all in one place, and in PDF format.

I also have the following, but have no more room on my server. Anyone interested in hosting them?

The C128 Programmer's Reference Guide (trimmed and reordered) - 41MB
Machine Language Routines for the C64/C128 (reordered a bit) - 28MB
The Transactor on the C128 (new compilation from images) - 80MB

The last item in this list is a NEW 280-page anthology of all of the feature articles ever printed in The Transactor on the C128. Though this took the lion's share of my time to put together, and though some of the page scans are far from perfect, I think it turned out to be a wonderful reference for the C128.

I hope you enjoy these. Please snuff them up quickly and spread them across the InterTubes, as I need the space back for other projects.

(Lance, if you'd like to take over hosting any or all of these, especially the ones I don't have room for, it would be great for me. The ones that are up there are taking up a lot of space, and I'm limited to five 20MB chunks, so I can't even find room for the others. Even splitting them leaves me with some pretty big files.)

nikoniko · « **Reply #1 on:** August 24, 2007, 08:15 AM »

That's great, Mark! Thanks for going to all that effort!

I have plenty of transfer going unused, so I'd be happy to mirror any or all of them. If you'd like I can set you up with an FTP account on my server and send you a PM with details on how to use it. For now I'll go ahead and get up copies of the files you already have up.

Also, I've already been working on a few of these titles for online browsing, something of a cross between the Open Library and Google Books for Commodore books, so if you don't mind I'd love to draw from your cleaned up versions in cases where they're better than my copies. Would that be okay with you?

nikoniko · « **Reply #2 on:** August 24, 2007, 08:41 AM »

Mirror here: http://furthervoyages.com/books

Sorry, didn't feel like typing up 10 different links at the moment.

nikoniko · « **Reply #3 on:** August 24, 2007, 10:31 AM »

Added some more books from my own PDF collection:

The Visible Computer: 6502
154x Service Manual
1541 Troubleshooting and Repair Guide
Machine Code Master
Machine Code Games Routines for the C64
40 Best Machine Code Routines for the C64
Impossible Routines for the C64
Mapping the C64
VIC-20 and C64 Toolkit: Kernal
What's Really Inside the C64
Dr Watson Assembler docs (C64)
Electronic Computer Projects for Commodore and Atari Personal Computers
Inside Commodore DOS
The Undocumented Z80 Documented
Programming the Z80, 3rd ed., Rodney Zaks
The Z80 Microcomputer Handbook

airship · « **Reply #4 on:** August 24, 2007, 10:53 AM »

Hey! We have the beginnings of a real library here!

Thanks for the space offer. I'll get uploading ASAP.

nikoniko · « **Reply #5 on:** August 24, 2007, 11:21 AM »

Sadly, a lot of the ones I added suffer from the problems you've been trying to fix, but for the moment it's better than not having them available at all.

By the way, feel free to rename, reorganize and create subfolders if I don't get around to it soon enough.

airship · « **Reply #6 on:** August 25, 2007, 05:28 AM »

So, everyone go to Nikoniko's link above. He's already slurped the ones I had up, and I'll try to get the others up there this weekend.

Look for the Transactor_C128 book. I think it's VERY useful.

Mangelore · « **Reply #7 on:** August 25, 2007, 06:14 AM »

This is just awesome stuff! Well done guys.
:hurra:

Blacklord · « **Reply #8 on:** August 25, 2007, 06:51 AM »

I've got around 30 more I can add (CP/M, PET stuff, BASIC stuff etc)

Lemme know where to put 'em.

cheers,

Lance

airship · « **Reply #9 on:** August 26, 2007, 12:17 PM »

I've just added a BUNCH more books, including the Transactor one. Check 'em out!

http://furthervoyages.com/books

BTW, I'll be taking down my files soon. So go to nikoniko's site in the future.

Blacklord · « **Reply #10 on:** August 26, 2007, 12:25 PM »

I've been progressively adding stuff in (guess these'll need to be moved nikoniko ?) - I've around 2gigs worth to put up.....

nikoniko · « **Reply #11 on:** August 26, 2007, 01:24 PM »

Wow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

Blacklord · « **Reply #12 on:** August 26, 2007, 01:42 PM »

Quote from: nikoniko

Wow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

This one - > http://furthervoyages.com/books/Miscellaneous%208%20Bit/How%20to%20Program%20Microcomputers%20(1977)(Howard%20W%20Sams).pdf

needs to be deleted - the upload aborted, so it's o bytes.

Blacklord · « **Reply #13 on:** August 26, 2007, 03:20 PM »

Quote from: nikoniko

Wow, Lance -- sounds like quite a collection! Thanks for your generosity in uploading it. I've gone ahead and set up a cron job to post your contributions several times a day, so anything you upload should appear at the above URL within a few hours.

Also - once you've got a nice pretty frontend, I'll link to it from here

airship · « **Reply #14 on:** August 27, 2007, 09:56 AM »

Wow! This is cool! Look what I started!

airship · « **Reply #15 on:** August 29, 2007, 11:22 AM »

You are DEFINITELY going to want to snag my latest upload. I almost guarantee you've lost the originals in your collection, but my re-creation lets you have a 95% accurate reproduction to show off to your friends.

Just print on cardstock, cut out, and you're good to go.

See if you can figure out which file I'm talking about (as soon as nikoniko makes it live):

http://furthervoyages.com/books

gklinger · « **Reply #16 on:** August 29, 2007, 04:25 PM »

Once everything is available in one place I'll go through and see what I have that isn't there. I have been squirreling away this kind of thing for years and I have a *lot* of Commodore-related books in electronic form. I've been meaning to organize my file pile for ages and this thread has motivated me.

Andrew Wiskow · « **Reply #17 on:** August 29, 2007, 04:57 PM »

Quote from: nikoniko

Mirror here: http://furthervoyages.com/books

Sorry, didn't feel like typing up 10 different links at the moment.

nikoniko · « **Reply #18 on:** August 29, 2007, 11:30 PM »

Things seem to be working now. My host's status page has a note posted about router problems, so I hope that's all straightened out.

Andrew Wiskow · « **Reply #19 on:** August 30, 2007, 10:44 AM »

Quote from: nikoniko

Things seem to be working now. My host's status page has a note posted about router problems, so I hope that's all straightened out.

Looks good now. Thanks!

-Andrew

nikoniko · « **Reply #20 on:** August 31, 2007, 12:57 AM »

I really need to put up a proper interface, but I've been busy doing OCR so that I can replace non-searchable PDFs with searchable ones. Also, Chris over at c16chris is generously donating a great collection of c16 / 116 / Plus/4 -related TIFF scans for conversion to PDF and posting in the archive. Particularly handy is the Plus/4 Programmers Reference Guide, which is hard to find these days.

airship · « **Reply #21 on:** September 04, 2007, 11:12 PM »

They actually wrote a PRG for that piece of doggie doo?

airship · « **Reply #22 on:** September 17, 2007, 09:48 AM »

Just a quick note that the FULL, FIXED PDF version of the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide is now up on nikoniko's site at:

http://furthervoyages.com/books/download.php?Uncategorized/C128_PRG_fixed_full_version.pdf

If you have any other version printed out, toss it! If you have any other version as a file, delete it! This version fills in all the missing pages, reorders the ones that were mixed up, and trims off all the unnecessary white space on the oversize pages of the old one. You can actually download this, print it out, and have a nice, neat USABLE copy of the C128 PRG!

Post on all the other boards about this one. I'd like to see this version of the C128 PRG replace ALL of the screwed-up versions out there on the Intertubes!

airship · « **Reply #23 on:** September 18, 2007, 05:43 AM »

I just won a copy of Mapping the Commodore 128 on eBay. In a couple of weeks I'll start correcting the OCR version of this book that's been on the Intertubes. It's AWFUL!!! Lots and lots of OCR errors, which is murder when you're looking for detailed information.

No promises on when it will be available, but I'll post here when it is.

nikoniko · « **Reply #24 on:** September 23, 2007, 08:34 AM »

Quick opinion poll regarding organization (yeah, I know it's desperately needed and long overdue):

Is it more helpful to have a folder for each computer system (or family), with topics for programming, schematics and so on in its subfolders... or to have those topics as the main folders, with the computer systems as subcategories of those? I'm thinking the latter, but before I go and create dozens of folders and start shuffling files around I thought I'd see what you guys think.

Author Topic: Commodore Book PDF Library now Online (Read 12126 times)

nikoniko

nikoniko

nikoniko

nikoniko

Mangelore

nikoniko

gklinger

nikoniko

nikoniko

nikoniko