A programmer named Robert Willie has managed to coax a new video mode (Real Interlace Mode) out of the Commodore 128’s VIC-IIe 40-column video chip. His new mode is a variant of FLI, and he was able to double the VIC-IIe’s stock 200 lines of vertical resolution to an amazing 400 lines. This feat was done entirely through software, no doubt changing some timings in the chip in realtime. Apparently, the trick only works with the VIC-IIe, and not the VIC-II in the C64.

The Commodore 128 was released in 1985, and apparently hasn’t given up all of its secrets yet.

Jason Scott linked to this video of him speaking at DefCon 13 (2005). The subject of his talk is “why tech documentaries are impossible”, and he certainly covers that topic well. But, he also gives a lot of background into the making of BBS: The Documentary

We’re going to be discussing Unicode and plenty more!

We’re at a new location this month. Panera has free Wifi!