Star commander windows xp

Apart from the periphery chip used in the Commodore drive, it is the same concept as the XP One end plugs into the PC parallel port and the two other ends plug into the serial and parallel ports on the drive. You can't use serial cables other than the X together with the XH or XH hybrid cable on the same port, because of the conflict between the pins used by the serial and the hybrid cables on the PC parallel port.

The mode of your parallel port is a vital feature that determines which cables you can use with your machine so try to find out all the modes of your parallel port. It's possible that, when changing the mode of the integrated parallel port in your BIOS setup, you won't find the necessary modes as they are called in this documentation. Some BIOS setups have different names for the port modes. See what the Commander tells you about the port mode in the "Transfer options" menu.

Below you find some advices about which cables to use with a given parallel port mode and vice versa. You have to determine the true capabilities of your parallel port yourself before choosing the cables to use. For maximum speed, you're advised to use the X cable and the XP or XP parallel cable together.

If the Commander still doesn't work then you have to use one of the other three serial cables that substitute the X cable. The X interface is the easiest of all. You only have to connect certain pins of the serial port of the Commodore drive and pins of the parallel port of the PC.

You need some plugs, some wires and some soldering skills. The XE and XM interfaces are not much harder, they only needs some diodes. However, the XA interface needs a couple of resistors and SMD transistors which are quite hard to solder. If you're not experienced at soldering then don't even think about doing them yourself. In addition, the XH and XH interfaces also need some diodes.

The following tables may help you to decide which cables suit your needs best. Depending on your parallel port hardware, your soldering skills and your patience, you may choose the cables that will work best for you. This table is a compatibility chart between different parallel port modes and different interfaces. Again, the standard X cable doesn't work on most Pentium-class machines. You can test the compatibility of your parallel port with XTest.

Unfortunately, there is no way of testing this compatibility with purely software. This table shows the ways to achieve different speeds on a single parallel port in different modes.

These tables show the ways to achieve different speeds on two parallel ports of different modes. The first cable refers to the primary parallel port, whose mode is indicated by the table title. The second refers to the secondary parallel port, whose mode is indicated by the column title.

Note that when you're advised to swap your parallel ports then it's meant to be a logical swap, not a physical one. Swap your parallel ports and try again.

Swap parallel ports and try again. The following diagrams are pictured as viewed from the solder end back side of the plug.

It may be of help to you that the numbers are often printed in small letters onto the plug itself. When wiring the interface cables, make sure that they are not too long. A cable longer than about two meters seven feet will possibly not work, especially if it isn't shielded at all.

Commodore drive periphery chips are displayed as viewed from above. The small semicircular cut may help you with finding the correct orientation. You can find the VIA 1 by searching for a chip on the motherboard that has the type number on it and none of its pins are connected to any other chip.

The original specification of the X interface requires the short connection of pins 2 and 15 on the parallel port plug. The X software uses it for autodetection, the Commander doesn't make use of it. If you intend to use other transfer softwares with your interface then you might want to do this alteration, as well.

This interface, unlike the X interface, needs electronical components, namely diodes. These decouple the control lines of the PC parallel port while data is coming from the Commodore drive. It is highly recommended to use 1N or BAT85 diodes only, other diodes may make the cable inoperable on some hardware configurations.

Please, read the chapter of the XE extended cable for more details. As you can see, the only difference is that the multitask cable has pins 5 Data and 6 Reset swapped in the Commodore plug. This interface needs electronical components: transistors and resistors. These amplify signals while data is going to the Commodore drive and decouple the control lines of the PC parallel port while data is coming from the Commodore drive.

You have to solder amplifiers right before each of pins 1, 14, 16 and 17; see the circuit diagram zoomed below. In the amplifier, the collector is connected to the Commodore pin; the base is connected to the PC output pin, via a resistor; the emitter pin has to be grounded, that is, connected to any or, preferably, all of pins on the parallel port.

This picture displays the transistor as viewed from above. Note that this pin layout belongs to the BSV52 transistor only, others may have their pins laid out differently.

If you don't wish to solder SMD components or you can't obtain BSV52 transistors, a possible substitute for them is the 2N transistor. Please, note that using 2N transistors is not recommended at all as it may make the cable inoperable on some hardware configurations! This picture displays the transistor as viewed from below, where its pins are. Note that this pin layout belongs to the 2N transistor only, others may have their pins laid out differently.

These interfaces need diodes. A suggested diode for this interface is the standard 1N or equivalent. You can connect the XH and XH interfaces to any type of parallel port. The XH interface only works with Commodore drives and compatible clones.

The XH interface only works with Commodore and drives and compatible clones. Alternatively, you may build two separate cables and buy a secondary old SPP parallel port card for the X interface.

The XP interface only works with Commodore drives and compatible clones. The XP interface only works with Commodore and drives and compatible clones. You have to connect two cables to the Commodore drive and the PC at the same time to acquire the enhanced transfer capabilities. Don't connect the XH, XP, XH or XP cable alone to the Commodore drive: none of them contain a GND line so plugging them without a serial cable may short circuit your machines and, possibly, damage the periphery chips.

When soldering the hybrid or parallel cable into your Commodore drive, make sure that no hardware or software is using the needed periphery chip pins:. In drives, nothing is defined to any of the bits of Port A. You may solder the XH interface and the XP interface without any problem. In C drives, bit 0 of Port A is used for the detection of the head being over track 1. Otherwise you'll get strange results when the drive is seeking: the DOS tries to rely on the detector line which doesn't exist anymore.

In II drives, bit 0 of Port A is grounded. Strip this connection off of the chip. You can't use the version of the XH interface and the XP interface with them. However, you may use the XH or XP interfaces, cables of the same design as the XH and the XP interfaces, with a different chip, namely the CIA, most of whose pins are unused in these drives.

If you already have a floppy speeder like Speed DOS or Dolphin DOS in your , or drive then you probably have a parallel plug at its rear. You may create another cable to connect the drive to the PC with. You may also split the cable between the drive and the C64 into a Y-shaped cable, one end plugging into the drive, another into the C64 and the third one into the PC.

In this case, remember not to plug the cable into the C64 and the PC at the same time. However, your best choice is creating a small adaptor that imitates the C64 user port on one side and plugs into the PC parallel port on the other side.

If your or drive has no parallel capabilities then you might still want to create a plug at its rear. This way there will be no cable always hanging out of the drive. With another cable, you'll be able to use parallel transfer with the C64, too.

Read their documentation before soldering so that you can connect the additional pins to the parallel plug, if needed. There are three types of lines on PC parallel ports: data lines are used to transfer data bytes between the PC and the external device; control lines are used by the PC to send control signals to the external device; status lines are used by the external device to send status signals to the PC.

From the PC side, logically, data lines should be used for both input and output, control lines for output only, and status lines for input only. But this is not exactly the case. On the early SPP parallel ports Standard Parallel Port , data lines can only be used for output; this is called a unidirectional parallel port. Note that this expression is mainly used for the usage of the data lines. Furthermore, with a little trick, the control lines can be used not only for output but for input, as well.

The transistor is controlled by the chipset which, on the other hand, is controlled by the software. When the corresponding port bit is set to one, the transistor opens and the resistor pulls the signal level on the pin to high, a voltage level of between 3.

When the port bit is cleared to zero, the transistor closes and pulls the signal level to low, between 0. The reason for the differences of the voltage intervals is that the transistor can pull stronger than the resistor. On Commodore drives, the pins of the serial port are also connected via open collectors to the periphery chip. When there are open collectors on the two ends of the same wire then three possibilities exist.

If both ends pull the line low then the actual signal level, that can be read by both parties, will be low. If both ends pull the line high then the result will be a high signal. However, if one end pulls the line high and the other one pulls it low then, again, because of the strength of the transistor, the signal level will become low.

The PC or the Commodore machine can pull the line high and low and the drive will be able to read this signal. However, if the machine pulled the line high then the drive will also be able to signal back, by pulling the line low. This is the only way to input data from the drive and this is exactly how Commodores, with a Commodore serial cable, and PC's, with an Xseries cable, work. It is still a mystery why the original parallel port, designed by IBM, is a unidirectional parallel port.

The port wouldn't have been more expensive if it allowed the software to switch the data lines into input mode. Actually, many parallel port cards are designed to be bidirectional but are crippled down to unidirectional mode. The method to enable bidirectional mode on these cards is described at the end of this section. However, with the introduction of high-speed peripherals, open collectors started to be replaced by totem poles: there are two transistors, one between 5.

The two transistors are controlled in an inverted way: at a time, exactly one of them is open and the other is closed. When the port bit is cleared to zero then, as before, the transistor on the GND side closes and pulls the line low. However, when the port bit is set to one then it is also a transistor that pulls the line high. This way, the high signal level is a voltage of very close to 5.

On most Pentium and newer motherboards, the pins of the integrated parallel port are connected via totem poles to the chipset. When a totem pole in the PC pulls the line high then it does that with a transistor.

If the drive tries to pull the line low, to send a signal, then it also does that with a transistor. The two transistors will be fighting against each other and the outcome is unknown: the signal level may remain at high, if the transistor on the PC side is stronger; or become low, if the transistor in the drive is the stronger one. Most of the time, the transistors in the PC seem to be stronger and, therefore, no data can be input from the Commodore drive.

And it is not only totem poles that may render transfer softwares unable to work: the chipset on some motherboards doesn't even contain the circuitry needed to read the signal level of lines other than the status lines.

However, as described above, their control lines are not bidirectional anymore. The X cable won't work on these parallel ports. If you can't make transfer softwares work with your motherboard then you should stop testing immediately, because the fights between transistors put stress on the chips on both sides. You should rather build one of the other serial cables which are slightly different from the X cable and work on more parallel ports.

The X cable is of the simplest design. It connects pins of the Commodore serial port and the PC parallel port without any conversion or wire split.

So that the PC is able to also input data from the Commodore, not only output to it, it definitely needs the control lines, that it uses, to be bidirectional. If they are not then the cable doesn't work at all, no matter what software you're using with it.

The XE cable connects wires, coming from the Commodore end, to two pins on the parallel port. One of these pins belongs to a control line and there is a Schottky-diode in front of it. This is the line via which data is sent to the Commodore. The other pin belongs to a status line which is used to receive data.

Because control lines may be used for output and status lines for input on any parallel port, this solves the problem with the X cable. When the PC expects the Commodore to send to data, it sets the control line to a high level and listens to the signal level on the status line.

The diode prevents current from flowing from the PC end, therefore, the Commodore is free to set the line to whatever level it wants to. Without the diode, the output lines of the PC and the Commodore would be fighting with each other, as described above. The XM cable has only two wires swapped at the Commodore end. This way, when the PC is waiting for the next handshake arriving from the Commodore, it can do that by enabling the "ACK generates interrupt" feature and halting its execution.

When the interrupt occurs, the PC can also continue with the next handshake. Until this happens, the software uses no CPU time because it's not running at all. Interrupts use significantly less CPU time than "polling": running in an endless loop that checks the signal level again and again. The XA cable is derived from the XM cable. It also has the two wires swapped at the Commodore end, therefore, it also improves overall performance under a multi-tasking system.

However, it corrects a problem with the XE and XM cables that occurs with certain parallel ports that are on the edge of the original IBM specification. According to the specification, the low level of a line means that the voltage is between 0.

When a Schottky-diode is applied onto this line then the voltage may go up to even 0. Unfortunately, this 0. For a Commodore, voltages between 0. In the latter case, it is also unknown what the software running in the Commodore will see: sometimes a high, sometimes a low level.

It is worth mentioning that exactly this is why Schottky-diodes were chosen for the XE and XM cables: other diodes raise the voltage even more. Instead of diodes, the XA cable uses transistors and resistors.

If the PC needs to pull the signal level to low on the wire then it sends out a high level on the parallel port. This closes the transistor between the wire and the ground. Because the transistor is strong, it can pull the signal level to typically at most 0. This voltage depends on the transistor but not on the voltage coming from the parallel port. The resistor is used to adjust the working point of the transistor for optimum performance.

Because a transistor will amplify currents, the base current has to be adjusted to a value that results in the needed output current. If the input current is too high, the transistor will work slower than it should be able to; if the input current is too low, the transistor will not switch reliably.

This pin may be any of pins 2, 5, 7, 10, 12 or 15 and must not be connected to any other chip on the board. The corresponding input pin 3, 4, 6, 11, 13 or 14 must be connected to bit 5 of the data bus.

If this is not the case on your card then you may access this bit from the data latch. Find out which one of its output pins 2, 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16 or 19 is connected to pin 7 of the parallel port connector and get bit 5 from the corresponding input pin 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 14, 17 or If you encounter problems in this software, first of all, visit the homepage and download the very latest beta release as it may have the bug, which you have run into, already fixed.

Also, its documentation may have more ideas on what to try when that particular problem occurs. Before reading this section, see the "Usage" section, as well. If you find a problem that is not related to accessing an external Commodore drive, you should contact the author with a detailed description of the bug, including a guide on how to reproduce it.

See section "Reporting problems" on how a proper bug report should look like. However, if you can't access the external Commodore drive properly, here are some ideas for you. Bare boot your computer, disable all resident softwares, memory managers and device drivers. These circumstances may affect the data transfer. SYS files. You may want to create a boot menu or a boot disk. During your test, don't plug anything other than the serial interface into your PC parallel port and your Commodore drive.

From your PC, remove dongles, parallel port switches and other devices that may filter data transfer via the parallel port. From your Commodore drive, remove daisy chained other drives, peripherals and Commodore machines.

If the connection with the Commodore drive locks up then switch the drive off and pull the serial interface out of it. Wait for the error message "Drive not present", plug the interface back and turn the drive back on. Optionally, you may reset the drive, e. Then try the following. If you get completely confused, you may want to simply delete the SC. INI file and start configuring the Commander again from scratch.

Switch "Transfer mode" to "Warp" in the "Transfer options" menu. This is not only the fastest transfer mode but the most reliable, as well. If you're experiencing problems during disk commands then switch "Command exec mode" to "Warp" in the "Drive options" menu. This will make the Commander use its own, more stable, software for disk commands.

Raise or lower the delay value in the "Transfer options" menu. It is very sensitive so change it at steps of one, with a butterfly method: add one to the original value; subtract one from the original value; add two; subtract two etc. The highest delay value you can use without transmission problems is the optimum.

If this value works fine for you then set a value of 0 to always use the automatic calibration rather than using a fixed value.

Note that, if you set a fixed value, you will definitely have to change it if you started using the Commander under another operating system, e. Check, in the "Transfer options" menu, if you have correctly set the type of the serial cable and the parallel port it is connected to.

Do the same with the parallel cable, in case you have one. If you have no additional cable, besides the serial cable, then set the parallel cable to "None". If you really want to access the Commodore drive via a serial cable under a multi-tasking system then set the "Async transfer" option to "Auto" in the "Transfer options" menu.

Without that, you would most probably experience frequent lockups or timeouts. First, you should test the connection under real DOS though. You might want to try the async transfer feature under plain DOS, as well, if you experience transmission problems.

Under Windows, open the "Properties" windows of the DOS shell, that the Commander is running in, go to the "Misc" tab and set "Idle sensitivity" to "Low", the left end of the slider. This gives more CPU time to the Commander.

Turn "Manual timeouts" on or off. While enabling it usually helps under real DOS, it may turn things even worse under a multi-tasking system. Also, when it is enabled, the Commander doesn't really like it if you touch the keyboard or the mouse during access of the Commodore drive as then the communication will fall apart.

Check whether the address and mode of your parallel port is detected and displayed correctly in the "Transfer options" menu. If it is not detected at all then, in the case of an integrated parallel port, enter the BIOS setup and check your parallel port settings. On some motherboards, it is possible to set the parallel port into Auto mode.

In this case, a plug-and-play compatible operating system has the chance to set the parallel port to the address and mode it likes. However, DOS is not one of these operating systems so set the address and the mode manually. Therefore use the left window instead because it works for all programs without having to enter any special command!

Press Start in UserPort or Update if the driver is already started! Shut down all programs, processes and functions that are not necessarily needed since they might interrupt Star Commander. The rest of the processes, it is best to shut down. If it is possible to shut down processes by changing options in programs, then do that instead of shutting them down with the Task Manager since it becomes a more controlled shut-down for example alg.

Also disable screen savers and automatic transition to low-power modes. It is also best to pull out the network cable or shut down a connected ADSL or cable modem. Then try to move around among the menus. Now there is a big risk that the complete command interpreter window will hang. I have seen slightly different behaviour regarding this.

If it locks up, then close the command interpreter window using the Close button in the upper right corner and then click Stop followed by Start in UserPort. With my present Windows XP installation it only locks up now and then and in that case only the first time after I have started up the computer. However, a pre-condition for this is that there are proper settings stored in the configuration file SC. If you haven't run Star Commander before this file doesn't exist and then the latest beta version refuses to start up for me at all with my present Windows XP installation.

Luckily, I managed to get Star Commander 0. Thereafter, version 0. INI to the latest beta version I could get also that to start up and work stable. Do you have the problem that you despite of repeated attempts can't get SCSETUP to work long enough for you to be able to save settings that make it stable?

In that case, you can try to put my SC. INI file for Star Commander 0. You can find my SC. Of course, you have to modify the settings under Transfer options so that they are correct for your configuration cable, disk drive etc. The SC. Set Transfer mode to as fast as possible for it to be stable under Windows XP preferrably Warp if it is supported by Star Commander for the Commodore disk drive you have selected. For Serial interface you have to look at the address areas and select the port that corresponds to your parallel port.

Asynchronous transfer must be enabled set to 'Always' or 'Auto'. Manual timeouts must be disabled. Disable Detect port modes.

One setting under Transfer options that I can mention in particular is Delay value. Please, note that only members are allowed to post to the mailing list. To unsubscribe, send an E-mail to sclist-unsubscribe. Arnold, home of the Commodore games USA.

The Badlands Austria. The Digital Dungeon The Netherlands. Gangsta's Paradise Hungary. Kiarchive FTP server Russia. Padua FTP site Germany. The Commander is giftware. You may use the unregistered version as long as you wish and you may give it to any individual, provided that it's in the original, unmodified archive. It is highly recommended that you download distribution packages from the homepage or other distribution sites listed later in this documentation.

If you get a package from somewhere else then make sure that the package has the author's authentic verification stamped on it. Either press and hold an assigned key to tap continuously or just tap once to execute the tap specific number of times. Complete Google sign-in to access the Play Store, or do it later. Look for Star Wars Commander in the search bar at the top right corner. Complete Google sign-in if you skipped step 2 to install Star Wars Commander. Click the Star Wars Commander icon on the home screen to start playing.

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