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Commodore Trivia 02
Here are the answers to the Commodore trivia questions for January, 1994.
These are just a couple days late, but I have not forgotten. Following this
post are the questions for the February Edition.
Note: If your name appears below as a respondent and you think you answered
the question correctly, I am all ears, but some questions did ask for more
than one part, which meant that, to get the question right, I needed two
correct responses from you. Keep that in mind.
Q $00A) What was the Code-Name of the Amiga while in Development?
A $00A) Lorraine. Amiga was the company name. When Commodore bought the
company, they scrapped the model name and used the old company name.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
David Butcher
Craig Taylor
Mark Spacek
Richard Bradley
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
L. McClure (L = ?)
Doug Spence
Joseph Korczynski
Paul Liss
Q $00B) What is Lord British's Real Name (The creator of the Ultima
Series)?
A $00B) Richard Garriott. Scott Statton has met him and says that he is son
of astronaut Owen Garriott.
The trivia question that this brings up is whether Garriott is
spelled with two 't's or one. Anyone care to clarify. I have a
magazine that says two, but it might be a typo.
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Mark Spacek
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
Paul Liss
Q $00C) What is the POKE location and value that will fry an early model
PET?
A $00C) 59458. It is in the (Versatile Interface Adapter, 6522)
No, I won't tell you what to poke into it, but I will tell you
that it is not te only way to fry a PET. here is a description from
none other than Jim Butterfield
"The poke shopwn aboveis correct. Its intention was to speed up early
model PETs by masking the RETRACE line (by switching it to output)...
however, Commodore subsequently REDESIGNED the interface in such a way
that making the VIA pin an output caused (now) two outputs to fight
each other ... result, VIA and/or video circuitry burnt out.
LATER (Days of "fat 40" and 80-column PETs), the new CRT controller
chip could be fiddled with POKES so that it generated scan rates
completely out of the capacity of the CRT deflection circuits.
Result: burnt out deflection circuitry ... and that was no YOKE!"
Richard Bradley says that 59595 is the second poke that Jim is
referring to.
I also have in on word from Ethan Dicks that 59409 is another
infamous poke, but I wouldn't try any of these!
Correct Responses:
Richard Bradley
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
Q $00D) On the Plus 4 and C-16, the VIC chip was replaced with the TED
chip. What does TED stand for?
A $00D) TED = Text Editing Device. It did not have as many capabilities
as the VIC II.
Correct Responses:
L. McClure
Q $00E) Commodore Produced a Letter Quality Printer in North America
(maybe elsewhere) for the Commodore Serial Line. Name it.
A $00E) The Commodore DPS 1101. Of course I should have made this question
more explicit. The DPS 1101 is a daisy wheel printer, and I wrote this
question back when Ink Jets and Laser printers were not a gleam in
user's eyes. Commodore has since sold many ink jet printers for the
Amiga line, so those answers were accepted.
The CBM 6400 was not accepted, unless someone can prove it had a
serial interface in addition to the IEEE-488 interface.
Correct Responses:
Richard Bradley
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
L. McClure
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Q $00F) What is the version of DOS in the 1541?
A $00F) 2.6
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Mark Spacek
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
Q $010) What is the Version of BASIC in the Plus 4 and the C-16?
A $010) 3.5.
Correct Responses:
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
Ross Capdeville
L. McClure
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
Q $011) What are the nicknames of the original three custom Amiga chips?
A $011) Daphne/Denise, Agnes/Agnus, and Paula/Portia, or Huey, Duey, and Louie.
Denise, Agnes, and Paula were the American names, but the the others
crept in from somwhere. the ducks were always a joke, but caught on
as alternate names.
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Stewart Stremler
Marko Makela
Mark Spacek
Craig Taylor
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
David Begley
Ronald van loon
L. McClure
Doug Spence
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
Paul Liss
Q $012) Commodore produced a 64 in a PET case. What is its name and model
number?
A $012) The Educator 64. It was model number CBM 4064, and it was also called
the PET64. Note that this version of the 64 was the second attempt.
Commodore first tried to sell the "Educator 64" to schools in the
regular 64 case, but administrators and teachers disliked the "homey"
look. Thus, it was squeezed into a PET case and sold better, although
I don't think it was ever a killer seller.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Richard Bradley
Doug Spence
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
Q $013) Commodore sold a 1 megabyte floppy disk drive in a 1541 case.
Give the model number.
A $013) The Commodore SFD 1001. It was actually half of an CBM 8250 LP
with a slightly revised ROM.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Mark Spacek
Craig Taylor
Richard Bradley
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
L. McClure
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Paul Liss
Q $014) What does GCR stand for?
A $014) Group Code Recording.
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Marko Makela
David Butcher
Mark Spacek
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Richard Hable
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
David Begley
Ross Capdeville
L. McClure
Doug Spence
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
Q $015) Commodore produced a drive to accompany the Plus 4 introduction.
Give the model number.
A $015) the CBM 1551 is the correct answer, although we still aren't sure
how many, if any, were sold. The 1542 was just a repackaged 1541
that was for sale if you didn't want the added features or the
price of the 1551, since the 1551 had a parallel data transfer
option in addition to the serial one.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Craig Taylor
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
L. McClure
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Q $016) What does SID stand for?
A $016) SID = Sound Interface Device
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Marko Makela
Mark Spacek
Craig Taylor
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Richard Hable
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
David Begley
Ross Capdeville
Ronald van loon
L. McClure
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Q $017) What does the acronym KERNAL stand for?
A $017) KERNAL = Keyboard Entry Read, Network, And Link. Again, I think
this is a words after the letters acronym, so take it for what it is
worth.
Correct Responses:
Q $018) What version of DOS does the 1571 have?
A $018) 3.0
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Scott Maxwell
George Page
Q $019) What other two Commdore Disk Drives share the same DOS version
number as the 1571?
A $019) Any of the following answers receive full credit even though I was
actually looking for the hard drive numbers.
The CBM D9060 and D9090, although I doubt the code is the same.
The D series were hard drives.
The 1570, which was a single sided version of the 1571 in a 1541
case painted to match the 128. The ROM is slightly different,
enough to make it unrecognizable as either a 1541 or a 1571 in some
cases.
Note: I also accepted the 1571II and the 1571D, the drive that is
inside the C128D, although I think these responses are somewhat
a given.
Correct Responses:
Ethan Dicks got the hard drives
George Page got the hard drives
Q $01A) How many files will the 1571 hold?
A $01A) 144 in both modes. I am surprised Commodore didn't add a track or
put another directory on the back.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Scott Maxwell
Ross Capdeville
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
Q $01B) How many files will the 1541 hold?
A $01B) 144. Someone even sent me the calculation used to arrive at this number.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Craig Taylor
Richard Hable
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
Alan Curry
Ross Capdeville
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Paul Liss
Q $01C) What did Commodore make right before entering the computer market?
A $01C) Calculators. They also made office Equipment, hence the name.
Also, they made watches, adding machines, and thermostats.
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Stewart Stremler
Marko Makela
Craig Taylor
Richard Bradley
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks (He has a calculator)
L. McClure
Doug Spence
George Page
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Q $01D) Commodore introduced an ill-fated 4 color plotter. Give the model
number.
A $01D) the Commodore 1520. It used 4 inch wide paper and could use 4
colors.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
David Butcher
Richard Bradley
Scott Maxwell
Ethan Dicks
L. McClure
George Page
Mark Caban
Joseph Korczynski
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
Paul Liss
Q $01E) Some formats of CP/M write disks using the MFM format. What does
MFM stand for?
A $01E) MFM = Modified Frequency Modulation
Correct Responses:
Scott Stratton
Marko Makela
finkel@math.tau.ac.il
Richard Hable
Ethan Dicks
David Begley
L. McClure
George Page
Q $01F) On the Commdore 128, the user manual left two commands undocumented.
One works, and the other gives a not-implemented error. Name both
commands and what each one does or does not do.
A $01F) The responses to this questions gave me more than I needed. It turns
out that Commodore left THREE commands undocumented, but at least one
works. Any 2 of these 3 answers are sufficient, although no one
answered the first one.
RREG reads the internal registers after a SYS command.
OFF gives an unimplemented command error.
QUIT does too.
Correct Responses:
Marko Makela
Ross Capdeville
George Page
New questions coming!
Wow, some people racked up impressive scores, but the winner of this month is:
George Page!
Here are the scores for Edition #2:
George Page 17
Ethan Dicks 16
Scott Maxwell 16
Joseph Korczynski 15
Marko Makela 15
L. McClure 12
Richard Bradley 7
Mark Caban 7
finkel@math.tau.ac.il 7
hermit@cats.ucsc.edu 7
Mark Spacek 7
Craig Taylor 7
Ross Capdeville 6
Paul Liss 6
Scott Stratton 6
Doug Spence 5
David Begley 4
Richard Hable 4
David Butcher 3
Stewart Stremler 2
Ronald van loon 2
Alan Curry 1
Well, there is no way people can get 17 on next month's Edition!
Jim Brain
--
Jim Brain, Embedded Systems Designer, Brain Innovations.
brain@msen.com
Dabbling in VR, Old Commodore Computers, and Good Times!
"The above views DO reflect my employer, since I am my employer" - Jim Brain
