CUTILS V1.0 - Copyright (c) >NIL: April 2000


o Copyright notice

Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, modify,
or redistribute this software as long as the original files and sources are
included, that it is not sold for profit, and that this copyright notice is
retained.


o Description

CUTILS is a set of two utilities, CLOAD & CSAVE, designed to upload or
download user's programs between a Commodore VIC 20 and a Linux PC, using
a simple homemade parallel cable. The typical transfer rate is 20KB/s (I
wish my internet connection was that fast!). 
They can be used to transfer your old programs to a VIC 20 emulator, or
to transfer programs found on the internet to a working VIC.

The utilities work indifferently with an EXPANDED OR UNEXPANDED VIC. 

You have to be root to run the CUTILS under Linux.

The utilities can upload or download any memory range (not necessarily 
aligned), and thus can be used to transfer ROM modules or any type of data
anywhere in memory.

The VIC version of each utilities is very short (less than 60 bytes!) so
that they will fit into stack space, without disturbing it. They generally
persist in memory from a reset to another, even after a program was run.

The utilities can be easily be modified to use with a C64 or a PET.

An Amiga 500 version of the CLOAD utility for an unxepanded VIC is also
included in the package.


o Important note 

The Linux CSAVE utility works only if your the parallel port of your PC is
bidirectionnal. If your PC is post 1996, you can be pretty sure that it is.
If not, get a life and change your hardware!
Btw, the parallel port of the Amiga (designed in 1985) is of course fully 
bidirectionnal.


o Information files

Read the file INSTALL for information on how to compile and install
the utilities.
Read the file MANUAL for information on how to use them.
Read the file CABLE_SPECS for information on how to build the cable.
Read the FAQ for any other question.


o Credits

Andreas Heitman
	For his very useful little note about how to copy rom modules 
	to files, which proved of incredible value, and started it all.
Matthew Dillon
	For the 6502 assembler for UNIX.
Riku Saikkonen
	For the Linux I/O port programming mini-HOWTO.
Zhahai Stewart & contributors
	For the IBM Parallel Port FAQ/Tutorial.
Marko Mkel & Olaf Seibert
	For the prlink utility, though I didn't use much information from it.
Sam Laur
	For the very useful VIC-20 memory map in ASCII text.
ftp.funet.fi
	For all the information I could get nowhere else! 
Commodore
	When computers were designed the right way...
comp.sys.cbm
	See ya folks.
...and of course the Linux afficionados worldwide!
