iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So what's the filter you're using there? I've been using ShaderGlass a lot to make my retro stuff look like it's on a CRT. But I feel I should expand my simulated CRT methods. 😊 www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pum...

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Paradroid — Hewson (Amiga WinUAE/ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Ah, that iconic The Last Ninja Cyberload turbo loader. Nice to see it replicated in ASCII. 😄 I always said playing The Last Ninja from tape is the way to experience it, with the loading-music tracks playing before each level, and the different ninja eye-colours. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-jJ...

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The Last Ninja — System 3 (C64 C64emu 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Interesting quirk with Deluxe Pac-Man: With a regular joystick or joypad, where odd movement combo's aren't possible, you're fine. But if you play it in an emulator with keyboard controls for the joystick, the game gets confused by any simultaneous up+down or left+right movements. Stuck in walls: 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Deluxe Pac-Man AGA (Amiga) There may be a huge plethora of Pac-Man clones out there. But every once in a while, something like Deluxe Pac-Man appears, and everything's alright. 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I know it's not a great adventure game. But I kinda enjoyed seeing what I could randomly puzzle through. 😋

Gremlins: The Adventure, for the C64. The loading screen.

Gremlins: The Adventure, for the C64. Outside the cinema.

Gremlins: The Adventure, for the C64. Inside the garage.

Gremlins: The Adventure, for the C64. Beside the snow plough.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Of course, what they really want to do is drive us to pay. 💰 But it's not important enough to me to ever do that. 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's almost like they don't have any competition to keep them honest.. 😉 If they don't want us to set up ad blockers, why to they put so so many ads in that we will take the time to learn how to block ads on everything. (Even the phone.) 🤔

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Choplifter (C64) A beautifully made conversion of an Apple II game. It even made the jump to an impressive arcade version later. Choplifter has you rescuing men while defending you (and them) against tanks, jets, and the occasional over-aggressive satellite. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=FILX...

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Choplifter — Broderbund (C64 full tape load C64emu 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Galaga! (arcade) Whoever thought of that capture-the-ship mechanic is a genius. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

WipeOut Phantom Edition on Windows is really a fun way to revisit the original PlayStation 1 future racer. But, what if it's too sharp and antialiased for your retro sensibilities? Why pipe it through ShaderGlass I say, to give it that old-timey scanlined CRT look. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVsc...

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WipeOut Phantom Edition — wide screen (PSX recompiled for PC ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Hehe. I'm not sure how many different tape versions there were. I assumed there would be only one. I had it on cassette, and it had the guy with purple cap and I think the red dog 🐶, so I assumed that's what all tape people had. Then I tried .TAP's years later in emulation and found other LCP's. 😲

Little Computer People. The blonde guy with glasses.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The disk version would randomise the person on first load and write their stats to disk. I believe there were different batches of the tape version with different LCP's coded to them. Do you know if your tape versions are different people? Or are they twinsies? 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I would've liked a little more to do in the driving sequences. Those felt a little bland. 🤔 But, as movie licenses go, it was a lot better than other games the C64 got. I did enjoy it. I spent ages on that title screen, pressing the space bar at the right times in the music. "Ghostbusters!" 👻 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I went back to this one because the programmer of C64emu has just added an option to disable the virtual 1541 disk drive. There were quite a few Activision releases where the game would fail to run if any peripheral, such as a disk-drive, was detected. 😐 Thus: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jER...

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Ghostbusters — Activision (c64 FAILED cassette load C64emu 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Ghostbusters! Hahahaha! 👻 This is one of those few well-made 80's movie licenses. They have had to invent much of the gameplay, but in true Activision form, they've made a good, addictive game for those who want to bring some Ghostbusting to their home computer. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOy...

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Ghostbusters — Activision [C64 full cassette load C64emu 60Hz no commentary]

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Commodore also made the 8502 CPU for the C128 Computer. Basically a 6510 that can see more RAM, and use an MMU for some bank-switching options. By default it only has an extra 64K of RAM, to give it 128K overall. But the MMU is capable of addressing up to 1024K, with some hardware modification. 😮

The Commodore C128 Computer.
(Which has a 6502 variant, the 8510, and also a Z80 CPU.. 😮 It has two brains!) 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Yeah. They must have all been asleep that day.. I was sure someone was going to point out that the CPU is a 6510, not a 6502. Though the assembly one would be contemplating would be 6502. (I'm trying to be inclusive.) 😋

A MOS 6510 CPU, as one would find in a C64 computer. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Just spending some time out in the garden. Contemplating the meaning of 6502. 🤓 (Waiting for the internet to point out to me things they think I don't know, in 3.. 2.. 1..) 😉

A Windows laptop, out on the garden table, emulating a C64, with it's beastie 6510 CPU — essentially a 6502 with some bank-switching. 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Monkey Island 1 (FM Towns) I know there is much to be done to become a pirate.. I just keep revisiting it from time to time to give the old man a fright, sneak into the kitchen, and talk to the dog. 😄

The Secret of Monkey Island — FM Towns version.
The title / intro-credits screen.

The Secret of Monkey Island — FM Towns version.
It's a good start to the day if you can give the old man a fright. 😊

The Secret of Monkey Island — FM Towns version.
Once you've heard all there is to be said about "grog".. what's in that kitchen? 🤔

The Secret of Monkey Island — FM Towns version.
Unquestionably, my favourite part of the game is talking to the dog. 🐶

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I was reminded how much I like Android II — both the Speccy and C64 version. I found out the hard way that the Amstrad centipedes take three shots, not two. 😐 I was also reminded how much I like, but I'm not very good at, Archon. 😎

Android II on an Amstrad CPC emulator, being played on the GP2x handheld. A fun 2.5D shooter where you hurry through a maze to destroy several snake-like "millitoids", while dodging or shooting other droids, and avoiding the occasional mine.

Archon on an Amstrad CPC emulator, being played on the GP2x handheld. A modern twist on a chess-style battle, where you have to fight each piece one-on-one before taking the square.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'm out travelling for a couple of days. Left the house quick, and I didn't get the GP2x handheld ready to take with me. 😐 Last time I decided to focus on the Amstrad emulator, which I'd hardly touched before. Y'know, it was really fun to try new versions of old games I knew. 😎

Playing Sorcery on the Amstrad emulator on the CP2x handheld.
(I"m so good at it, I don't even need to press the buttons.) 😋

I would play a bit of Elite, but I think it requires more keypresses than I can properly do on the old GP2x. The intro looks refreshingly not-flickery though. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I haven't posted much Amiga content of late, partly because the machine can do so many screen modes that it can be hard to capture a video where the view doesn't jump about between the title/loading/game sections. 😐 Paradroid 90 was nicely consistent here. Runs well in a 60Hz NTSC mode too. 👍

Paradroid 90 for the Amiga.
The title screen.

Paradroid 90 for the Amiga.
Loading the maps for the first dreadnaught.
I like how they're sticking with the C64 narrative that the robot is in there, in the thick of it. But you're merely remote-controlling it, seeing its sensor-data overlaid on the ship blueprints from your home computer.

Paradroid 90 for the Amiga.
Loading the maps for the first dreadnaught.
Your "Influence Device" dodges the fire from both a maintenance and sentinel droid as it tries to circle round for a transfer.

Paradroid 90 for the Amiga.
Loading the maps for the first dreadnaught.
The transfer sub-game. Very well thought out this one, as you and the other droid fight for control of its circuits. "Your brain or mine?" 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I like how Paradroid lets you wander the ship, shooting the s** out of all these rogue droids. But also when you find a powerful one with a good weapon, you can go "I'll have that" and take over its brain. 😈 Though I've somewhat tired of the transfer game these days. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pum...

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Paradroid — Hewson (Amiga WinUAE/ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It was kinda your basic graphic adventure — released on a budget label so you didn't expect Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls. 😄 The innovative part was supposed to be the music that would change as the location/situation changed. But that plan was cut. You can hear it in the music's regular changes. 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Sometimes it's good to take a break from the frenetic blasting/racing/platforming action, and just play a nice relaxing game of golf. The first Leaderboard on the C64 appeared and showed us that this was the way to do a computer golf game. Great stuff. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Of...

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Leaderboard — Access Software (C64 C64emu 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Circus Charlie was an arcade game that was down at the local fish&chip 🐟🍟 shop. I really like this era of arcade gaming where just about any idea could be put out there if it was fun enough. This one certainly was, but it's not very forgiving if your timing is off. 😋 www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD0y...

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Circus Charlie — Konami (Arcade MAME/ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Oooooh! I'm getting Rescue on Fractalus, Skyfox, and Empire vibes with all that planetary and orbital goodness. Keep it up! 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The analogue movement on the stick is still quite good. The top button's a bit twitchy, but the base ones are good. And there's even a switch and handy adapter to use it on PC. I'm reminded how bad the old Apple 16-pin DIP joystick plug is. So darned fragile. The pins always get bent. 😐

An old-school Apple II compatible joystick.
Top view.

An old-school Apple II compatible joystick.
Bottom view, with all its little switches to toggle auto-centering at the top and bottom of each axis.

An old-school Apple II compatible joystick.
Side view.

An old-school Apple II compatible joystick.
Those darned fragile DIP plug pins. Always bent.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

{plays dramatic 2001 music} {Dave Bowman voice} 👨 "Something has arrived.." 👩‍🦰 "What? What has arrived?" 👨 "Something wonderful!"

The box around the box that contains the Apple II joystick. 😄

The box that contains the Apple II joystick. 😎

The stick, in the box, that came in the other box. 😋

This is it. The Apple II joystick.
Top button is a bit twitchy, but other than that it's in good nick. 👍
(Oh, and a handy PC Gameport adapter too! How convenient!) 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Okay, so I won the auction for a retro Apple II joystick. First thing I had to do was plug it into the PC (via the appropriate adapter) and play some Choplifter. The fire-button is a bit twitchy, making me miss a few things. But it's been a lot of fun to test out. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFAa...

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Choplifter (Apple II AppleWin/ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I went a fair way through the ZX Spectrum version one time, with an infinite lives cheat. 🤔 I think it took me somewhere between 20 to 40 lives to get through the Skylab Landing Bay level. 😮 😄

Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum
The title screen

Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum
The first level: Central Cavern

Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum
The seventh level: The Vat

Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum
This is where it gets really tricky: Skylab Landing Bay

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

They played particularly well on my old breadbin C64 — it had a nice strong filter. 😎

The old breadbin C64.
Not mine, unfortunately. 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

..Comparing the C64 conversion to the arcade Terra Cresta, it's the usual deal where the pace of the arcade is faster, and there are more sprites. But I kinda think the C64 may have ended up with the better soundtrack. 🤔 It's a tough call though. 😄 www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pad...

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Terra Cresta — Nihon Bussan (Arcade MAME/ShaderGlass 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The conversion of Terra Cresta for the C64 has some excellent Martin Galway music. Zzap!64 weren't hugely impressed by this game, and I can see why. But I really enjoyed it all the same. It's just a fun vertical shooter with some cool power-ups, in my book. 😎 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBbL...

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Can there be a villain name as on point as Death Adder? (Black Adder did lessen his scariness a bit) 😊 Golden Axe is really a cool arcade game. A great slash-em-up. Was lucky enough to play it on a free-play night, so got to the end without it eating all my money. 😄 www.youtube.com/watch?v=thzD...

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Golden Axe — Sega (Arcade MAME/ShaderGlass Tyris Flare 60Hz no commentary)

YouTube video by Level106

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Yeah. I’ve still got a few Amiga games on the HDD that, even WHDLoad-patched, do some things too fast on a fast CPU: Leaderboard, Shufflepuck Cafe, Nebulus, The Sentinel, Zany Golf, etc. ..Some are still quite playable ‘too fast’, but timing that swing? I’m too old for faster split-second timing. 😝

Lethal Weapon movie.
“I’m too old for this s--t” meme.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

The Amiga version of Leaderboard was quite cool. The speed of the swing was CPU-timed though, so it became quite hard if you had a CPU faster than 7MHz. 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Just to show how much more successful, more long-tailed the C64's games were, here are the two data-sets combined. Here I opted to track the C64 for a few more years. It goes to show how many people are still coding for the C64 just for fun. Great stuff. 😎 Not sure the cause of that 2000 blip.. 🤔

C64 and Amiga game releases each year, as tracked by the Lemon64 and LemonAmiga sites.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The C64 was certainly more successful than the Amiga. Unfortunately this data is just game releases overall, rather than commercial releases. So the C64 trails off, but it never really finishes, so I opted to end in at 1999, before we suddenly got a new surge in 2000. But yes, a good guess. 😎

C64 game releases, as tracked by Lemon 64.
(Which doesn't claim to track *all* releases,
but good enough for my purposes here.) 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

But yeah, I would've stuck with that A1200 forever if it hadn't died. Such a good machine. 😎 I could put it in a shoulder-bag with power supply, disk-wallet, joystick, and long triple-RCA cable (for composite and audio) and rock on up to a friends place and have some excellent gaming on their TV. 🕹️

The shoulder-bag that the A1200 was taken places in. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

..and *finally* the A1200 died. 😭 Found someone in a neighbouring town with an A4000 he was willing to sell. A 25MHz stock 030 wasn't fast enough for me, so I was able to find an Apollo 040 board with SCSI and FastRAM and then a PicassoIV GFX card. It was a beast. But *needed* WHDLoad for old games.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

There was a display A4000/040 in a computer shop in the city, often with Frontier running its intro. So that was inspiration too. Eventually I got a 68030@50MHz with MMU and 882FPU. I think that was the best combo of speed+compatibility I ever had. And I knew how fast it was coz Frontier was fast. 😄

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Ah well I had a friend who had an A1200 too, and he got a 40MHz 68030 accelerator for his. I ran unexpanded for a while, quickly ran out of hd-space, so upgraded the drive (maybe three times in the time I had it) 😄, and got a simple FastRAM expansion, which actually gives the stock 020 a good boost.

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Actually, that got me looking at LemonAmiga dot com to see how many games were released in '94/95 .. then I wondered how quickly it dropped off .. then wondered what the peak was. 😄 Yeah, that was about the end-times for commercial games. Everyone was getting out. Enjoy the graph! 😊

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Yeah, probably only a year or two of good commercial games. I was always too impatient with Frontier.. Ending up smashed into planets because I wouldn't turn down the time acceleration in time. 😊 It was great for benchmarking the speed of the CPU whenever a new accelerator card was installed. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Yeah, the C64 game "Logical" is copyright 1991. The Amiga game "Rolling" is copyright 1994. Seems logical the Amiga guys based theirs on the C64 game. I wish I could remember where I got my copy of "Rolling" from, coz I usually found these wee games on Aminet. Must have got it from a friend. 😎

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Yes, someone was quite high when that one was programmed. 😉

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level106.bsky.social @level106.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I get the impression that this was one that was put out on some cover-magazine disks. Probably one of those "I'm gonna make a game based on that other game I liked, and put it out there, but not really mention that other game." 🤔 Or maybe it was mentioned in the magazine. I never saw any docs. 😄

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