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The 8-bit software publisher Cronosoft is back in action, with a new range of games and 'uniform packaging'. This comes at an increased cost per title - either £3.99 or £4.99 plus postage - and its extensive back-catalogue is being re-issued in compilations of three or four games per cassette tape for £4.99 each.

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The first couple of releases (with the new packaging and price) are available now for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. These are the popular golf/platform game Albatrossity, which will run on a 48K machine or better, and the 128K shoot-'em-up Blizzard's Rift, a Gravitar clone in which you're tasked with plundering the hidden space treasure from several space worlds. Both of these games are by Jonathan Cauldwell. For Dragon 32/64 fans, James McKay's classy Gauntlet clone, Glove, will soon be available. This is especially handy, as Dragon emulation isn't as easy to do as the more popular Speccy, while the machines are usually not too expensive to buy and are found often enough on popular auction websites.

To keep up to date on developments, point your web-browsing software to www.cronosoft.co.uk.

Commodore 64 and 128 users are once again able to legally obtain JiffyDOS chips for their machines. In an announcement from the USA-based Brain Innovations, which is working with the intellectual property owners and creator Mark Fellows, the Commodore legend Jim Brain said that he was finalising a licensing agreement for "the 'JiffyDOS' ROM Overlay manufacture and distribution".

The upgrade words by replacing a ROM chip inside a C64 or 128 and on the board of a Commodore disk drives with a serial bus connector, such as the 1541, which uses single-sided 5.25" flopies, or the 1581 that utilises 3.5" diskettes. This gives new and easier-to-use commands from BASIC and faster access to the data stored on each disk.

JiffyDOS was ported to the Plus/4 and Vic-20 machines a few years ago, although, as this was done by Maurice Randall of Click Here Software, I am therefore unsure if Brain Innovations will be offering it for these computers. However, there will be legal binaries for those with the technology to create (or 'blow') their own Eprom chips, as well as versions for the C64DTV units, and devices like the 1541 Ultimate+ (www.1541ultimate.net). Prices will be announced shortly.

In a related development, Brain Innovations is offering a cheap Ethernet solution for the C64 and 128 through the Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club, at just $55 plus postage. It's apparently designed for 'entry-level' Ethernet connectivity, which hopefully means that it's easy to set up, and already works with applications and games designed for the RR-Net interface, though with better support for 128 modes. If you're really struggling to think of what to use such a device for, there's a C64 set up as a server using similar hardware at www.c64web.com

For information about Brain Innovations, point your web browser at www.jbrain.com and the Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club can be found at www.geocities.com/c64-128-amiga