retroputing

Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

The below was posted on retrohackers.com and reposted on Lemon64.com. If true, this sounds very, very promising!

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This weekend I had to opportunity to pay a visit to the bimonthly HCC-meeting in Maarsen. Unlike most C-64 related meetings i've been visiting before, this place was rather crammed with C-64 enhusiasts than sceners. Unlike most american user-groups, these guys seems to be focused on new hardware development. Among the guys who frequently visits these events you have people like Ruud Baltissen, Jan Derogee and Gideon Zweijtzer - who alone could do wonders with the C-64 hardware.

The 1541-Ultimate

Gideon Zweijtzer showed me the latest developments of his project, the 1541-Ultimate. I recall reading about it some year ago when I checked out the 1541-III project by Jan Derogee, but I didn't really raise any eyebrows then. Seeing his latest, more or less finished, boards and testing it hands-on was a totally different thing. This is one of the nicer hardware-thingies i've ever got my hands on. The core is a cartridge with an FPGA which is ment to be an emulator or replacement for the 1541, but it doesn't stop there.

What surprised me a little is that it resembles the upcoming Super Snapshot a lot. It features a normal MMC-card slot, a mini-USB slot and a C64 serial port - visually it looks a bit like a pimped-up MMC-64. The cart itself holds an image of an Action Replay and a TFC III within, activating when you turn it on - working just like an ordinary cart. It has three buttons - a reset-button, a freeze button and a button to access the file-system of the MMC. The cart can potentially emulate any C-64 drive - the ram of the board is the limit. Currently it's set to emulate the 1541 - and it does it well. Very well.

I had no problem running normal Dreamload-based demos from the MMC-card. Neither was there a problem running stuff which had Lasse Öörnis loader, Deus Ex Machina (Grahams loader), MMS loader and so on. It didn't manage Krills latest loaders though. Writing to .d64 files within the MMC-card was no problem, and it utilized the Action Replay's fast-load/save routines. To change disk, you just tapped the button in the back of the cart and choose a new disk from the menu - while keeping memory and all registers in the C-64 unaltered.

But what do this mean in practice, then? Well, it's a very portable 1541 for starters. One that is portable enough to bring anywhere. Second, you won't really need a PC to transfer disks anymore. Just connect a normal 1541 as device #9 and start any diskcopy program of your choice. You can even back-up or write disks with the built in copier of the Action Replay.

Gideon is currently working on the "external" option of the cart. This means that you could use the mini-USB as a power-source and running it without having it plugged into the cartridge-port. Running it externally changes the use of the buttons - the reset and freeze buttons are used to swap .d64 images and the middle-button is used to reach and get out of subdirectories. This function is currently in development, though.

The reason Gideon haven't been putting it into production - right now he solders them manually - is that the cost of the cart is about 100 euro with all the components included and that he needed to produce atleast 25 carts to be able to sell it for the same price. Me and TDJ assured him that 25 sceners would buy it without any hesitation for 100 euro.
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98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

I threw my name in for this. Hopefully it will really happen.

Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

Phosphor Dot Fossils · Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1531 Location: Planet Arkansas

If you guys are gonna start ditching your 1541-III's for this, I wanna get on that list. Laughing

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98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

I finally got a response back from Gideon. He sent out an email to the people that had contacted him so far with payment info. I went ahead and sent off payment for an Ultimate Plus (135 euro or just over $200). He's hoping to be ready to ship by the end of Feb, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

ubikuberalles · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject:

Sounds good! I hope you get it soon without incident (sorry, but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed until February - my fingers would hurt too much. Smile

).
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98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

ubikuberalles · Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject:

Mr. Flibble doesn't have fingers, just flippers. But I'll ask him to keep his flippers crossed.
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Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

Man I am up in the air on this one. That thing sounds really cool and if I hadn't just dropped $130 on the 1541-III I would pre-pay for one instantly. The $200 is a bit steep but ... man, I am struggling over this one.
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98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

Even not having dropped $130 on the 1541-III it was still hard to spend the money. But I've wanted a replacement for the actual drives for a long time now and after missing the boat on the 1541-III, I had to.

If it makes the decision any harder, I read that you can put replacement 1541 ROM code on the sd card for it to use. Basically, it will work with JiffyDos. After spending the money to upgrade 2 more of my commies with Jiffy, that makes me very happy.

Wonder what the resale on the 1541-III is? Maybe dump it before the ultimate hits?

Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

I got an e-mail today asking for payment, so I went ahead and made the plunge. With the current conversion rates it ended up costing me $212. I don't have an ETA on arrival yet or anything. We'll see.
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98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

Mine is listing as shipped now, so hopefully it will show up soon. All of the initial reports I've read are very positive so I'm pretty excited about getting a hold of this!

98PaceCar · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 464

its here! I've only tried one multiload so far but it worked great! I'll post more info later but it looks great so far!

Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

I'm sure I'll find out when mine arrives, but I'm curious as to how quickly it can dump a real 1541 diskette to D64?

The 1541-III was a neat idea, but without the ability to dump games to D64 or load multifile games, it quickly fell from "useful" to "gimmick" in my eyes.
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