Thanks for the update Geideon Really appreciate it. Can't wait to get rid of all these 5.25" disks from my desktop.

Nice to see i can save my music.I'm not a pro but still like to make it

I don't really see any use for this device?

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Commodore 128 Programmer
City of Kouvola, Finland

http://mydarkgothvampiricplace.endofthe ... Commodore/

true. beeing able to run just about every d64 unmodified from a sd card totally doesnt make sense at all o_O

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http://hitmen.eu

Hehe... agree. Totally useless

Yeah, you can use this bulky toaster and real floppies instead! It doesnt make any sense because x1541 cable is so handy!!

*sigh*

I'm very happy to see that the interest for the 1541 Ultimate has plummeted! So this whole thing is back to just a hobby for me. No pressure, no delivery times, no expectations.. hee!! heaven!

yeah just send me one no pressure.

Tomorrow would be nice

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Commodore 8bit Web Services http://cbm8bit.com
Try our new browser driven disk image editor.

Where to order ??

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..force be with you

Contact Gideon.

No no no no Yesterday
Take your time Gideon

Two months have now passed since the last Maarsen-meeting, where I first had the chance to encounter the 1541 Ultimate. Much have happened ever since, and during this time about 150 people have signed up with Gideon. As I went there today, and once again had the chance to see the device behave hands on, I believe an update might be in place. To sum up the changes reported here and on other places.

A little update, 2 months later...

Once again I had the chance to look at the device, and one of the first things I noted was that the cart looked different. Gideon soon told me that he had made a complete redesign of the board to make it work with the C-128's out there, and to solve some other minor issues. Save for the fact that the hardware have been redesigned with a bigger FPGA to ensure that it'll work with the 128, some minor issues which I reported two months ago have dissapeared.

First of all, copying now works two ways. You can set up the 1541U as any device, connect a real drive as any device and copying between them works as between two real drives. No hassle. Nibbling a disk from a 1541 to a D64 will give the same result a normal nibbler would produce. Shutting out external devices are done from the interface, setting device is done in the same fashion. Secondly, it now has 40 (or even 41) track support. Crestology reportedly works like a dream. As most of you might know, an additional illegal opcode was added so that Krills loader will work. There is also support of saving and loading .prg's and other files directly to and from the MMC's directory.

The support for Action Replay and TFC III images can now be switched on the fly in the interface and will swap cartimages with a powercycling. Both carts seem to work very well in cooperation with the drive. For you who wished for better support for it as an external device, I can report that D64-images now are easily switchable from basic along with maneuvering the subdirectories. It felt a little like seeing someone toying around with a CMD harddrive. Maneuvering the D64's using the buttons isn't supported yet, but i'm assured it'll get there too.

Ofcourse all things aren't implemented yet - the REU didn't work as it should do yet. From what I understood, that is one of the things currently adressed. Another thing to be looked at is the support for Secure Digital HC cards, making it possible to use 8 GB cards on this little thingy. Gideon told me this was easily implemented, and that this feature would be present in the final version. The planned date for the release of the first batch is in the end of March/beginning of April.

Guys. We're getting closer to this wonder. Day by day.

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/Twoflower

Jens said the same thing about the MMC Replay. What exactly is the problem with C128s and new cartridges? All the old carts seemed to work just fine.

Glad to hear it's coming along nicely, and let me know if my Ultima IV IFFL scanner works.

I sent you a message about preordering some time ago, gideonz, but I have not yet recieved a reply. I know that you are busy, but I just want to make sure that I am not left out of this

[quote]What exactly is the problem with C128s and new cartridges? All the old carts seemed to work just fine.[/quote]

the signal quality on the c128 expansion port is terrible, even compared to the already awful c64 =). to be a little more precise, when certain signals go high, and thus draw current, glitches on other signals will occur. this is not so bad for the old carts, because the logic chips used on them are very slow, and they wont even notice such short glitches. but something like a modern fpga is infinitely fast compared to the old stuff, and _will_ notice all that crap - so you must somehow take care of it.

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http://hitmen.eu