Hello, I am an MMC Retro Replay user. I signed up with this forum today after reading that the developers of the MMC-R hang out here. I bought the unit last year and I have Bios 0.54 .

I have a few questions that I am hoping some of any of you can help me find answers to.

1. Where is the new 0.55 bios and is it an official bios or created by a 3rd party? and, has anyone here used it and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

2. Have there been any plug-ins developed specifically for the MMC-R or upgraded from the MMC or RR days and if so, where are they?

3. I had an idea for a project: Would it be possible to hack the JiffyDOS kernal to be flash-able to the MMC-R alternate flash kernal memory? It seems to me this would be quite useful to JD users who only have one floppy drive with JiffyDOS installed to use with multiple C64. Or in my case where the C64 JD kernal chip burned out somehow and I had to revert back to the original kernal chip making JD useless for me now. I tried just flashing the JD.bin to one of the 6 spare MMC-R flash banks and of course it did not work and no surprise there because I am no programmer nor do I understand if this would be possible. I "think" it might be possible based on some of the other alternate kernals that are available which leads me to my next question:

4. have there been any flash kernals for the MMC-R and if so, where are they?

5. The TNT / MMC Browser works on one type of memory card for the MMC-R. has there been any work towards making the very cool TNT browser updated to have more compatibility with other memory media on the MMC-R... if so where is it?

6. Why can't I find any indication that the MMC-R even exists when i go to the manufacturer's website? see here:
http://icomp.de/products/products_e.htm what gives?

I guess the last random questions are, why does it seem to me that virtually NOTHING has been done 3rd party-wise for the MMC-R or am I just not looking in the proper places? Did all the programmers shoot their wads with the MMC and just don't care anymore? Has some other device come alone to replace the usefulness of the MMC-R? If so, what is it?

I appreciate any help and/or guidance any of you can provide.

1. Jens's official site. It has mainly fixes and not really new functionality. Actual improvements should be coming later this year.

2. I am not aware of any.

3. I have no knowledge of "alternate flash kernal memory". MMC Replay implements a set of external ROMs, which appear at $8000 or $A000 - only in Ultimax mode can one appear at $E000, but this is not useful for normal operation, because most of the system RAM of the computer is inaccessible.

4. Can you explain more what you mean by Flash KERNALs? This device does not have the functionality to replace the internal KERNAL of C64.

5. No. TNT has abandoned this project two years ago. It's a real shame!

6. When I made a note of the exact same thing to Jens a while ago, he merely confirmed the website isn't up to date...

I don't know why nobody took the interest to develop for MMC Replay. I was expecting everyone to update their MMC64 plugins and make new ones, but nothing came out. It surely has to do with the continued limited support from the manufacturer and the loss of interest by developers.

I hear 1541 Ultimate is popular now and it sure has its benefits compared to MMC Replay. I am hoping Jens will deliver on his plans to improve the BIOS and that it won't be too late to provide what should have been there at product launch...

_________________
Commodore 128 Programmer
City of Kouvola, Finland

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

thank you for your replies

I agree the 1541 Ultimate is the "ultimate"... it is however also the ultimate wallet drainer ... whew, and given the weak us dollar, that makes it even more painfully expensive

ahh well, I think I am going to try this new gadget that not too many people are discussing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0329167694

the C64TCP... that combined with my cheapo thinkpad laptop should suffice for serving up disk images nicely, although a tad clunkier than the MMCR

Yes. 1541 Ultimate is expensive as hell, but there is a Polish clone coming. I've never heard of the C64TCP, but it seems nice and due to the serial connection is more compatible than MMC Replay.

Though I'm not sure how it can be 37% faster than a real 1541 since it makes use of normal KERNAL routines. BTW, despite having an array of this new generation C64 'periphery', I more often actually use no carts.

_________________
Commodore 128 Programmer
City of Kouvola, Finland

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

hehe, yeah, I am partial to just using the floppy drive from floppies I made with the MMCR. I recently got JIFFYDOS but the C64 side chip blew out on me not two hours after I had it running so now I'm back to slow loading. Frankly it isn't that big of a deal. Funnily enough it rivals the wait/load times on many modern 360/PS3 games.

Polish clone eh? there is a bad joke in there somewhere but I would sure love a cheaper alternative to the 1541 Ultimate.

Yeah, there is this universal balance... Drives get faster but the size of content gets larger in the same proportion. Best loading times were in the past when Amiga games could be installed onto HDD. Then on PC the whole thing was ruined mainly by the "put the CD in the drive" idiocy. Also, it is against the law to hack it!


Hehehe. I heard rumors that one is in the making, but the Right(tm) thing to do is to make payment the person who actually did the work. I was flaming Gideon for the incredibly annoying scroller, but reality is he has done awesome work and created a great device!

_________________
Commodore 128 Programmer
City of Kouvola, Finland

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

I agree. Lets not forget that without people like Gideon, investing litteraly thousands of hours into developing there wouldn't be any amazing new gadgets for or commies.

well, regardless of right or wrong, I don't have damn near $300 american weak-ass dollars to spend on the "ultimate" solution anyway so it is a moot point.

I did however just get my new catweasel mk4 plus in the mail today after months of waiting for it to be in stock so that should distract from one commodore to another for the time being

At today's exchange rates the price is closer to $150 without ethernet and $200 with. Not spare change but I think it represents incredible value.

_________________
Call me Golan; my parents did.

The C64TPC is no "1541 Ultimate" clone. It looks very similar to SD2IEC/µIEC/1541-III though. Probably it's yet another IEC protocol implementation in some microcontroller, this time not reading from an SD card but from the PC via serial cable, and providing mediocre compatibility with low costs (good compatibility, as the 1541U offers, needs full mechanics and floppy cpu emulation). Not so interesting in my opinion, especially since the other cheap solutions do not require a PC to be running, and can even be put into the C64 case.

From the C64TPC website:

At least SD2IEC and µIEC do support some fastloaders though, reaching speeds up to 25x normal C64/1541 speed, while the C64TPC probably is stuck at 1.37x speed.

Yes. I actually misremembered and it was indeed said to be a clone of 1541-III rather than 1541U. Sorry for my mix-up.

However, I'm not even sure if it was the C64TPC that I was thinking about. In any case 1541 Ultimate will be superior.

_________________
Commodore 128 Programmer
City of Kouvola, Finland

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

Just prioritizing my time and money.

TNT! Good to have you back!