MegaCart.. Getting the ball rolling.

[joshuadenmark]

no, not illegal

whats NOT illegal about all those pirated games?

Youre right

[mrr19121970]

I see the mega cart games change from time to time. I suspect it was licensed the same as the DTV, open letter to all copyright holders saying if you object then we will remove, else we will pay you 1$ct per unit as our license.

[groepaz]

yes, that would certainly make it totally legal then.

[tokra]

The reality is probably that most of the old companies are non-existant anymore and as such it is unknown if or whether copyright holders still exist. For the ones where copyright owners are still known to exist, it's better to use "don't ask, don't tell" - as the companies would be forced to act when they get to know about copyright infringements (if they would not act, other infringing parties could claim they don't pursue their copyright and it is as such void).

Example: even though Super Mario is over 30 years old, you can be sure you will be pursued if you sell it without license.
You will also be pursued if you create and sell a game with characters that are copyrighted. I remember there was a "Smurf"-game that got into legal trouble.

The reasons projects like ROM-databases or multi-carts are out there at all is just because copyright owners do not care or choose to look the other way, so they can pretend to not know about those. However they will protect their copyright if they think they are loosing money because of that.

I suppose if you actually *asked* the known copyright owners for a legal license, they would a) not know what you are talking about regarding VIC-20 and b) ask for such a high fee that it would kill the project at once. Understandably such licenses require legal work and need to be handled and paid for. Usually too much fuss for the companies if you only plan to sell 100-200 items.

[Mayhem]

The reality is probably that most of the old companies are non-existant anymore and as such it is unknown if or whether copyright holders still exist. For the ones where copyright owners are still known to exist, it's better to use "don't ask, don't tell" - as the companies would be forced to act when they get to know about copyright infringements (if they would not act, other infringing parties could claim they don't pursue their copyright and it is as such void).

SOMEONE will own the copyright to each game. The question is, it would be an utter fustercluck to discover who or what that is in many cases.

[eslapion]

I suppose if you actually *asked* the known copyright owners for a legal license, they would a) not know what you are talking about regarding VIC-20 and b) ask for such a high fee that it would kill the project at once. Understandably such licenses require legal work and need to be handled and paid for. Usually too much fuss for the companies if you only plan to sell 100-200 items.

You forgot option c which is what I was mostly confronted with...

"VIC-20 ??? You actually found people dumb enough to buy that? That was published 30 years ago... we couldn't possibly care less what you do with those and please don't bother us again with something like that."

[mrr19121970]

There is also this 'work of art' copyright law. Remember this case were the original designer of the Starwars helmet moulds started selling them on eBay? George Lucas wrapped the guy up in a legal battle to stop him selling the helmets. Lucas ended up loosing, as the judge decided that they were works of art and not just film props. Therefore the copyright lapsed after 30 years.

I am fairly sure that abandoned VIC20 games are now considered 'works of art' too

[Judge Drokk]

Where's ya backbone guys? Copyright?

Not worth the paper it's printed on.

I come from a background of cracking, mailtrading, Phreeking AT&T phone cards, original supplying, and in my Amiga group we wrote the 'famous' crack intro
for SKID ROW for their crack of Lemmings on the Amiga.

I have to admit tho' back then they couldn't even trace a "direct dialed' call in less than 20 minutes.

When you have got every other company (like Nintendo's Virtual Console on Wii) re-selling old classic from 30 years ago then copyright will always be "live" on the old stuff.

But hey..... it's just like crossing the road......... Beep beep!

[mrr19121970]

When we were kids, we used to call some airline (the name escapes me). But I still remember 0800 222222 as the freephone number. Call outside of office hours. After the recorded message dial and and get an outside time and the call our cracking buddies in Germany and the states.

Yesterday I caught my 11 year old trying to get round the parental protection on the router. He has a technology ban until the end of the month. I did much worse than him, just never got caught.

[groepaz]

I am fairly sure that abandoned VIC20 games are now considered 'works of art' too

most certainly not. perhaps some specific classic titles, but even that is doubtful. for the vast majority copyright applies, and it will stay that way for a while. "abandoned" or not is irrelevant.
(and just now i realized the funny things being said about DTVs supposed licensing. LOL. no)

[beamrider]

"Abandonware" is just a conscience-soothing term and has no legal recognition.

[RobertBe]

...it was licensed the same as the DTV, open letter to all copyright holders saying if you object then we will remove, else we will pay you 1$ct per unit as our license.

Epyx and Hewson were compensated for the use of their games in the DTV. However, I did not know the details of their business deal. From where did you get your information on their dealings with Tulip Computers, Ironstone Partners, Mammoth Toys, and DC Studios?

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

[brain]

Not to wade too far into this thread, but Ultimem has a China assembly run, and it's not a big deal, as a power noted.

It's late because I always seem to get the designs to the assembly house right about the time Chinese New Year starts, and CNY takes much longer than everyone else's New Year. It's almost two weeks in length, once you figure in the plant shutdown and ramp-up.

Ultimem is delayed a bit because of a PCB issue (soldermask over IC pads), but these things happen. It does not affect the desire to assemble in China. I use PCBA in China for all my designs. I shudder to think of MegaCart's being assembled by hand...

Jim

[fuzzybad]

You can run cart images on a SD2IEC..? I thought it was just D64 and PRG.? what file type? Is there an equivalent to to c64s .T64 file type?.

The SD2IEC is a mass storage device, it doesn't emulate cartridges or cassettes. One could load cartridge images from any Commodore drive, for example a 1541.

In this case, I have downloaded a bunch of binary files which are cartridge images (ROMs). These are Commodore PRG file type, and have the correct load address at the beginning of the file.

Therefore, the cartridge image can be loaded with the absolute load address option, then started using the SYS warm reset command.

For example:
LOAD"DONKEYKONG.CRT",8,1
SYS 64802

There are several caveats with this technique:

* You must have RAM expansion for the memory block(s) that the cartridge game uses
* Many cartridges used non-sequential memory blocks, which means there will be two files to load for these
* Some cartridge images contain a copy-protection method which attempts to overwrite its own memory location, to ensure the code is running from ROM. These cartridges will not work unless your memory expansion has a "read only" mode.

[mrr19121970]

https://fierman.org/c64/CHAM20/megacart.rom

So it's been about 3 years or more since my 'order', and I never heard back. What would be needed to be done to get this working on a physical VIC20 ? Will The Ultimem do this ?