UltiMem

[brain]

Yep, I'll let him know.

Jim

[bhold]

Hi all. I downloaded the latest patch tools (June 5th) from jbrain's link and modified 'filelist.txt' to create my own flash file that just fits on an 800K floppy. I used a C1581 drive to flash this to my VIC-20. but also have the problem that none of the ROM cartridge images will launch. Selecting them from the menu simply resets the VIC back to the initial boot screen. Other programs that are not designed to run from cartridge launch just fine. Some other tidbits:

1. I am building both the .c and .s files, as well as the .img and .bin file, starting from source code, using the supplied Makefile, on Mac OS X. It appears to work just fine.
2. Once I transfer flash4file.prg and ultimem8m.bin (which just fits on my 800K floppy) to floppy, the flashing process on the VIC also *appears* to go just fine. It takes about 10 minutes to run.
3. Menu operates normally, including special keys to exit the menu with different memory configs (RUN/STOP, 3, or 8 ).
4. None of the game cartridges or tool cartridges will launch (stuff form the vic20/roms directory)
5. Every non-cartridge PRG I tried launches just fine.
6. I AM USING the latest source code from June 5th with the patch to fix that Atarisoft games that people had trouble with.

[majikeyric]

Hi!
Weird.

Cartridge PRGs are located at the end of the file to flash the Ultimem with. Maybe the file is incomplete ?

flash4file "compresses" the file to flash.

"flash.prg" runs on VIC and flashes the file "ultimem.bin" (not "ultimem8m.bin") you created with makecart then flash4file on your Mac.

[bhold]

Thanks for response.

The Makefile produces 'flash4file' program that runs on the Mac, and 'flash4file.prg' that runs on the VIC. I am copying the .prg file and the .bin to my floppy and I am renaming 'ultimem8m.bin' to 'ultimem.bin' so that I don't have to modify the filename in 'flash4file.prg' before running it on the VIC. It IS TRUE that the source for flash4file.prg is called 'flash.s', so that makes things a little confusing.

The Makefile also creates a 'flash8m.prg' by simply concatenating the .bin file onto the the .prg file. However, trying to run this on the VIC did not work at all.

I do notice during the flashing that there is a bunch of writing to low addresses, followed by a bunch of writing to higher addresses that start with 0x700000. I don't know if that is cartridge images being saved near the end of the flash space, but sounds reasonable.

[majikeyric]

Maybe you could use the "flash.prg" file in this archive : http://hugbox.org/pixel/software/vic-20 ... 160511.zip

[bhold]

It appears mathematically certain that the flash.prg from that ZIP file is identical to the one I have built myself:

[bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] 127 $ openssl sha1 flash4file.prg
SHA1(flash4file.prg)= 4f801aa4a8e8e71d8491e87bed4e20d8e079c75e
[bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] $ openssl sha1 ~/Downloads/ultitools/flash.prg
SHA1(/Users/bholdsworth/Downloads/ultitools/flash.prg)= 4f801aa4a8e8e71d8491e87bed4e20d8e079c75e
[bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] $

Any other clues? Any ways to verify the contents of the .bin file?

[bhold]

This might be suspicious... Different menu.img file produced by me compared to in your ZIP.

[bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] $ openssl sha1 ~/Downloads/ultitools/menu.img
SHA1(/Users/bholdsworth/Downloads/ultitools/menu.img)= 35f363a1e338c0e188124642539bf3d2068970f9
⌂65% [bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] $ openssl sha1 menu.
menu.img menu.s
⌂65% [bholdsworth:/Volumes/ … /Commodore 8-bit/VIC-20/ultimem] $ openssl sha1 menu.img
SHA1(menu.img)= 4b9a6c5fb4f5203574f171e65e03b0d0da9a123e

Then again, it may be just that I am using a patched/more correct/later version of menu.s from jbrain's archive. Wasn't this where the fix went in for loading ROMs before?

[majikeyric]

Yes that ZIP has an outdated menu.img.

I guess your ultimem.bin is not well formatted but I don't see why... someone else maybe ?

[bhold]

Success!

Apparently, the way I was creating the floppy was unreliable and resulted in a corrupted .bin file on the VIC side. I simply change my method, made the disk again, and it flashed and works flawlessly.

Best.

[majikeyric]

Congrats!

[majikeyric]

I have noticed a bug in the VICE emulation of the UltiMem:
With IO2/IO3 set as RAM :
Writes to IO2 ($9800) are mirrored to IO3 ($9c00) and vice versa.

*EDIT*: Oups, there is no more bug in the latest VICE version on vice.pokefinder.org it seems

[telengard]

Please excuse the non-technical post.

Finally had some time to attempt to program the flash on my Ultimem. I placed the flash prg and the images (.bin) on my sd2iec device. I figured out that holding down all 3 buttons would bypass loading what is on the cart. From there as shown in the instructions, I loaded the .prg, did a list, changed the 2015 line accordingly to the 8m image file, but each time I run it, my screen changes color (black/red) and I see "file not found" and my sd2iec starts blinking.

I've tried this a bunch of times including rewriting the files to be sure and the same behavior. What is the significance of the multiple colon characters on the program listing? They seem to pad out to a specific offset.

thanks for any ideas/help!

[brain]

You have to keep the size of the line the same. It's one area where Marko and I probably are not aligned.

TO save some frustration, I would rename the file you want to be "ultimem.bin" or whatever the default line is, and then run. That's what I do.

Jim

[telengard]

You have to keep the size of the line the same. It's one area where Marko and I probably are not aligned.

TO save some frustration, I would rename the file you want to be "ultimem.bin" or whatever the default line is, and then run. That's what I do.

Jim

Thanks for the info. That gets me further. I'm now getting an error message:

09 unknown op

[brain]

What file are you using (link?) I will try it here.

Jim