VIC20 Diagnosis cart and 'octopus cable'

[mrr19121970]

@Elaspion @k3ys and all.

Does anyone have a PAL 'VC20 Diagnosis cart' diagnosis cart on offer (either original or newly created). I saw this but I can't tell if it is a 'proof of concept' or a fully working device. The blog entries appear to be a development commentary rather than hard facts.

Update, it's a fully working device and costs 37/45gbp posted within/outside of the UK

Making the 'octopus cable' seems to be very straightforward. 2 resistors are needed and then just hard wiring.

In Ray's sketch it says 27 ohm resistors, however in the pic I see red/violet/orange/black/brown = 273 Ohms 1%

and on Zimmers they say 1k okm & 2.2k ohm. Which is correct? Does it really matter? I have 75, 200, 300, 330, 360, 1k at home.

I have contacted @Ken, as he already has all the parts - perhaps I can source them as kit or assembled from him.

[mrr19121970]

Seems @Ken has got this covered:



In action:


I will take one.

[ken]

I hope you are happy with the harness
due to the total lack of interst in my projects I will some day complete the vic20 cartridge board to go along with the harness
but I am in no rush
ken.

[mrr19121970]

Yes. I am very happy with the harness. Here is a youtube video of it in action.

I see only 1 way to improve it, but this is only a cosmetic thing. The joystick and datasette connectors could be on a wire, so that they don't get lost. This also is true to the original then too.

[mrr19121970]

I saw that Dave @ Tynemouth has made the cartridge and octopus cable:

http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/201 ... -kits.html

[mrr19121970]

...and he's charging 50gbp EU shipping for the PAL module (double if you want the NTSC module too). Yikes.