Ultra Vic-20 Cart Release 2011

[eslapion]

There is only one sentence that comes to my mind... "Going too far".

What next now? When will we be connecting a 2TB hard drive and 4GB or more of flash memory or DDR3-SDRAM to a computer that was originally supposed to use 160kbytes floppy disks (at most) and 32k+3k of extra RAM ? And, most importantly, for what purpose?

I guess we could even make a SuperCPU for the VIC that uses a 3GHz Core i7 with 8 cores and 12MBytes of cache...

No thanks for me... this is not a VIC-20 anymore.

[e5frog]

Well... having a cartridge with a ROM that holds all software is quite impossible unless a lot of patching is done. Loading single file programs from cart directly into memory however would be the easy part.
Consider all the programs that loads from tape in several parts - how would those be handled?

It would have to work like the 1541U-II then with a tape-interface so that it could run a .tap-file via a connector to the tape port. And I don't know about floppy disks, where there much games released on floppy for the VIC? But if you're supposed to use a multi-part floppy disk program you would probably also need 1541 emulation and a connector to the IEC interface - like the 1541U-II...

... and it will be ready already next year.

And what about software checks, how will the games be checked that they are an accurate working version? What about PAL/NTSC versions, will that be patched or will both version (if any) be added to the ROM or will it be an NTSC only cartridge?

[Corsair24x2]

Looks like my poor old 2-prong VIC is dead. Bought a newer one on ebay - I'm going to need one of these carts once you make them, you can pm me with info.

[allst-half]

Hello fsporsche,

did you get my pm notice for the order of 2 carts?

[vk4akp]

For me I would love to see someone make a Vic-20 cartridge that has the following.

- Max RAM possible with bank switching. (Like FE3)
- Big Flashable ROM section. (Like FE3)
- RJ45 Ethernet port. (Like RR-Net / c64Nic+)
- Super CPU. (Something no one seems to have thought of yet for the Vic!)
- 40/80 column & expanded graphics.

To me the SD card storage is already addressed in the uIEC project and since it plugs into the IEC port regardless it seems tacky to have a cartridge with a lead and din connector to loop back elsewhere anyhow.

Non flashable ROM is a dead end as newer software is released or more old historical software is uncovered and brought back to the masses.

All these things exist now and only need a PCB design really.
Except for the Super CPU for the Vic.
For this surely there is a modern day Atmel or Pic Micro IC that could be used to emulate a 6502 in code and provide acceleration.

Perhaps this could be the new proposed design for the FE4 ¿?

.-.-.

[Mike]

- Max RAM possible with bank switching. (Like FE3)
- Big Flashable ROM section. (Like FE3)

Not a big attraction to those who already have a FE3, though. These features would rather be considered a strict requirement, IMO.

- RJ45 Ethernet port. (Like RR-Net / c64Nic+)

From what I knew, the FE3 team once considered including a network interface. They decided against it, as the design already had become quite complex, and they wanted to have a working cartridge - and not tinkering around with it for another some months ...

- Super CPU. (Something no one seems to have thought of yet for the Vic!)

You might take a look at the thread 'The VIC-20 at 10 Mhz'. If it were implemented for the VIC-20, it would be an internal mod, for a good reason: an external cartridge cannot access the built-in RAM - for the same reason the VIC chip cannot access external memory: there are three 74LS245 buffers acting as timing barrier in-between. And you'd surely want the 'Super CPU' to access the video memory, right?

- 40/80 column & expanded graphics.

Here's my opinion about 40/80-column display adapters. Regards expanded graphics:

MINIGRAFIK with its 160x192 pixel graphics mode works fine with just an external 8K RAM expansion. MINIPAINT as editor for this graphics mode runs with 16K extra. Programs using this graphics mode are compatible to both PAL and NTSC. And there are not just some trivial demo programs around, several games and utilities already have been written with MG.

There's MAXIGRAFIK with a true 208x256 pixel resolution (PAL only), which requires at least a 24K RAM expansion.

The above examples show what is possible to do with a VIC-20 in hi-res graphics without resorting to non-standard display hardware.

Finally, there's my VFLI mod, which allows to display 208x256 pixels with much improved colour resolution - and this one still uses the VIC-I chip!