Megacart is back

[folkoh]

Hi,

I just received an email from Brain.

He‘s planning a new production run for the Megacart. He‘s checking his old lists on who had interest. No def date, price (albeit prob similar to the old run) yet. ROM will be 2.1c for now and no changes to the hardware announced yet.

Although I have the fantastic Behr-Bonz and the Penultimate has some of the newer titles, I still want one, it’s just nice.

Thought I share the news here.

Cheers,

Folko

[orion70]

I have been a proud owner of one of the earliest copies, and must say it's still the one I use most. As once nbla000 had in his signature, it's "the cartridge you plug in once and for all"

[Mike]

I second this.

Hopefully Brian finds a more comfortable way of production this time, rather than manual assembly.

Cheers,

Michael

[English Invader]

I brought this up earlier in the Mega Cart Easter Egg thread (which was the most recent discussion of the MC here). Already have two; the first was bought in 2009, the second in 2011 and the third was ordered in 2013. The first one only took about 3 months, the second took the best part of a year and the third has been 7 years and, when the website went down, I stopped expecting it to be fulfilled.

I'm delighted for anyone who gets to experience the joy of this cartridge for the first time thanks to this new production run. There are other solutions available now but there is something special about this one.

[English Invader]

I second this.

Hopefully Brian finds a more comfortable way of production this time, rather than manual assembly.

Cheers,

Michael

I think SkyDivingGirl offered to pick up the slack for this a few years ago but she didn't get a response. Brian seems to be a guy who is very committed to doing things his own way (and I mean that as a compliment rather than a criticism).

[beamrider]

I have one of these and love it!

The fact is hasn't been bettered over all these years, speaks volumes.

Would love to see some kind of Megacart-2 though, to give me an excuse to buy another.

[groepaz]

Mmmh did i send over the PAL fixes i did? (bandits, capture the flag, spidercity, tooth invaders, final orbit). All i remember is that i pulled them from the Megacart ROM

palpatches.zip

(32.48 KiB) Downloaded 181 times

[folkoh]

Some more info arrived from Brian, he will likely start prodcution earliest this week after he has checked his lists.
Price will be $99.95 USD. He thinks it takes him approx 4hrs to make one with soldering, assembly, packaging, etc.

I think it is safe to say that there won't be any changes or new features compared to the original design.

For me that's fine: If I could recommend upgrades it would be adding a SD card slot or USB connection for the ability to add crt/dsk/tap/p00 images on your own. That would bring it ahead of all competition again.

But I will happliy take it as what it is: one of the finest carts out there. Very pleased about it being put back into production.

[Mike]

For me that's fine: If I could recommend upgrades it would be adding a SD card slot or USB connection for the ability to add crt/dsk/tap/p00 images on your own. That would bring it ahead of all competition again.

First, the design of Mega-Cart pre-dated the wide-spread availability of SD2IEC devices by one year or two. They were simply not on the radar, so to speak.

Second, custom *.crt support would require adding Flash-ROM - you could have that with FE3 already. "*.dsk" (really, *.d64) would already been take care of by any external SD2IEC. *.tap support requires a lot more extra hardware and external connections. Similar to what the C64SD Princess (or ITS) did. There's no protocol to use the cartridge port as if it were the cassette port. *.p00 files are mainly *.prg files in a container, and could be handled with a SD2IEC solution as well.

So, while your request seems somewhat reasonable, an external SD2IEC takes care of most of your requirements, and cartridge images can be soft-loaded into the expansion RAM supplied by Mega-Cart, write-protected and started with reset. The current Mega-Cart hardware already supports said steps.

[Supie]

Hi guys.
I’m new in this forum therefore please forgive me my silly questions.
I‘m still using my first VIC 20 which I got almost 40 years ago.
Unfortunately I was not lucky to get a megacart yet thus I‘d like to purchase one.
Now that Brian is building new ones, how is it possible to buy one?

[English Invader]

Hi guys.
I’m new in this forum therefore please forgive me my silly questions.
I‘m still using my first VIC 20 which I got almost 40 years ago.
Unfortunately I was not lucky to get a megacart yet thus I‘d like to purchase one.
Now that Brian is building new ones, how is it possible to buy one?

I don't think he is accepting new orders. He has quite a backlog as it is.

There used to be a website where you would place your order and Brian would confirm your order by e-mail and then e-mail you again when he was ready to do the assembly work (this is the point where he asks for payment and some people have been waiting many years for this stage). The website has been gone for a while now so I would assume that no more orders are being taken.

[Supie]

Oh, that‘s a pity.
Thank you für your quick response.

[prowlr]

I looked at getting one of these just before they stopped being sent out.

From the chatter I had seen around, I was wondering how many back orders there were and if it would impact my ability of putting in a request. Looks like there were a decent amount and it will. Oh well.

[CanadaPhil]

From the chatter I had seen around, I was wondering how many back orders there were and if it would impact my ability of putting in a request.

My order goes back to 2015 and the website for ordering has been offline for quite some time. So, to answer your question, I would say not a chance most likely.

You may have better luck in picking up a "Behr Bonz" board with 127 games on it. It used to be sold by a well known member on this very forum. Not sure is that is still being made? I got mine years ago.

PS: Yes, Brian did reach out to me and I reconfirmed my request for a MegaCart, so I am in the “new cue”.

Brian can take his time. I look forward to receiving my MegaCart at some point. But, I am sure all of the “self-entitleds” will begin attacking him online again just as they did years ago. I just hope it doesn't sour him on this.

[prowlr]

You may have better luck in picking up a "Behr Bonz" board with 127 games on it. It used to be sold by a well known member on this very forum. Not sure is that is still being made? I got mine years ago.

Thanks for the suggestion but I already got that covered a little while ago