VIC20 Cart Image for VICE?

[Disc Master I]

Hi everyone.

I just started getting back to using the VIC-20 after being away from it for many years. I recently got one of those "TheC64" systems and enjoyed the C64 games that I was trying out again. Then I thought about the good ol' VIC-20 and wanted to get back to using that system as it has some great games and sadly was a system I never actually owned back in the 80s.

Anyhow, I have my collection of cart images and as most of you probably know, many of these cart images come in multiple files. What I wanted to know is if there is a way to create a single cartridge file that includes the multiple files for an individual game cart such as "dkong.20" & "dkong.a0" and perhaps a cfg file that tells VICE what RAM expansion settings to use (if any). This way it would require the loading/mounting of a single file instead of mounting/loading the 1st file, then again for the second file,etc.

I did some research tonight, but there wasn't any information that specifically seemed to answer my question. I found an old Lemon64 post that I made many many years ago (2004 maybe) but that was about launching multi file carts from disk which required a small start.prg file that acted as sort of a config file to load the first dkong.a0 file, then the dkong.20 file and finally a sys64802 to reboot the system and launch the game.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if after all these years someone may have designed a method for zipping or merging a cart's multiple files into a single file. Perhaps even something like a singe game flashcart image that lets you copy the dkong files to it and then mount it in VICE as a cart and launch the system. If anyone has any info please let me know. For now, I can continue to make filename.d64 images with the cart files and the start.prg file to run them, but disk loading is much slower than an instant cart launch.

Thanks
John

[Boray]

Not exactly answering your question, but with PRG Starter you can do this:
"Double click the non-A000 part. Then drag and drop the A000 part into the VICE window. Press Alt-R to start."
http://www.boray.se/software/prgstarter/index.html

On a real Vic-20 with DIRPLUS, you can do this:
"You can now easily autostart two-part cartridge images. Mark both files and then press Shift-M (for multiload)"
http://www.boray.se/commodore/dirplus/

[Mike]

Hi, John,

What I wanted to know is if there is a way to create a single cartridge file that includes the multiple files for an individual game cart [...]

This is a recurring question here on Denial. VICE offers support to attach multi-part cartridges via its command line, i.e. you'd have a batch file as an equivalent to your *.cfg file.

Other than that, there's no general *.crt (or *.vrt) format implemented - there had been a discussion about a rather simple method which however got dismissed as not being flexible enough (see here). Besides, even with such a format available someone would need to take the time to convert all known cartridge dumps into this format so it gets widespread use.

For myself, I mostly settled on your method: putting a boot loader and the cartridge dump(s) into a *.d64 (example here), to use with full RAM expansion. That gives you the desired single file for each cartridge, starting it is as simple as dragging the *.d64 onto the VICE main window, and if you switch off "True Drive Emulation" in VICE (resp., set autostart to VDrive), that should be fast enough.

Greetings,

Michael

[Disc Master I]

Thanks for the info. I've decided to continue making my d64 images with the start file that loads the various cart images then restarts the VIC-20 to launch the game. So far everything is going well. I'm up to 'C' in my collection of VIC-20 rom carts that I'm converting, so there is certainly a bit of a ways to go.

Can't wait to get these installed on my "TheC64" maxi or the soon to be released "TheVIC20" retro system.