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Commodore_Free_Issue_04_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64
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t.1541 ult
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The 1541 "Ultimate"
(On this moment on a Xilinx developing
board) The construction and future of the 1541 "Ultimate" At this time, some
hard work is performed to replace the
widespread 1541 disk drive.
Our club member Gideon Zweijtzer has
made an implementation of the 1541 disk
drive in an FPGA, and demonstrated one
of the first versions of this hardware
emulation on Saturday December 16,
2006 in Maarsen. This prototype used
a Xilinx development board. The
prototype shows that it is possible to
?download? an image of a floppy disk
from the PC to the 1541-emulator by
means of Ethernet. This image is
placed in a memory that the 1541-
emulator has access to. The rotation of
the disk and the stepper motor that
moves the read/write head is mimicked
accurately. The achieved compatibility
is very high, because this
implementation uses the original 1541
ROMs. At this moment the emulator is
perfection to the point that even
difficult speed-loaders such as the one
from the Final Cartridge III work well.
Parallel to the implementation of the
1541 itself, work is being done on an
interface to a SD-card, such that it
should be possible to load .D64-files
from there, rather than having to
download them through Ethernet.
These two functions together will
appear soon on just one printed
circuit-board; one that can be used as
cartridge for the C-64. This cartridge
will include the 1541-emulator, but
will also implement another cartridge,
such as the Final Cartridge III. With
this cartridge it will be possible to
select a floppy image and ?put it in
the drive?, by means of a menu on the
C-64 screen. For the purpose, the
cartridge has a ?third button?. This
button functions very similar to the
freeze-function of other cartridges,
but will be used to bring up a menu to
select an image from the SD-card. When
the user exists the menu, the Commodore
will continue operation. To serve other
Commodore users as well, other than
C-64 users, the plan exists to have
this cartridge operate as stand-alone
unit as well. Since the on-screen menu
will not be available in this case, the
user needs another method to select the
floppy image. There are several ideas
to do this, but these ideas are not yet
completely mature. The hardware is
being developed such that new
functionality can be added to the
emulator system by simply putting
some files on the SD-card. The first
release will ?only? implement the
cartridge and the 1541 in its purest
form.
Information used with permission and
taken from
http://commodore-
gg.hobby.nl/innovatie_1541kaart_eng.
htm