scotty Posted April 16, 2017 Share Posted April 16, 2017 (edited) Thinking Ultimate, but price is a little high. From what I understand, Uno Cart is a stripped down version that will just not run the larger AtariMax images, but ads a search function, not found on Ultimate? Atarimax is also an option. He is not that far from me (few miles). Basically, what I want to do this.... I already have SIO2PC and it works great, so I have no need for loading XEX or ATR files. I want to be able to load CART images into ROM, not RAM of OSS, Bounty Bob, XEGS games, Basic, 8 and 16K game carts, BASIC etc, etc, etc.... I assume when using stuff like OSS products, and Atari Basic that you can also Boot a Dos image from the SIO2PC along with the cart, so you can load and save your work? Edited April 16, 2017 by scotty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 16, 2017 Share Posted April 16, 2017 I think the best option is The CART!, though I don't own one yet, I'm on the waiting list for the next release. http://www.mega-hz.de/Angebote/THE!CART/THE!CART_EN.htm 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted April 16, 2017 Share Posted April 16, 2017 I assume when using stuff like OSS products, and Atari Basic that you can also Boot a Dos image from the SIO2PC along with the cart, so you can load and save your work? Yes. For all intents and purposes, the UNO looks just like the actual cartridge for the .car file it presents to the host Atari system. If the cartridge can boot DOS and use it, so can the UNO version of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 (edited) I love my Ultimate! Edit: Why? Because it is the most flexible, it truly is the ultimate (as of now). Edited April 17, 2017 by Kyle22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwilove Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 (edited) Has anyone listed the unique features of each cart system - and also the common features they have? And what machine they are most suitable for? With their prices. For many I guess - you're stuck with the cart system you opted for - and it's only 5 or 10 years later on - then you may decide to get the latest - which has the more convenient option(s) present - if only to store so many games onto the one (SD) card... but you end up with not hunting for the cart with the game on it, from many carts - to hunting for the game title from a big list? The later being the more convenient. Harvey Edited April 17, 2017 by kiwilove Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 18, 2017 Share Posted April 18, 2017 (edited) I really think the truly most versatile and compatible with Phi2 on-board for compatibility with all Atari's is THE CART! I linked above, it is compatible with just about every cartridge form there is or close to it, just check out the features in the link I posted above. And don't be confused by the pictures at the bottom stating only 32MB, etc., that is for the old version, the new version does have 128MB, 512K sram, etc. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you can fit every cartridge game made in 128MB. Since the vast majority are 8-64K, and only a handful with higher memory. Edited April 18, 2017 by Gunstar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gargoyle Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 (edited) I assume when using stuff like OSS products, and Atari Basic that you can also Boot a Dos image from the SIO2PC along with the cart, so you can load and save your work? I'd recommend Ultimate. I, like you, have an SIO2PC for things other than cartridge games. I also use OSS programming languages from the cart and the SIO2PC is there to save my work. Yes the price is on the high side but if you are handy (well quite a bit handy) with soldering you can assemble your own for about half the current going price. That's what i did. Edited April 20, 2017 by gargoyle 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 (edited) Thinking Ultimate, but price is a little high. From what I understand, Uno Cart is a stripped down version that will just not run the larger AtariMax images, but ads a search function, not found on Ultimate? Atarimax is also an option. He is not that far from me (few miles). Basically, what I want to do this.... I already have SIO2PC and it works great, so I have no need for loading XEX or ATR files. I want to be able to load CART images into ROM, not RAM of OSS, Bounty Bob, XEGS games, Basic, 8 and 16K game carts, BASIC etc, etc, etc.... I assume when using stuff like OSS products, and Atari Basic that you can also Boot a Dos image from the SIO2PC along with the cart, so you can load and save your work? The CART! is exactly what you are looking for. It handles 99-100% of cartridge rom images and doesn't bother trying to load XEX or ATR files. And all cartridge images should work as they are meant too, including OSS and using DOS and loading and saving work as if it was the real cartridge. The one caveat is that you can't get it right now, pre-orders are being taken via e-mail for an upcoming run. I'm on the list myself. - Following modes are possible: - 8K (left), 8K (right), 8K+RAM, 16K - MEGACART 16/32/64/128/256/512/1024/2048K - ATARIMAX 128/1024K (1MBit / 8MBit) - XEGS 32/64/128/256/512/1024K - SXEGS 32/64/128/256/512/1024K - OSS - SDX 64 - Diamond 64K - Express 64K - ATRAX 128K - Williams 64K - Blizzard 16K - SIC! 512K - MEGAMAX 8 / 16K Mode (1024 / 2048K) - flexi mode (separate 8k banks at $A000 and $8000 Edited April 21, 2017 by Gunstar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 I love my Ultimate! Edit: Why? Because it is the most flexible, it truly is the ultimate (as of now). It is a fabulous cart indeed. The only thing I love more in The!Cart is the very nice ATR support. I have some games (like Cropky) that do run from The!Cart, and this game is ATR only. This ATR does not run from Ultimate SD Card. What I like on Ultimate SD is the fact that you can store everything on SD. The!Cart is more static. The Search engine on The!Cart is very powerful though. The!Cart, Ultimate SD are equal awesome. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 Another cart I absolute adore is MyIDE 2. I admit: it is perhaps slightly more incompatible than The!Cart and The Ultimate SD cart, but almost any game can run from MyIDE 2. Even on a stock atari. It has 512KB Sram on board. It does do CF carts (in stead of SD cards). And it offers you a harddisk interface which let you run SpartaDOS X with read/write to apt partition. Or you can use the MyBIOS SOFT-OS which let you handle MyDOS partitions (read/write). Or you could update your Atari with a MyBIOS OS in rom, which gives a plethora of new features. MyIDE 2 is perhaps not as easy as The!Cart or the Ultimate SD cart, but it s definitely an amazing thing. Another cool solution is SIDE 2 in combination with Ultimate 1MB upgrade. With FJC's U1MB OS upgrade the SIDE 2 changes into a real PBI harddisk, which is awesome. (My favorite PBI harddisk is IDE+ btw., which is a great game storage thing too).... Anyway: CHOICES CHOICES CHOICES! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 It is a fabulous cart indeed. The only thing I love more in The!Cart is the very nice ATR support. I have some games (like Cropky) that do run from The!Cart, and this game is ATR only. This ATR does not run from Ultimate SD Card. What I like on Ultimate SD is the fact that you can store everything on SD. The!Cart is more static. The Search engine on The!Cart is very powerful though. The!Cart, Ultimate SD are equal awesome. Hmm...I didn't notice ATR support in the info for The CART!, but that's cool. Bonus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 (edited) Another cart I absolute adore is MyIDE 2. I admit: it is perhaps slightly more incompatible than The!Cart and The Ultimate SD cart, but almost any game can run from MyIDE 2. Even on a stock atari. It has 512KB Sram on board. It does do CF carts (in stead of SD cards). And it offers you a harddisk interface which let you run SpartaDOS X with read/write to apt partition. Or you can use the MyBIOS SOFT-OS which let you handle MyDOS partitions (read/write). Or you could update your Atari with a MyBIOS OS in rom, which gives a plethora of new features. MyIDE 2 is perhaps not as easy as The!Cart or the Ultimate SD cart, but it s definitely an amazing thing. Another cool solution is SIDE 2 in combination with Ultimate 1MB upgrade. With FJC's U1MB OS upgrade the SIDE 2 changes into a real PBI harddisk, which is awesome. (My favorite PBI harddisk is IDE+ btw., which is a great game storage thing too).... Anyway: CHOICES CHOICES CHOICES! As far as cartridge rom support, I do like my MyIDE 2 as well, even if there had to be .R16 patches for the XEGS stuff. It runs every cartridge rom including XEGS that I've tried, even through my SpartaDOS cartridge. But .XEX support has a lot of holes and needs tons of patches still done for tons of software. I haven't tried ATR support on it, I think that is only through MyBIOS and MyDOS partitions though, I have mine setup for both that and SDX, and only use SDX. I use the FAT loader only for rom images for two reasons; one, that's all that will run from the FATloader through the SDX cartridge, and two, I can run .XEX's easy enough through SDX. If something is an ATR, I still just write those to real floppies and use my ultra-speed Happy 1050. But I still want the Cart! for all it's compatibilities, and because it has 512K sram on board that you can use ALL of, unlike the MyIDE 2 where 256K is taken for MyBIOS and you are left with only 256K usable sram. Edited April 21, 2017 by Gunstar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan Both Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 I do like my MyIDE 2 as well, ... I haven't tried ATR support on ..... If something is an ATR, I still just write those to real floppies and use my ultra-speed Happy 1050. May I suggest you really should try the atr slots of the MyIde2... Stefan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 It is a fabulous cart indeed. The only thing I love more in The!Cart is the very nice ATR support. I have some games (like Cropky) that do run from The!Cart, and this game is ATR only. This ATR does not run from Ultimate SD Card. What I like on Ultimate SD is the fact that you can store everything on SD. The!Cart is more static. The Search engine on The!Cart is very powerful though. The!Cart, Ultimate SD are equal awesome. I don't even notice the lack of .ATR support in the cart because I use the Incognito Loader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted May 23, 2017 Share Posted May 23, 2017 I am having trouble locating an Express! cart image. Is there a bug fixed one around? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted May 23, 2017 Share Posted May 23, 2017 I am having trouble locating an Express! cart image. Is there a bug fixed one around? You may find one though this page: http://www.realdos.net/Express%20Cart.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted May 23, 2017 Share Posted May 23, 2017 As far as cartridge rom support, I do like my MyIDE 2 as well, even if there had to be .R16 patches for the XEGS stuff. It runs every cartridge rom including XEGS that I've tried, even through my SpartaDOS cartridge. But .XEX support has a lot of holes and needs tons of patches still done for tons of software. I haven't tried ATR support on it, I think that is only through MyBIOS and MyDOS partitions though, I have mine setup for both that and SDX, and only use SDX. I use the FAT loader only for rom images for two reasons; one, that's all that will run from the FATloader through the SDX cartridge, and two, I can run .XEX's easy enough through SDX. If something is an ATR, I still just write those to real floppies and use my ultra-speed Happy 1050. But I still want the Cart! for all it's compatibilities, and because it has 512K sram on board that you can use ALL of, unlike the MyIDE 2 where 256K is taken for MyBIOS and you are left with only 256K usable sram. You used my patcher in the past for XEX files, didn't you? It has been a while since I wrote that patch routine. It was written in Synassembler, and I have LOST the source. It is not rocket science, but it would be handy if I had the source code of my patch routine. I have contacted Steven Tucker about this, and I think he would be pleased if I could tell him why my patcher works. I guess when he knows what my patcher does, it is easier for him to built it in his FAT32 loader. I was on a short vacation and the only thing I brought with me was an Atari 800XE with a MyIDE 2 cart. Have had lots of fun. I was able to do some nice coding and saving, I was able to play games, I did write and save some TXT's. It is very awesome. Only downsides of MyIDE 2 so far are: no RTC (IDE+ has it), no RESET button and the lack of APT partition table in MyBIOS. If people are ok with using third party OS's, then I would recommend MyBIOS in ROM and you will have a very nice harddisk interface. My number #1 choice is still IDE+ ... especially the Real Time Clock and the fact that it is a real PBI device. It runs awesome on a stock atari. SIDE2 + U1MB is awesome too. It is a very nice combination, with an amazing replacement BIOS written by FlashJazzCat. It is simply amazing. Downside for me is that it needs an updated atari and that I have to give up my cart port. But besides that, it is fabulous too. So... choices choices choices.... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+xucaen Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I thought it better to comment on this than to start a "yet another 'which cart'" thread. I've just spent the last 2 hours comparing carts for the Atari 8-bit. my brain hurts... I would want something that can load up all cartridge based games. So, which is easier to use and is most compatible with cartridge games? I'm thinking, based on what I've read: Ultimate cart > The!Cart > Uno Cart... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I thought it better to comment on this than to start a "yet another 'which cart'" thread. I've just spent the last 2 hours comparing carts for the Atari 8-bit. my brain hurts... I would want something that can load up all cartridge based games. So, which is easier to use and is most compatible with cartridge games? I'm thinking, based on what I've read: Ultimate cart > The!Cart > Uno Cart... Well, the UNO Cart is inexpensive and will handle .CAR files made from any commercially-published cart from BITD. All the bankswitching schemes are fully supported. A few modern titles won't though, as they are too big. But it's cheap and works great. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+xucaen Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 I guess I'm looking for a more detailed comparison. Something like this. Are there any other features to compare? I'm not sure if I have everything covered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrbrevin Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 Depends on what you want The!Cart emulates the various banking systems of cartridges but via a workaround you can use other file types. Adding these files to the internal storage takes some time and effort. The SDCard / CF card multicarts can run ATRs and XEXs and only require files to be added using your modern computer and a card reader - a quicker process. The SIDE2 cart has more features, i think it can connect a HDD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty Posted July 7, 2018 Author Share Posted July 7, 2018 WOW!! I remember this thread!! I ended up with the Ultimate and was glad I did. Have tried all kinds of images with it and everything worked. Even created some of my own multi game carts using AtariMax's Maxflash Studio Software. Nice being able to put all the arcade game conversions on a single cart, and having some fun on a Friday or Saturday night. Just like the old days. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 See my comparison chart in pinned Topic for newbies. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+xucaen Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 See my comparison chart in pinned Topic for newbies. Awesome! Thank. It looks like the AVGCart it's identical to the Ultimate but for half the cost. B-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted July 7, 2018 Share Posted July 7, 2018 Awesome! Thank. It looks like the AVGCart it's identical to the Ultimate but for half the cost. B-) It looks like the AVG can already do a bit more than the Ultimate Cart (like Side2 emulation and limited ATR support) and the firmware is continuing to be developed. It is an extremely interesting project. However, the waiting list for the next production run is already quite long so it might be a while until you're actually able to get one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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