What is this for my Commodore?

[eebuckeye]

Any idea?? I can not find any markings..

 

 

[IainGrimm]

I think that may be a Quick Disk Plus with a custom cable, you can see it is an IDE cable, possibly didn't come with it

 

Looking at it you could remove the cable and plug it in directly to the C64, you not got a machine to plug it into for a test?

 

Looking through Zzap there is an advert for Quickdisc from Eversham Micros

 

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/displaypage.pl?issue=008&page=049&thumbstart=49&magazine=zzap

[eightbit]

That is exactly what it is. It is like the other Fast Load carts. The red button resets to standard C64 basic (basically resets and turns "off" the cart). The cable was custom made for someone who probably did not have the space to reach behind the C64 to hit the reset button. My commodore is in tight quarters so that could be useful to me. If you are looking to sell it, PM me.

[eebuckeye]

Interesting... thanks!

 

I'll try to mess around with it a bit.. is there anywhere I could find a manual?

[hammerhead]

Is it really a Quickdisc+ ?

 

Guess there may be different versions but the only ones I remember had the button on the face of the cart, not the end.

 

Like this...

 

 

 

Might just be a simple reset switch.

[carlsson]

The extention cable probably origins from a three slot expansion device that I used to own a few years ago but can't remember what it was called. However according to original Commodore engineering expertise, the expansion port never was meant to be extended through a such extention cable, so YMMV a lot when it comes to how well it works and for how long. A bit of buffering of the signals would help improve the situation.

[eebuckeye]

Ok.. I hope this does not have a problem with my 128...

Edited April 3, 2014 by eebuckeye

[eebuckeye]

Ok.. I gave it a shot... not exactly sure what it is still..

 

when you turn on the 128 and go into 64 mode the screen is black and a program loads automatically which seems to then execute the Load "*",8,1 command.

 

I have attached a screen shot of the program that loads (with the disk drive off it gives an error. The red button is of course a reset...

 

Does this make sense to anyone? Is this just a 'custom' cart which loads the first program on a disk and has a reset button?

 

Thanks!

[IainGrimm]

It literally looks like a disk fast loader seeing as it automatically runs that command, there were a few of these carts around at the time, stuff like the Action Replay carts had fast loader option but there were also dedicated fast load only carts like the Epyx one for example.

 

Why not load a disk game and time it without the cartridge attached, then do the same with the cartridge attached and see if it loads up quicker.

 

When you press the button do you get a menu or anything or does it just reset the machine back to Commodore Basic screen

[carlsson]

It would be mildly interesting to see how the listing ends. The two PEEK addresses 915 & 916 should be in the middle of the tape buffer, which suggests that on power on, a machine code routine on the cartridge executes, reads some data from the drive and stores into those memory positions, then possibly puts the BASIC program into RAM and executes it. It looks like if you got more than 40 programs on the floppy disk, it would display some menu instead of just loading the first one?

 

Also interesting to select a random value and let it depend on whether the name of the programmer should be displayed or not. If I recall correctly, RND(0) will yield a deducable series of random numbers, while RND(1) is somewhat more random? RND(-X) would reset the seed for the random number generator. As this runs on power on and relatively automated, I'm not sure if the RND will yield different results, perhaps the more files on the disk, slightly more time passes to read the amount and it would make a difference. Anyway, it should not really be of any importance.

[R.Cade]

Hmm... MegaSoft Super Load?

 

Jim Drew might know something about this since he was involved with Megasoft back then and is around again.

[R.Cade]

Can you save the BASIC program and post it here?

 

[R.Cade]

Can you save the BASIC program and post it here?

 

[eebuckeye]

I would certainly like to save the basic program.. How should I do that? I assume a SD2IEC would work but I have not received it yet (hopefully soon!!).

 

I gladly will post it once I know how.

[eebuckeye]

Ok.. I could not find a good way to save the program so I have multiple screenshots which show the entire listing..

 

Anything helpful??

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[carlsson]

Not sure, I didn't study it in total detail but the program looks like it has special cases for loading ROM images (cartridge dumps) and programs that start below BASIC, usually autostarting ones.

[JimDrew]

Hi... that was done by Bob Scheffler. That might actually be a prototype setup. It was not uncommon for us to use an extension cable like that when working on prototypes because we worn out cartridge ports quite often before we went this route. I don't know how many insertions the C64 cartridge port was good for, but I can tell you after a few hundred times they didn't work reliably and then we were chasing our tails trying to figure out what 'coding' issue existed when one of the address or data lines was not making good contact.

 

Post a picture of the insides to that cart. Maybe I can tell you something about the hardware.

[eebuckeye]

Interesting.. does not look like much is in the cartridge...

 

Any new thoughts?

[JimDrew]

That is definitely a prototype. No commercial product is hacked together like that!

[eebuckeye]

So this would be a Megasoft Super Load proto?

[carlsson]

Does the small 74 series chip lie loose on the circuit board, pins bent upwards? I suppose when assembled, it would then rattle a little if you shake it carefully... doesn't seem like production grade.

[eebuckeye]

Definitely not production grade.. just wondering if it is definitely a Megasoft Super Load. I can not find any documentation online either.

[JimDrew]

This is something that Bob did apparently. He worked on a few Megasoft things. This was never sold as far as I know.

 

Typically, we glued the 74xx chip upside-down with CA (super-glue) and soldered wires. There should be no rattling of the chip because it should be attached permanently to the board. I have several carts made up like this for changing the address scheme easily during prototyping.

Edited April 10, 2014 by JimDrew