Add a RTC to SDX in an Atarimax or other flash cart?

[+Larry]

I'm curious about this, because there is a lot of room inside those Atarimax carts. Has anyone looked at this? Of course, it still would not have a pass-thru, but I never, ever liked to stack up the carts anyway. The Atarimax carts all have gold contacts and are ubiquitous to say the least. I have probably 20 or so, mostly unused, so seems like a useful venture.

 

Any thoughts from our hardware techies?

 

-Larry

[Marius]

I have successfully added RTC DS1307 to the PIA. There do not exist real-time drivers, but I wrote an APETIME look-a-like tool to download the time from that DS1307 inside my a8. It's good enough for me.

 

Now back to your question: I wished I knew how to make hardware for the cart port. I guess it can't be so hard to convert my program to be controlled over lines on the cart port.

 

So I guess it is possible yes.

[+Larry]

Cool idea! Sometime, could you post a picture or two? It's certainly a step in the right direction!

 

BTW, I was looking at all the RTC modules available, and the DS1307 caught my eye -- it is very petite!

 

-Larry

[drac030]

From what I remember, there can be a problem with mapping a RTC on the page $d5 together with the AtariMax 8Mbit cartridge, because the cartridge itself occupies most of the addresses there. The AtariMax 8Mb builds should really be regarded as offering limited functionality (I am trying to avoid the term "demo version"), since there is no pass-through and no RTC.