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The!Cart or the Ultimate Cart?


bfollowell

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I think I'd like to purchase a cartridge-based product that I could use to emulate the various ROM/cartridge images I have. The two that I've narrowed down to are The!Cart and the Ultimate Cart. They both seem to do a lot of the same things, but I'm having trouble determining which would be best for my needs. They both seem great and are about the same price, but I'm only going to purchase one, and I want to make the best decision I can. I've looked into the AtariMax cartridge-based products but, as near as I can tell, while they give you access to lots and lots of files through the cartridge port, they don't necessarily emulate the various cartridge types. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point.

 

Let me be honest. This is for an Atari 800XL, so most of what I'd be using it for would be to play old Atari 8-bit game cartridges, all the way up through the 128KB bank switching cartridges. However, I'd also like to be able to use images the old Monkey Wrench/Monkey Wrench II cartridge and the various O.S.S. language cartridges like MAC/65, Basic XL/XE, and Action!

 

Would either of these work for what I want?

 

I guess I'd like to here from some owners of these two products. If you could only own one of these, which would it be and why?

 

Thanks.

 

 

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Thank you very much. Yes, for all the searching I've done, I hadn't stumbled across that side-by-side comparison yet. This is exactly what I needed.

 

It looks like the products are fairly closely match for what I plan to use them for. It looks like The!Cart allows access to ATRs and the Ultimate Cart doesn't but I have an SIO2PC-USB and plan to purchase an SIO2SD soon as well, so that doesn't interest me. The Ultimate Cart appears to barely edge out the The!Cart for my purposes, because it can emulate just a few more cartridge types, but just barely. For the money though, I believe I'll probably lean towards the Ultimate Cart, unless someone else posts some compelling evidence that causes The!Cart to edge itself ahead. Honestly, they look extremely close in capabilities and cartridge types emulated and they're almost identical in price, so it really is almost a toss-up.

 

I'll probably look a little closer and try to determine the actual 35 and 38 cartridge types that each emulates and compare them too, before I decide which to purchase.

 

Thanks again for that link!

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There are very few things that you will not be able to do with an Ultimate Cart / SIO2SD combo. Those things are basically limited to the RAM and television format limitations of your own 800XL.

 

OK, but I'm assuming I would've ran into those same limitations on The!Cart for the same reasons. Basically an 800XL is the same as a 65XE is the same as an XEGS, with very minor differences. Anyway, the limitations will be because of the machine I have, not the cartridge system I choose to buy, correct?

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For me the downside of The!Cart is the requirement of dedicated software and having to flash the data.

 

As an upside you get extremely fast access to a lot of data space which allows stuff like PDM audio , ultimate cart can do this but the lack of memory only allows ~15 seconds of audio.

 

Also, The!Cart can do this...

 

 

I got an Ultimate Cart, it meets my needs better, but The!Cart is a unique and excellent bit of hardware.

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There are only two things I don't like about my The!Cart, the long initial flashing time or if you need to reflash the whole thing. Mind you,it has incremental flashing which works well for adding stuff, BUT, if you change one little thing in what is already on The!Cart, like changing the genre category and it seems to do a complete reflash in my experience. But I actually do like the being able to flash it installed in the Atari with flashing software on the Atari. It's not completely independent though, you still have to use the workbook on a PC.

 

The other thing I don't like about it is some things, like PDM audio you can't add to The!Cart with other software, if you want to use PDM, you have to reflash the entire cartridge just for one song, and reflash a full-flash again when you are done which of course takes many, many hours to do. It's too expensive an item and not readily available to have dedicated The!Carts like you can with Atarimax 1 & 8Mb carts, buying in cheaper bundles.

 

Other than those two things, The!Cart is fantastic and the 128MB of storage is more than enough room for most people's needs from a cartridge.

 

Next time I buy a cartridge-based loader it will be the Ultimate Cart though, because I already have The!Cart and availability and wait time is always at question with The!Cart. I don't want to wait another two years from pre-order to device in-hands again.

 

You might also look into MyIDE 2, you can use it as a HDD with MyDOS or SpartaDOS or both, and also FAT32 with a choice of two loaders now, the original one from Atarimax, or Side 2's loader which is more compatible with .xex file software. I don't know about the Side loader and rom images, but the FAT32 loader of Atarimax's loads them too, up to 256K in size(some need patches but they all already have been patched and down loadable from Atarimax forum). It has flash and sram on board and it's own Ultraspeed OS MyBIOS too. It also can load ATR's on the HDD side.

 

But having the MyIDE II with all it's facilities and The!Cart with all of it's has been a fantastic combo too that you can't go wrong with, so lots of good choices.

Edited by Gunstar
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  • 2 years later...
28 minutes ago, jmprice_314159 said:

Thanks. Looked at the AVG cart and it states:

 

  • supports ATR files (read/write) – support is limited due to Atari cartridge port constraints

 

So, does that mean it will only load single ATR files? It is not clear what the limitations are?

 

Which would be better, the new Side3 cart or AVG cart?

 

Thanks.

 

AVG cart. works with up to 4 ATR slots that can be changed/exchanged with a button press, enough for most multi-ATR games. See here: https://atari8bit.net/tutorials/de-re-avgcart/#Loading_ATR/_ATX_Files

 

The limitation regarding ATR is that AVG is a cart. and ATRs/disks normally load via SIO, so in order to load ATR images you a) either require the OSXEX2 file (and this requires RAM under OS, so only ATR/disk programs that do not use that space will work) or b) require a separate/external AVG-SIO-cable (which makes it possible to boot any ATR via SIO off the AVG cart., so 99,9% of the A8 programs should work)...

 

I guess that SIDE-3 has a similar limitation, either a) only some ATR's will load from the SIDE-loader (those that do not require RAM under OS) or b) you require a U1MB in combination with SIDE-3 to load almost any ATR image you want (with the exception of a few ATRs/disks that use custom SIO loading and will therefore still not work).

 

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30 minutes ago, jmprice_314159 said:

Which would be better, the new Side3 cart or AVG cart?

Both have their strengths. If you want the highest compatibility with games and demos, the AVG-Cart+SIO cable is the way to go. Almost all .car, .xex and disk images work perfectly. The Side3 cart with its build-in SpartaDOS and realtime clock is more powerful and versatile, especially when you have an Ultimate 1MB with Flashjazzcats excellent firmware installed. I have both carts, which is best ?

Edited by Dinadan67
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With 

3 hours ago, Dinadan67 said:

Both have their strengths. If you want the highest compatibility with games and demos, the AVG-Cart+SIO cable is the way to go. Almost all .car, .xex and disk images work perfectly. The Side3 cart with its build-in SpartaDOS and realtime clock is more powerful and versatile, especially when you have an Ultimate 1MB with Flashjazzcats excellent firmware installed. I have both carts, which is best ?

Hello Dan, with the AVG cart and the SIO cable, how do you select multiple ATR files? Does it have some sort of user interface that boots when you plug the SIO cable into the port on the back of the Atari, and you can then select the various ATR files? Also, I have a stock Atari 800 XL with no memory expansion. Would AVG and SIO work for multiple ATR games? Thanks!

Edited by jmprice_314159
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4 minutes ago, jmprice_314159 said:

With 

Hello Dan, with the AVG cart and the SIO cable, how do you select multiple ATR files?

TAB or SHIFT-1 to 4

https://atari8bit.net/tutorials/de-re-avgcart/

4 minutes ago, jmprice_314159 said:

Does it have some sort of user interface that boots when you plug the SIO cable into the port on the back of the Atari, and you can then select the various ATR files?

you select ATR files in AVGCART's file browser and then boot, after that you can use cart button to cycle selected ATR files among assigned drives

4 minutes ago, jmprice_314159 said:

Also, I have a stock Atari 800 XL with no memory expansion. Would AVG and SIO work for multiple ATR games? Thanks!

when using SIO cable, no atari ram is used by the cart so if the game runs on 64kB, it should run

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9 hours ago, jmprice_314159 said:

With 

Hello Dan, with the AVG cart and the SIO cable, how do you select multiple ATR files? Does it have some sort of user interface that boots when you plug the SIO cable into the port on the back of the Atari, and you can then select the various ATR files? Also, I have a stock Atari 800 XL with no memory expansion. Would AVG and SIO work for multiple ATR games? Thanks!

The AVG-Cart has a simple user interface which lists all files and folders on the SD-card. I can select multiple ATR-Files with "tab" which then get numbered and after booting the first ATR i can cycle through the images by pressing a button on the cartridge. I used the AVG-cart with no problems on a stock 800XL.

Edited by Dinadan67
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