C64 game on cartridge

[Mortis]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm not expecting too much assistance on this one as I think it may not be possible. Keep in mind that I am thinking here which is mighty dangerous.

 

In the beginning I loved to play Fort Apocalypse on my C-64 via tape. Today I can't for the life of me create a working physical tape to use so I use an EF3 to run a converted copy of Fort on it.  Runs great.

 

I've noticed that the contacts on my Ef3 are getting a little worn and was hoping to use it less. So I purchased a Unicart and have mixed success burning roms for it.

 

Here comes my question, Fort was never actually produced on cartridge for the C64 and the EF3 boots it via command with load "", ef, 1. When I attempt to burn the 16k bin to an eeprom and use the unicart, it just blue screens.

 

Anyone out there have any suggestions for a working cartridge or a good method to record a real tape for it? Tapdancer, recording to mp3, direct from wave to recorder, nothing works and I suspect it is due to the fastload. Using the same methods on another program works perfectly.  I can use my A400 with it's cartridge just fine, but I actually prefer the C64 version. 

 

I can try and find a link to the crt image or upload it here (even the source code is out now).

 

Anyways, thanks for looking...

[carlsson]

I found the CRT image you're referring to and used cartconv (part of the VICE suite) to exract a BIN or PRG out of it. However due to it being 16K it pulls the GAME pin low, meaning to map out BASIC ROM and map in cartridge ROM. When I tried to mount the raw binary in VICE, I also only got a blue screen. I'm not sure how to solve this in a software way. I tried to map out BASIC ROM before executing the code which caused some differences but not booting the game.

 

Exactly what is a Unicart? I found two different references.

GGLABS UNICART: https://www.ebay.com/itm/401913389399

This says that the DIP switches can be set for 8K, 16K or Ultimax mode and I think by setting those as indicated you might get the binary file extracted from the CRT to work.

 

Marko Šolajić Uni-Cart: https://8bithardware.wixsite.com/website/product-page/c64-uni-cart

This is a more advanced contraption.

 

As for how to make a working tape, it was quite a while ago I fiddled with that. Does Tapdancer perhaps have an option for inverting the sound upside down? I remember sometimes that was required in order for tapes to load. In principle you should be able to take a regular PRG version and convert to slow loading tape if fastloader is any issue.

[Mortis]

Hi Mr. Carlsson! 

 

The unicart is the GGLABS one you linked to above.

 

I appreciate all the attention and work you did on this.  Totally unexpected.  ?

 

I'm not totally sure about Tapdancer being able to invert the sample, but I'll look into it.  I'm going to extract the prg and fiddle around with it. I'll post here as a wrap up either way.

 

Thanks again...

[Mortis]

Just to finalize this one: no success here.  I tried a few different things.  It may be that my old recorder starts to drop time after a longer run.  I'll pick this up again later as I have other projects going on.

 

Thanks all...