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Nice Hardware Projekt


Heaven/TQA

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but what is the difference to AtariMax Cart?

 

http://raster.infos.cz/atari/forpc/creaxin1en.htm

 

ps. the Sony TFT looks quite good...would fit to my 130xe.

929705[/snapback]

 

What's the difference? S/XEGS RAMcart is designed to store cart images. In other words: it's battery powered (multi)cartridge. It has 128 kB of memory, so it's fully compatible with XEGS 128 kB cartridge (I have seen Commando running from RAMcart), but it can handle up to sixteen 8 kB cart images.

 

I'm really looking forward to get my own RAMcart. Finally I'll be able to play Commando, Tower Toppler, Deflektor, Barnyard Blaster or Crossbow on REAL Atari HW!

 

F.

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but what is the difference to AtariMax Cart?

 

* 128 KB SRAM with 3V battery - years of lifetime (!), unlimited number of overwriting (!), no block-save necessity (!).

* Full XEGS cartridge bank switching compatibility (!). All the great 32/64/128KB XEGS cartridge games is possible to play on Atari with this one RAMcart. (Commando, TowerToppler, etc. .... without need of ANY modifications)

* Usable for standard 16KB cartridge games, also most of classic 8KB cartridge games are working.

* SXEGS switchable mode.

* Read only mode for cart memory protection.

* XEGS RAMcart File Feeder software for easy loading of cart dump files.

* with special DOS it can works also as ramdisk (D8: device with cca 120KB, battery keeps its content)

* new Creaxin1 software for making of programs/games packages.

* components' price cca 250 Kc (8 EUR)

Edited by raster/c.p.u.
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  • 1 month later...
Are these available for purchase yet?

950183[/snapback]

Rules for the ABBUC hardware contest 2005

...

1.4 Notification / Admission conditions:

* sending of a fully-functional hardware / upgrade and complete documents, schematics, manuals, etc.

* readable + understandable documentation and manual of the hardware in german or english.

...

1.6 Presentation of the Hardware:

The hardware / upgrades will be presented at the annual ABBUC meeting (JHV) in October by its author/developer or a representative. If the author/developer is absent at this meeting and did not name any representative, then the leader of the hardware ressort will present the hardware instead.

 

---

 

Event

Date Subject

05/10/22 10:00 AM to 06:00 PM JHV 2005

 

---

So, I think, whole documentation will be published soon...

:)

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v688/mon...o/ImpresoMC.jpg

 

In Chile, twenty years ago some guys develop (or copy) this memory card system. Is very primitive but are the basis of the project RamCart.

 

The chips are erased, i have some of this cartridges and all come with erased chips.

 

Here you can see the instruccion set for this device (in spanish, sorry) : http://www.atariware.cl/foro/viewtopic.php?t=463

 

PS : Luck with the competition !

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v688/mon...o/ImpresoMC.jpg

In Chile, twenty years ago some guys develop (or copy) this memory card system. Is very primitive but are the basis of the project RamCart.

It's interesting, I haven't seen it never.

But it isn't the same hw, It has 32KB memory only, so Commando 128KB and/or other 64 or 128KB SXEGS games can't be working with it.

Also it hasn't sw switchable capability.

Ufff... ;)

 

The chips are erased, i have some of this cartridges and all come with erased chips.

I think I recognise chips used there exactly. :-)

You can see first old prototype of our RAMcart which hasn't sw switchable feature. But it has 128KB SRAM already and that's why there is some "bigger" chips in our cart (more banks, more complicated PCB). Also some more features it has had.

http://krupkaj.wz.cz/Atariada2005/original/DSC02157.jpg

(big 128 KB Memory chip is on other bottom side ;-))

Our S/XEGS RAMcart is much more different, fortunately. ;)

 

PS : Luck with the competition !

Thanks. :)

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I think I recognise chips used there exactly. :-)

You can see first old prototype of our RAMcart which hasn't sw switchable feature. But it has 128KB SRAM already and that's why there is some "bigger" chips in our cart (more banks, more complicated PCB). Also some more features it has had.

http://krupkaj.wz.cz/Atariada2005/original/DSC02157.jpg

(big 128 KB Memory chip is on other bottom side ;-))

Our S/XEGS RAMcart is much more different, fortunately.  ;)

950743[/snapback]

 

It is funny the labels on chips are not readable in my photo also. Actually the labels are there but jpeg compression caused they are not readable ;)

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Is the RAM in the cart writeable by the game in the cart itself?

950959[/snapback]

Our S/XEGS RAMcart has read_olny/read&write hand switch. But this switch has to be set to "read_only" state if cart is enabled and Atari is turned on (or if reset key is pressed), because initial OS ROM routines overwrite some parts of cart memory otherwise. (Cart memory is mapped instead of standard Atari RAM and OS routines does the clearing of screen memory etc.)

 

But, for example, game (or other program) can show some request message like "Please, permit the RAMcart WRITE now.". (Also our patched version of DOS II+ does it - red background color appears if write operation to ramdisk is required.) After the RAMcart write operation there is recommended to restore "read only" state of course.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello Raster,

your Ramcart won only the 3rd place, sorry for that. But I guess this happened, because the completely new Turbo Freezer not only has the well known freezer abilities but is also able to emulate various Atari carts (4k, 8k, 16k, OSS bankswitching, Sparta X cart, Atari S/XEGS bankswitching). The new Turbo Freezer will be available as an XL PBI upgrade as well as an XE PBI upgrade (meaning CART + ECI port; there is another cart. port on the pcb of the XE version available). And last not least there will be a 128k and a 512k version of the turbo Freezer and one can order it soon. So, as far as I can see the new Turbo Freezer has all your S/XEGS Ramcart options plus more (but I might be wrong)...

 

I do not understand, why the USB cart made the 2nd place. As of yet it is only a stupid cart., useful to connect some "PC joysticks" (sticks, pads, wheels, etc.) to an XL/XE computer and play a few patched games (Pole Position, Boulder Dash, etc.) with it...

 

Nevertheless I do hope you will get a Turbo Freezer for free from ABBUC (or I will buy one for Krupkaj and one for you!) - and maybe then you will be so kind and write/patch some software for it, to use the extra RAM as a kind of Ramdisk (since as of yet one can only use it to freeze programs and/or emulate normal and bankswitching carts)... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

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;) I am not the right man. The right one is Bob!k. I have only served small insignificant role in the project. Nevertheless I would like to know more about new Freezer. Is documentation available somewhere? Edited by krupkaj
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I do not understand, why the USB cart made the 2nd place. As of yet it is only a stupid cart., useful to connect some "PC joysticks" (sticks, pads, wheels, etc.) to an XL/XE computer and play a few patched games (Pole Position, Boulder Dash, etc.) with it...

 

I have one myself, and admittedly I haven't even used it yet except to try the USB mouse demo with it. I just think it's so cool to hook up modern USB devices to my atari. I'm expecting more from the USB development team in the future. There are lots of possibilities and all the code is open source.

 

Hardly any of the new hardware for the Atari is "useful", but most of it is "cool".

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Yep,

but new drivers for other devices like floppy, HDD, etc. will not be available for the USBcart. Instead the USB team is working on another project: the SIO2USB...

 

For this project they will connect an USB device to the Atari SIO port. It is similar to the SIO2IDE project, but it will be much cooler. There will be no need (unlike SIO2IDE) to always defrag the harddisk when adding a new disk image (and complete defragmentation of the SIO2IDE HD can only be done on the PC, thus SIO2IDE is a little *awkward*). The SIO2USB will use a small pcb with a LCD on it, where one can choose any kind of ATR (or XFD) image. This image can have any size, up to the maximum 16megabytes. There can be as many images on the USB stick, as there is storage-space (memory) available. And the SIO2USB will not use any memory of your A8 computer, it works on any A8 computer and every disk image can be booted with it, no matter if the image is a bootdisk or contains any files. Also the density (SD, DD, HD, Hd partition) does not matter and the DOS format (DOS 2, 3, 4, Sparta, etc.) also does not matter. In other words: The SIO2USB works like APE or SIO2PC, but this time all your images are loaded directly from/to the Atari and the PC is not required any longer...

 

At the moment, the USB team is using an USB-stick with the SIO2USB device, future plans are to use an USB harddisk (and maybe also an USB CD/DVD-ROM) with it. Of course the USB device uses FAT-16, so it can be read and written with the PC, but the provided pcb makes it usable for the A8 (the LCD is there to choose a certain image and to avoid using any memory of the A8). Besides, the USB device can contain any data (PC data, ATR images, etc.) and it still works ok for the A8 and the PC...

 

So, in my eyes the USB cart is not that useful... it looks like there are no other plans than using the USBcart to connect PC joysticks, pads, mice, steering wheels, etc. to the A8. For me, the SIO2USB project is much more interesting, alas, they are still alpha - or beta testing... -Andreas Magenheimer.

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