Is there a flash multicart for the C-64 like the Atarimax ones for the A8?

[Bill Brasky]

Is there one at all? If so, is it easy to use for a novice C-64 user? A lot of C-64 emu's and products just assume that you grew up with the C-64 and know how to use it by heart. Can disk/tape based software run from the cart or be easily converted to do so? Price/links?

[MacbthPSW]

Not as far as I know. Cartridge based games weren't nearly as popular on the C-64 as they were on the A8, or even the VIC-20, so there wouldn't be a whole lot of games to use on it if it did exist, maybe just a few hundred.

 

Perhaps the closest thing would be the MMC64 which allows near instant loading of most single-load games (games which do not access the disk drive again once they've loaded).

 

This leaves out many great C-64 games, but includes many other great ones, so it's not a bad device. There still isn't a complete substitute for a real 1541 drive, though a few projects are close.

[+remowilliams]

some recent discussion

[AussieAtari]

Have a look at this great (Australian) site - www.64hdd.com, this maybe as close as you will get.

[Mayhem]

There's more C64 carts than Vic20 ones btw

 

(roughly double from my collection lists, and that's just the games)

[MacbthPSW]

There's more C64 carts than Vic20 ones btw

Ah, interesting. I guess I could argue that game carts are more *popular* on the VIC-20 even if not as many titles were published, but I won't.

[Video]

I loved carts on the C64, no load time kicks ass (well, as close as a computer could come to it anyways)

 

Is there any reason a cart couldn't have a disc game put in it? Other than carts tended to autolaod on powerup, but couldn't you wright a bit of software to kick it into a select screen to pick a game or something anyways?

[MacbthPSW]

Is there any reason a cart couldn't have a disc game put in it? Other than carts tended to autolaod on powerup, but couldn't you wright a bit of software to kick it into a select screen to pick a game or something anyways?

It's not impossible, but a varying amount of work would have to be done to any given game to get it to run from cart. Single-file disk games would be easiest... built into the menu program in the cartridge would have to be a copy routine which copied the game from cart memory into the C-64's main 64k of RAM, and then it would start like normal. This is essentially how the C-64 DTV (30 games-in-1 stick) works.

 

Well behaved or properly cracked multi-load games could also be made to work by modifying the kernal (C-64 O.S.) to intercept calls to load from the disk drive, and transfer the file from cartridge ROM. This is also what the DTV does.

 

But you couldn't make a general purpose C-64 cart that would be able to run every C-64 game, without modifying many of the games to be well-behaved with it. This is basically what people have done for the IDE64 cartridge.

[Bill Brasky]

How can I tell which games will work with MMC64 without actually trying them? Is there a compatability list online?

[MacbthPSW]

How can I tell which games will work with MMC64 without actually trying them? Is there a compatability list online?

Any game that's just a single C-64 (PRG) file will work. So, if a file is already in .prg format, it's good to go. If it's a .t64 file, the .prg inside it can be extracted easily with a program like Star Commander. If it's a .d64, you'll have to "look inside" it with Star Commander or VICE (when you're attaching a disk image, you can view the disk directory) and if there's only a single file, you're *probably* okay (though there's some cases where a disk will just have a single C= DOS file listed, and the game uses it's own custom file format for the rest of the game on disk - those ones won't work on MMC64).

 

I don't think there's a compatability list since there are thousands of games that will work with the MMC64... but also thousands of games that won't.

 

BTW, Paul Slocum did a bit of a review of the MMC64 in his blog... http://www.qotile.net/blog/wp/?p=163