Two months have now passed since the last Maarsen-meeting, where I first had the chance to encounter the
1541 Ultimate. Much have happened ever since, and during this time about 150 people have signed up with Gideon. As I went there today, and once again had the chance to see the device behave hands on, I believe an update might be in place. To sum up the changes reported here and on other places.
A little update, 2 months later...
Once again I had the chance to look at the device, and one of the first things I noted was that the cart looked different. Gideon soon told me that he had made a complete redesign of the board to make it work with the C-128's out there, and to solve some other minor issues. Save for the fact that the hardware have been redesigned with a bigger FPGA to ensure that it'll work with the 128, some minor issues which I reported two months ago have dissapeared.
First of all, copying now works two ways. You can set up the 1541U as any device, connect a real drive as any device and copying between them works as between two real drives. No hassle. Nibbling a disk from a 1541 to a D64 will give the same result a normal nibbler would produce. Shutting out external devices are done from the interface, setting device is done in the same fashion. Secondly, it now has 40 (or even 41) track support. Crestology reportedly works like a dream. As most of you might know, an additional illegal opcode was added so that Krills loader will work. There is also support of saving and loading .prg's and other files directly to and from the MMC's directory.
The support for Action Replay and TFC III images can now be switched on the fly in the interface and will swap cartimages with a powercycling. Both carts seem to work very well in cooperation with the drive. For you who wished for better support for it as an external device, I can report that D64-images now are easily switchable from basic along with maneuvering the subdirectories. It felt a little like seeing someone toying around with a CMD harddrive. Maneuvering the D64's using the buttons isn't supported yet, but i'm assured it'll get there too.
Ofcourse all things aren't implemented yet - the REU didn't work as it should do yet. From what I understood, that is one of the things currently adressed. Another thing to be looked at is the support for Secure Digital HC cards, making it possible to use 8 GB cards on this little thingy. Gideon told me this was easily implemented, and that this feature would be present in the final version. The planned date for the release of the first batch is in the end of March/beginning of April.
Guys. We're getting closer to this wonder. Day by day.
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Really appreciate it. Can't wait to get rid of all these 5.25" disks from my desktop.
So this whole thing is back to just a hobby for me. No pressure, no delivery times, no expectations.. hee!! heaven!