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Welcome to the 1541 Ultimate Website!!
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Hello!  Great that you are checking out the 1541 Ultimate website again for news and updates. Well, I got a bit of news! Part of it is good, part of it is bad. Let me start with the bad one: Because the web form worked better than I even expected, and I didn't check on the total number of orders for a while; I have more orders than I can accomodate in Batch #2!  The good news: I took the risk of starting the production of Batch #3 even before the current one is finished. This means that batch 3 comes only 3 to 4 weeks after batch 2; which is pretty quick, compared to the time between batch 1 and 2. Now lets pray more than ever that I didn't make a terrible mistake somewhere that forces me to push all new boards through the shredder.  Can you sense some stress? :-)) I re-opened the pre-order list; all people ordering now will automatically shift to batch #3. I included a batch-indicator as well. What else? Ah, yes! I finished an update of the firmware (V1.4), which will appear on the website soon. This will be the version that gets flashed by default into all new boards as well. Tiny bug was fixed in the RR emulation, which caused TAsm and Codenet to fail in some circumstances. Secondly, the disk swap delay time can be programmed for a more proper disk swap detection in some demos. Third, the 1541 drive will 'remember' the disk after a power cycle (optional). And last but not least, V1.4 also supports SDHC!!! Yes, imagine!! Having a 4 GB card, gives you room for over 23000 floppy disks! Note that the problem with the 1541-II compatibility was solved by just placing the right ROM into the 1541 emulation. Shame on me! Picking a rom that is so rare that nobody has seen this phenomenon with a real drive! The rom is now selectable in the configuration menu. This can already be found in 1.3beta. For our Dutch friends, I have reverse engineered the KCS power cartridge. It is not part of the 1541U yet, and I am not sure if it will be feasible to add it, but I'll look into that some time, too. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 August 2008 19:06 )
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Introduction to the 1541 Ultimate Project What is it?The '1541 Ultimate' is a storage solution for your Commodore home computer, such as the C64, C128, C plus4, C16, etc. This piece of hardware implements a 'real' 1541 diskdrive for Commodore computers, and is capable of storing the floppy disks on a modern SD-card, or MMC-card. It contains a replica of all the necessary hardware to be fully compatible with a real drive. The '1541 Ultimate' can be used as a cartridge in the C64/C128, or as a stand-alone unit for use with other Commodore models with a serial bus. In cartridge mode, the user can view the SD-card content with just a simple push on one of the buttons, and 'mount' .d64 images into the floppy drive. In stand-alone mode, the user can use the buttons to navigate through the directories, or send IEC commands to a secondary device on the bus. This secondary device also allows saving and loading files to the FAT file system directly, but is not as compatible as the 1541 drive. ContextThe '1541 Ultimate' is a personal hobby project, that has grown into a mature device that can be very useful for current Commodore users. It enables the user to copy real 5.25" floppy disks onto an SD-card, and run them from there, without the C64 knowing that it is not a real drive it is talking to. Floppy disks are prone to aging, and many floppies are on the verge of getting unreadable. So in the context of the greater "Preservation Project" that is carried out by Commodore enthousiasts, the '1541 Ultimate' can do a lot of useful work. Although I am not a company, I would like to make the '1541 Ultimate' hardware available for Commodore enthousiasts, especially because this piece of hardware is very powerful and can potentially do a lot more than 'just' implementing a replacement for the 1541 drive. I hope that people can understand that although this board has been made with a lot of care and enthusiasm, it is still a hobby project and not an official retail product. 
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Status, Aug 1 |
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Hello all! Finally, the production of the second batch has officially started. This means that all components and the PCB have been ordered. There has been some delay due to some issues that you guys have found on version V1.0. Fortunately, most issues were clearly software or FPGA-logic related. This I needed to know, to make sure that the hardware itself can be left unmodified. The only open issue is the "help!-my-1541U-hangs-up-with-a-1541-II!"-issue. Because I have still not been able to test the 1541U with a real 1541-II drive, I just decided to included a driver IC in the layout, which can be mounted optionally. Note that the firmware will automatically detect the presence of this IC on the board and drive the IEC bus accordingly, for full firmware compatibility. The fact is that I just can't hold the production of the second batch any longer; knowing how impatient some of you are..  Secondly, the assembly line came back with some remarks on the land patterns on the PCB, which resulted in some work there, too. I further tried to optimize the process by deciding that I will have the Flash devices programmed before mounting on the board. This will save me a lot of work later, and will hopefully help me to ship faster. I expect the boards to be on my desk by the end of September. Thank you all for your understanding and support! Gideon |
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