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A happy, healthy and prosperous 2009 to all!! 

Update Jan 1, 2009: It has been a bit silent lately, but more news will follow soon!

Update Dec 18: Many of you might have wondered if I am still alive or not. Well, I am! Some that know me would say "barely". Nothing physically serious though. Without getting into too much detail on my private life, some of you might also be divorced and have a child and you might know that there are sometimes situations that are emotionally killing. An ex is not an ex without reason, I always say. As much as I like things to be part of the past, it still has pulled me down and worn me out. Okay, having said that, I am slowly starting to regain momentum and enthusiasm for the 1541 project. First on my list of issues is of course the reliability of the Ethernet communication and the continuation of the production of Batch 4, which has gotten some delay as well. The availability of some components played a role here, too, so don't start sending me letters with Antrax! :-) What the Ethernet timing is concerned; I have seen some nice pictures on the forum of measurements. I will try to respond to them soon. It sure needs more investigation and measurement. Thanks to all of you for your support and faith in me and in this project. Cool 

Update Oct 20: Also the non-Ethernet boards have arrived. Massive shipping planned tomorrow (Oct 21).

Update Oct 17: Remaining Ethernet boards were received yesterday. I hope to receive the Plus boards today! It is going to be a busy weekend for me :-p  For those coming to X2008; I made a button on the Order Status page that allows you to indicate whether you'd like to pick up your unit there (if available). Just click on the button once and it will add "X2008" to the remarks field. Note: I will not be there on Friday!

Update Oct 15: Unfortunately, the first Batch-2 units shipped have a small issue. It turns out that the order of the cartridge ROMs flashed is faulty. Therefore, the Final Cartridge 3 and the Action Replay cartridges don't work. You can fix this by applying the official V1.5 release that can be found in the download section. Of course, cartridges that are shipping from this moment on won't have this issue.

Update Oct 12: 58 boards shipping tomorrow; check your status.  Others will follow soon, of course!

Update Oct 9: 70 boards arrived; shipping has started! Remaining boards from batch 2 and 3 will arrive not long after. Please do NOT ask me when yours will be shipped. I don't have time to answer that. Rest assured, that it will be as swift as possible!

As announced, I went to the production company to shoot some footage of the production of the 1541 Ultimate. It took me some time to get the video converted so it was uploadable to YouTube, but here it is:

Some pictures are available as well, which show a bit more detail. These can be found in the news section, to which I have moved older news items, too.

I was informed that I can expect the first boards on tuesday/wednesday (oct 7/8). I have already prepared my test-desk and some shipping boxes, so I expect the first units of batch 2 to be shipped during the same week. All others will follow shortly of course. 
Last Updated ( Thursday, 01 January 2009 00:30 )
 
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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.

Context

The '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.

Click here for feature list and specifications.
 
 
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