Finally, the software for the 1541 Ultimate II is finished. In the last two weeks, an enormous amount of work has been done:

• USB is now working stable, including insertion and removal.  (My external 500 GB harddisk was detected flawlessly!)
• Support for USB devices with multiple LUNs (like card readers)
• GCR (G64) supported added, including write (the Ultimate-I couldn't do this)
• T64 file support re-integrated
• Tape support, using TAP files (I needed to test the hardware anyway!)
• Comprehensible menus
• Real time clock functional  (still need a clock widget...)
• I made a wooden mould, to simplify closing the plastic cases without damaging them.

The plan is, to ship the first 40~50 units this coming Wednesday! The remaining units will follow as soon as possible!  Thank you for your patience!

Gideon

Hi all!

A short note from the developer! No, I haven't died yet! :-p I have been out for a few days to a conference, and have been working hard on finishing the 2.0 software. I ran into some very nasty and almost untracable bugs. But.. things are getting stable and better. There is support now for the real time clock, and USB is finally working more or less. I am not running into troubles anymore with USB sticks (the intended use of the port) and even an external card reader seems to work just fine. I just completed the addition of T64 support new style and sorting of directories. As soon as I have added USB support to the bootloader, I will ship the units. I foresee frequent updates being made available through the website in the coming time, and one user insisted that the update procedure should work from a USB stick, since he doesn't have a card reader. Although 99% of the people have access to a card reader, he does have a point.

Hardware update: New cases are on their way.  The previous ones needed some manual modification before they would neatly fit the Micro-SD connector of the board. It took me 20 mins per case (!) to modify them a bit and put the board inside, that I decided to have the mould changed slightly.  I have also received the IEC cables and the MicroSD cards. So what will be shipped to you, will be a complete package. Hopefully you will find it worth the wait!

Gideon

Update January 29, 2010

Finally, you might think! An update on the 1541U-II... As time is going fast, the moment that all the hardware parts for the 1541U-II will be ready is drawing near. It all was not too easy, but things are going now the way they should.

The major difficulty showed to be the plastic case. Finally I have found a contractor who is willing to make the plastic case exactly as I wanted it, for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the mould for plastic injection is quite expensive; in fact about double of what I expected initially, based on an unrealistic quote that I got a few months ago. Because of the large interest in the 1541U-II, I decided to just continue with it, and leave the selling price of the total product intact.

Earlier this week, I received the first pictures of the first try-outs of the injection mould tool. The result shows a little problem in the design, with the planned material (ABS). Due to the thick and sturdy plastic constuction on the inside, sink marks are visible on the outside. The manufacturer has tried to run the case with a different material (PA), which looks a lot better. However, due to different shrinkage characteristics, the mould tool needs to be adapted to adjust for the difference in material. (You can see this, that the matte version does not close perfectly...) They will do this, but it will take one week extra before the cases are ready. The final color won't be black (unless I am getting a lot of angry E-mails now.. ;-), but light cream color, to match the C64C better.

The bare boards were manufactured in China this time, and had been delivered to the assembly company, which is currently working on the first 100 pieces of 1541U-II boards. I am expecting the hardware boards within 2 weeks! Then I can start testing and programming them. 

And then the software… I am very busy porting and reordering the existing code base to the “Ultimate V2.0”. Actually, most of the code is being rewritten from the base up, to give it more structure and better maintainability. As announced on the website, the 1541U-II will have a USB port. Although it was quite some work to write the host-controller for the FPGA and the software stack to access the port, it is now starting to work quite well. At this point, USB pen-drives are recognized. The directory and files can be read from it, just like the 1541U-I could do on the SD-card. Further fine-tuning is necessary and integration with the existing software still needs to be done. The first release, 1541U-II V2.0 (alpha), will be functional, but sober... Updates will follow to add the "sauce" to the cartridge.

Hopefully I will have some help by mid-February to pack and ship the finalized units, and answer the non-technical E-mails.  With the delay incurred in the project, I want to be able to ship out as efficiently as possible.

As for the financial aspect, I am accepting payments now. If everything worked as it should, you saw the total amount due when you ordered. Payment instructions can be found on the website under “Ordering Info”.

Hello everyone!

It is about time to release some news about the 1541U-II. I think some of you must be really curious about the extra features and possibilities that the 1541U-II give, and about the progress on production and firmware. To start off with the 1541U-II features, I can tell you that it differs from the 'standard' 1541U Plus/Ethernet that:

• the board itself is about 30% smaller than the 1541U;
• it has a MicroSD connector, instead of a full-size SD;
• it has a real-time-clock function, for correct file time and date;
• it has a larger FPGA, which enables the implementation of more features;
• it has a USB Host port, which can be used to connect USB-sticks;
• it is targeted to have a suitable case for the device.

Some of you have written in the forums, that the MicroSD connector is not much of an improvement. But the rationale behind going to MicroSD is mainly the available space on the board is less, and that with the addition of a USB-A port, the average user will use the usb-stick rather than the SD-card. So the MicroSD-card does not need to be removed from the cartridge very often. However, because at the moment that I announced the 1541U-II, the USB port was not yet tested, I could not reveal this feature as I did not want to make promises that I can't keep. The USB turns out to be quite a bit of work to get it to work, but I can now announce that I managed to implement enough of a host-controller function to be able to talk to USB devices and send the most basic commands to access a mass-storage device. I am quite close to have implemented the 'read-block' and 'write-block' functions, which is the interface level that the file system module uses. In other words, I expect to be able to access the (FAT) file-system on the USB stick quite soon!

How will it work for the user? My objective is to have one 'directory' level above the current root of the SD-card, where you can select which partition you want to browse. There the USB flash drive becomes visible, as well as the MicroSD card, if present.

Why has the Ethernet function disappeared? The rationale behind this, is also space. However, another consideration is the shitty interface of the CS8900A chip. This chip is slow and creates quite a challenge to get the timing right on the C64 slot. It works now, but there are quite some tricks to make it work, and it will probably only work in 95% of the cases. Because I want the 1541U to be a quality product, I decided that it would be better to emulate the CS8900A chip in the future inside the FPGA, and transfer the data over USB, by means of an external USB-to-Ethernet converter. This will not only be cheaper, but also more reliable. However, everyone knows that implementation of these things take time, so I am not offering this functionality from the start.

Production status: All components are on stock at the assembly company for 100 boards. Once the PCB is ready, the assembly company will build the boards for me. Hopefully, the case will be done by the time that the boards come, too. The design of the case has been finalized, but to find a company that can make a mold for this, is quite another issue. I have offers from different companies that differ in price by a factor of 5! It will be a huge investment for me, and therefore I need time to select the right company for making this special case. Therefore, I don't expect the cases before Christmas. :-(  For this very reason, I have not yet opened "payment season", because I do not feel good when people pay and have to wait long before I can ship. It gives me a lot of stress.

Some time ago, I already had a prototype made by a company that uses a 3D printer, based on some kind of ink-jet system. Below you can see the result, including the new 1541U-II board on the left. Note, that the final case will *not* be transparent. It will be either black or creme.

I hope you will be enthusiastic about the new developments. I would love to hear about your thoughts and ideas, but beware that I can't answer all E-mails. At this moment, I only have 3 days every 2 weeks that I can use to spend time on the 1541U project.

Regards,

Gideon