Dear 1541 Ultimate enthusiasts,

Some of you might have noticed that the order form has been temporarily closed, and many questions and rumours have been going around about the future of the 1541 Ultimate. The reason behind all this, is that behind the screens I have been working on a successor of the "1541 Ultimate". How this unit will be called has not yet been determined, but it could be something as simple as "1541 Ultimate II" or "Ultimate Cartridge".

What is it, and why was it designed? Basically, it is a scaled down version of the 1541U. It will provide similar functionality, although some things have been changed. It will no longer support full-size SD-cards, but only MircoSD, or "Transflash". Also, Ethernet will not be supported until further notice. It will support tape emulation out of the box (without the need for special FPGA images) and it will provide a real-time clock function with battery back up. Audio output has been significantly improved, which might seem useless for just the drive sounds, but this enables the creation of FPGA images that provide additional sound channels of useful quality. The power consumption has been reduced as well. There is one extra cool feature that will not yet be disclosed ;-)

And last but not least... This unit will come with a case! At least, that is the plan; there are some negociations going on with manufacturers for plastic insertion moulding. It seems feasible to have this done, although it's pricy for low quantities. A prototype is 3D-printed this week; the prototype board is already there and functional.

Now, speaking of the case.... Since I like to keep the high compatibility with the 1541, the big DIN connector is still there on the board. It might be an option to use a custom connector for this, with a custom cable that needs to be made for this unit, but to be honest, this does not have my personal preference. I would need to have these made separately, and stock them separately as well. So, let's say that the big DIN connector is a fact, how do we enclose this? There are two options; which are shown below:

And the second option is:

As you can see, the first one has a "strange" bulge, but is for the rest rather elegant, while the second one is symmetrical, but bulkier. Which of the two it should be, I don't know.. Maybe I'll open a poll for this, what do you think?

Availability: It will still take around 12 weeks before these units can be delivered; which means late October 2009. Price: I tried to keep the price acceptable. Due to the case, it has to go up just slightly though. The selling price including tax is € 125; (excluding: € 105).

Please let me know what you think. 

Regards,

Gideon