I was just wondering how much interest there is in the RR compared to the MMC64.

For example. I seem to use my MMC64 with the RR-Net more than my Retro Replay and RR-Net. I have GuruTerm and WarpCopy64 which I regularly use from my MMC64 combo.

How many people acutally use the RR cart more than the MMC64?

Do you the RR-NET addon more with the RR cart. or the MMC64?

The RR is good for experimenting/developing i think. Having instant access to, for instance, codenet has been vital to my development of GuruTerm. It would have been much slower and way more patience consuming without a cart. In other words, plain painfull! I seriously doubt I would have made it to Beta1 without TFE. But, yes - i think RR is mostly suited for developers and people who just want to do crazy hacks

i don't even own a mmc64. i think, that the mmc64 is just another way of mass-storage for the c64, while the RR really offers better opportunities... as rave gurur just said: for developpers, it's perfect, TFE rocks. but having TMP+REU patched to the RR-ROM is very nice too. (always speaking for a programmer)

I agree completely. RR + RR-net is great for development, especially for cross-development with TFE and codenet, or TASS in the RR-ROM when no PC is at hand.

I'm not interested in MMC64 since it isn't an IEC device, with the compatibility issues that comes with that. I'm waiting for Jim Brain to finish his uIEC device which will (hopefully) give more or less complete 1541 compatibility. IIRC it will even use JiffyDOS transfer routines if you have JiffyDOS in your Commodore (which I have).

Don't be surprised if it doesn't offer much more compatibility than D64 mounter and DFI plugins. You get listen/second/unlsn/talk/tksa/untlk/acptr/ciout with uIEC, but without 6502+2*6522 emulation compatibility isn't anywhere near complete.

One advantage MMC64 has is the browser, making it easy to mount and run software. An IEC device would be clumsy in comparison, either having an embedded display for management, or using a clunky CMD style partition scheme.

But it's not out of the question to have a full hardware emulation implemented in an IEC device. That would be pretty snazzy.

I thought I'd read somewhere that it would have full 6502 and 6522 emulation. Wishful thinking from my part I guess. It still has one advantage: it's not restricted to the C64. Any mass storage device I buy has to be useable on my VIC-20, Plus/4, and C128 in native mode, i.e. it has to be a IEC device (or some kind of multiple format cartridge – not much chance for that...).

Btw, I made my first small program with the PC Codenet server -> Final Replay combination yesterday. Wrote the code with Kate on my Linux laptop, assembled with DASM, sent it to the SX64 sitting next to the PC. Wonderfully fast write-assemble-test-crash-curse-edit-compile... cycle.

Would be wonderful imo. Should be quite possible with an FPGA or similar if someone is willing to do all the hard work. Wouldn't be a cheap device though, I guess. Not that I know anything about hardware design. I should probably just keep quiet.

Too bad Nicolas Welte hasn't produced a new run of C2N232 yet. (FAQ tells you to contact Marko for new run, but IIRC Nicolas is the one to pester if you want that to happen). C2N232 is fast enough, and it's smaller than any of the alternatives if you happen to have PC nearby. For standalone storage uIEC and 15411-III are your best options. I will most likely end up getting at least one of them.


But then we wouldn't know when to educate you! As there already is FPGA VIC-20 much of work is already done. I don't know if 6502/6522 implementations in that one are complete or just "good enough" for VIC-20, but that would be my starting point in either case.

Couldn't the VICE source be of some help too when it comes to timing and such things? I know that you can't just translate C code to VHDL, but it should be of some help to figure out the inner workings of the drive. As I understand it the 1541 emulation in VICE is very accurate.

I'm not familiar with VHDL so I don't know the posibilities there, but I believe a fairly powerful embedded microprocessor would be required to emulate it all properly.

Using an FPGA you wouldn't really be emulating the hardware in the normal sense. You actually clone (more or less) the 1541 hardware inside the FPGA. No need for a microprocessor at all, except for the 6502 clone inside the FPGA.

VHDL is the language you use to write the configuration for the FPGA.

i did tryed using the winvice drive file in the mmc and renamed the file extension to bin. this was before i retro got the replay. when i tryed it i got an i/o error. But the problem is that having the space in the ram to fit such coding in. And as pc has an lot of memory the emulators can support the full workings of the drive.

cheers
paul

TNT: About C2N232 - I have it here and it is GREAT ! Was just wondering - did the Serial port connection (which can be done with the solder pads on the C2N232) ever go out of beta testing and it started working ? That would mean a nice 64HDD type of device together with the tape type of the device.

Tom-Cat

Latest news about C2N232I is this, I believe.