VIC-20 MegaCart Support

JudgeDrokk · Unread post by **JudgeDrokk** » Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:13 pm

The VIC20 core is great - love it, I wondered however, as the core can run VIC cartridge images......

A 'real' VIC can run the physical MegaCart ... but the MiSTer core can't execute the CRT .image of it.

Is there a possibility of this function being added in the future or is it it a pointless excersise?

beamrider · Unread post by **beamrider** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:03 pm

I believe the MIST is now supporting the mega-cart ROM making it easier to use Vic-20 cartridges.

https://github.com/gyurco/VIC20_MiST/commits/master

Not sure if these changes could be ported easily to MiSTer or not.

Moondandy · Unread post by **Moondandy** » Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:40 am

Good spot, this might be something Alan is interested in bringing over. Do you know if there are other features on the MiST core not yet on MiSTer?

beamrider · Unread post by **beamrider** » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:25 pm

not sure, but looking at the GitHub history, it seems to have had more development attention than the MiSTer core.

lroby74 · Unread post by **lroby74** » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:56 pm

Now it's avaiable on Mist FPGA

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:44 pm

Tape motor control over UART, interesting.

kathleen · Unread post by **kathleen** » Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:02 pm

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:44 pm Tape motor control over UART, interesting.

If this could be implemented for the cores capable to read real tape, it will be a kind of cherry on the cake.

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:32 pm

kathleen wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:02 pm
LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:44 pm Tape motor control over UART, interesting.
If this could be implemented for the cores capable to read real tape, it will be a kind of cherry on the cake.

Absolutely, this would allow for actual tape players to work correctly and could be used for multiple cores. I'm interested to see what kid of adapter they are using on the MIST.

LactobacillusPrime · Sat Oct 08, 2022 7:27 am

beamrider wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:03 pm I believe the MIST is now supporting the mega-cart ROM making it easier to use Vic-20 cartridges.

https://github.com/gyurco/VIC20_MiST/commits/master

Not sure if these changes could be ported easily to MiSTer or not.

The Chameleon64 VIC-20 Core also supports the VIC-20 Megacartridge! The fact that this image has a lot of the cartridge games next to tape and disk games working is a godsend. It does away with the clumsy two part manual loading and using the correct start address. It really is a wonderful cart - I have one in my real VIC-20 as well. Fingers crossed it will appear on the MiSTer FPGA core at some point. It would replace quite a fair bit of the hard to use multi part cartridge files that are out there now.

ericgus09 · Unread post by **ericgus09** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 9:54 pm

In the same vein id love to see the "PENULTIMATE+ CARTRIDGE" from TFW8B able to run on the Mister .. one thing I do miss using my Mister vs my real Vic20 ..

sharklodon · Unread post by **sharklodon** » Tue Oct 18, 2022 5:21 am

Hi team,

No news, right?

If it's available on Mist and NeptUNO FPGAs, it would be easy to implement it on MiSTer,

Thanks,
Shark

Moondandy · Unread post by **Moondandy** » Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:55 pm

Does anyone have a list of what VIC-20 multicarts are out there? Are there exclusive contents on any carts? The more info there is on what is out there then the more chance of getting support added.

ericgus09 · Unread post by **ericgus09** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:20 am

Moondandy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:55 pm Does anyone have a list of what VIC-20 multicarts are out there? Are there exclusive contents on any carts? The more info there is on what is out there then the more chance of getting support added.

Well the Penultimate+ cart has these TFWB in-house games included on their cart (and yes they are decent games), I actually own 2 of these carts, the original release and the updated one with the extra games and some updates.. IMHO well worth it if you have a real Vic20, the cart sits in my machine permanently .. that + an SD2IEC (the cart has features for enhancing sd2iec use).. and of course memory expansion too.

tfw8b titles

Bertie the Ball
BolderDan
Cheese and Onion
Fast Boy
Future Fighter
Pentagorat
RodMan
Spaceship-1
Super Starship Space Attack
ViccyBird

The complete listing of 70+ other games and utilities can be found here..
https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/vic20- ... -plus.html

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 9:36 am

Moondandy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:55 pm Does anyone have a list of what VIC-20 multicarts are out there? Are there exclusive contents on any carts? The more info there is on what is out there then the more chance of getting support added.

I have the Penultimate+ and a Final Expansion (alpha).

The Final Expansion cartridge has a really handy system to load all kinds of software from an SD2IEC device, using a built-in menu. It uses files with custom commands to correctly enable the right memory expansion blocks and load and execute software. This, for instance, allows you to load a two-part cartridge into the correct memory blocks and start it automatically. Another example is automatically loading a file and starting it with a sys command.

Apart from that it allows up to 512KB memory expansion, using blocks you can switch in and out of the addressable memory blocks. And it has 512KB of EEProm, which you can use similarly, allowing you to instantly start any type of software without having to load it.

And there's an option to add some extra basic commands, like Jiffy DOS compatible load and save commands.

The full (non-alpha) version has a built-in SD2IEC drive and a real-time clock (which is only used for correct time stamps when saving files to the drive).

Moondandy · Unread post by **Moondandy** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 3:48 pm

Thanks for the info chaps, much appreciated. Without breaking any rules about requesting/posting roms, have these two carts been dumped so if someone were looking to implement multicart loading into the core they could test these two? I can see that the MegaCart is out in the wild, and that one is confirmed to run on MiST.

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:30 pm

Moondandy wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 3:48 pm Thanks for the info chaps, much appreciated. Without breaking any rules about requesting/posting roms, have these two carts been dumped so if someone were looking to implement multicart loading into the core they could test these two? I can see that the MegaCart is out in the wild, and that one is confirmed to run on MiST.

The Final Expansion firmware is open source: https://github.com/ops/FE3-Firmware

Moondandy · Unread post by **Moondandy** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:41 pm

Oh, that's interesting, so is there a compiled rom file of this that could be potentially used on MiSTer?

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:54 pm

Moondandy wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:41 pm Oh, that's interesting, so is there a compiled rom file of this that could be potentially used on MiSTer?

I see there's a vic20_fe3.zip floating around for MAME, that looks like a candidate.

ericgus09 · Unread post by **ericgus09** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 8:54 pm

Moondandy wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 3:48 pm Thanks for the info chaps, much appreciated. Without breaking any rules about requesting/posting roms, have these two carts been dumped so if someone were looking to implement multicart loading into the core they could test these two? I can see that the MegaCart is out in the wild, and that one is confirmed to run on MiST.

I dont know bout the cartridge rom, but many of the TFW8B in-house games on the Penultimate cart are also available via ITCH.io as a name your own price basis downloadable prg/d64.. of course you can buy the actual cartridge versions at their shop as well. TFW8B is more about selling physical cartridges .. which for some platforms for real machines is a good option .. as I said I own a couple of the pent carts.. well worth it if you have a real machine.

Chris23235 · Unread post by **Chris23235** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:01 pm

Megacart is now supported:

Sorgelig wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:26 pm VIC20:
- Add Megacart support (adopted Robinson's implementation).

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:27 pm

That is awesome, can't wait to try it

EDIT: Just tried it, it makes the core much more easy to use. You do seem to need to set it to PAL for it to work.

teller · Unread post by **teller** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:21 pm

Awesome news!

djsquare · Unread post by **djsquare** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:22 am

Does this mean Cheese and Onion will work on the Vic 20 core now? I could never get that game to work and figured it was just because it needed 32k RAM

rhester72 · Unread post by **rhester72** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:30 am

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:27 pm EDIT: Just tried it, it makes the core much more easy to use. You do seem to need to set it to PAL for it to work.

I noticed the same, which is odd, because supposedly the genuine cartridge worked on both NTSC and PAL.

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:16 am

rhester72 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:30 am
LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:27 pm EDIT: Just tried it, it makes the core much more easy to use. You do seem to need to set it to PAL for it to work.
I noticed the same, which is odd, because supposedly the genuine cartridge worked on both NTSC and PAL.

Looks like that is a bug then. You're limited to 50hz at the moment. Though, for instance, Rally-X, which AFAIK is an NTSC game, does work.

rhester72 · Unread post by **rhester72** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:50 pm

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:16 am Looks like that is a bug then. You're limited to 50hz at the moment. Though, for instance, Rally-X, which AFAIK is an NTSC game, does work.

Works within the megacart or outside it?

Come to think of it, I'm not 100% convinced that the megacart is, in fact, NTSC compatible...there's a considerable number of 'PAL fixed' games included that may well be rendered no longer compatible with NTSC as a result (and not marked as such).

LamerDeluxe · Unread post by **LamerDeluxe** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:45 pm

rhester72 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:50 pm
LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:16 am Looks like that is a bug then. You're limited to 50hz at the moment. Though, for instance, Rally-X, which AFAIK is an NTSC game, does work.
Works within the megacart or outside it?

Come to think of it, I'm not 100% convinced that the megacart is, in fact, NTSC compatible...there's a considerable number of 'PAL fixed' games included that may well be rendered no longer compatible with NTSC as a result (and not marked as such).

Rally-X, that is included in the megacart, works. Could be that the cart is PAL only.

beamrider · Unread post by **beamrider** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:00 pm

djsquare wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:22 am Does this mean Cheese and Onion will work on the Vic 20 core now? I could never get that game to work and figured it was just because it needed 32k RAM

I don't think so.

The reason Cheese & Onion doesn't work is due to the MiSTer Vic-20 core itself not being particularly accurate. Quite a few games don't work or have issues.

beamrider · Unread post by **beamrider** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:05 pm

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 08, 2022 9:54 pm In the same vein id love to see the "PENULTIMATE+ CARTRIDGE" from TFW8B able to run on the Mister .. one thing I do miss using my Mister vs my real Vic20 ..

The mega-cart does everything the Penultimate does and more (apart from the TFW8B) games. A pity you can't really obtain them any more.

beamrider · Unread post by **beamrider** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:07 pm

rhester72 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:50 pm Come to think of it, I'm not 100% convinced that the megacart is, in fact, NTSC compatible...there's a considerable number of 'PAL fixed' games included that may well be rendered no longer compatible with NTSC as a result (and not marked as such).

LamerDeluxe wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:45 pm Rally-X, that is included in the megacart, works. Could be that the cart is PAL only.

Many of the cartridge ROM images on mega-cart have been patched so they work in either NTSC *OR* PAL. mega-cart NTSC not working on MiSTer is either a core or "feature" issue as they definitely work on real hardware.

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