1541ultimate

The 1541 Ultimate is a project by the dutch hobbyist VHDL-developer Gideon Zweijtzer. This is a Commodore 64 compatible cartridge that carries an Action Replay and Final Cartridge III (whatever the user prefers) and a fully compatible FPGA-emulated Commodore 1541 drive that is fed from a built-in SD-card slot with c64-compatible files (e.g. .d64 diskimages or .prg single program files). The difference to other SD-based and .d64 mounting cartridges like the MMC64, Super Snapshot 2007 or MMC Replay is, that the 6502 that powers the 1541 Floppy and the 1541's mechanical behaviour (even sound) is fully emulated, making it theoretically compatible with almost anything. Fileselection and management is done via a third button on the cartridge that brings up a new menu on screen. The 1541 Ultimate also works in standalone mode without a c-64, functioning just like a normal Commodore 1541 would. Diskselection of .d64s is then done via buttons on the cartridge, power is supplied via a mini USB-port. There is a "Plus-Version" available with an extra 32 Megabytes of RAM (as REU and for future use), the basic version has just enough RAM for the advertised functions to work.
The cartridge is slightly larger than a standard c64 cartridge, making it too big for standard cases. It is shipped "bare" with two stands at the far side to give it at least some stability.

The first batch of 1541 Ultimates were shipped in early April 2008 to all customers that had paid for it in advance, financing the production run. A second production run is already scheduled, orders are handled on a first-come-first-served basis.

There is a similar hobbyist project to the 1541 Ultimate called '1541 III', but it is not mass-produced, and it is unknown if it ever will be.

Features
*Full emulation of a real Commodore 1541 diskdrive.
*Secondary 'IEC-drive' for direct access to FAT filesystem.
*FAT/FAT32 support, with sub-directories and long filenames
*C64 cartridge emulation; Final Cartridge III, Action Replay, Commodore 1750/1764 REU
*Flexible freezer menu to select, mount, create D64 images, browse disk images
*Configuration screen, with resident settings
*'Stand-alone mode' - powered through Mini-USB connector, controlled through buttons and IEC.

Specifications
*Board size: 68 x 96 mm
*250k-gate FPGA
*Full size 6-pin DIN connector (IEC)
*512 kB SRAM
*2 MB Flash ROM
*32 MB SDRAM (Plus version only)
*2 emulated 6502 cores, one with the original clock (emulating the 1541 CPU) and the other with 25MHz (handling the .d64 management and SD-access)
*Full size MMC / SD card compatible (Mini/Micro SD possible with adapter)
*Stereo audio output
*6-pin expansion pin-header for connection to tape port (for C2N emulation), or other future features.

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See Also

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