Multiple Cartridges at Once - possible?

[Raven]

I know there are cartridge-switching boards, but are there any boards that let you utilize more than one cartridge at once? Specifically, I want to use my TFCIII and 1764 at once, so I can make use of the TFCIII interface and be able to use 1764 accelerated apps at the same time.

Do boards like that exist? Can they? Is it possible and just hasn't been done?

Thanks.

 

[carlsson]

It would depend on what address lines the cartridges use. I am not sure if that kind of expansion exists for the C64, but indeed it does for the VIC-20 which is a bit different. It means on the VIC you can use (access) two or more cartridges mapped to different memory addresses. However in case of an address conflict the first cartridge tends to take precedence or it may all lock up.

I am afraid both the TFC3 and 1764 are quite complex cartridges which would utilize most of the signals on the cartridge bus. The product you may be looking for would be a Retro Replay, MMC Replay, Chameleon or similar, something that both acts like a freezer cartridge and has a built-in memory expansion. Those cartridges however are a bit expensive so perhaps not within your budget anyway.

 

[hexsane]

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/...nsfer/C2N232/cbmlink.html#comp-cbmsrc-reuplay

Has information about using an REU with an Action Replay cartridge by making the REU registers write only. If other carts use this range this may work with it.

-Matt

 

[Raven]

It would depend on what address lines the cartridges use. I am not sure if that kind of expansion exists for the C64, but indeed it does for the VIC-20 which is a bit different. It means on the VIC you can use (access) two or more cartridges mapped to different memory addresses. However in case of an address conflict the first cartridge tends to take precedence or it may all lock up.

I am afraid both the TFC3 and 1764 are quite complex cartridges which would utilize most of the signals on the cartridge bus. The product you may be looking for would be a Retro Replay, MMC Replay, Chameleon or similar, something that both acts like a freezer cartridge and has a built-in memory expansion. Those cartridges however are a bit expensive so perhaps not within your budget anyway.

I don't actually care about the freezing and usually-wanted features of the TFCIII. What I do use is it's instant-booting GUI, and it's fastloader stuff that's integrated. I do have an Epyx Fastload as well, but the TFCIII has the GUI thing going for it (and I like it's GUI better than GEOS).

Edit:

Remembering that I had attained several C64-related books and hadn't read through them, I started flipping through a book on expansions for the unit. I found this:

"Cardboard 5 cartridge slot expansion" - which lets you use up to 3 carts at one time, and 5 plugged in total. Looks like I know what I'm looking for now. Googling for it returns that it lets you manually accept or deny requests to use the lines that must remain exclusive to a given cart that uses them by using switches.