Christmas comes early this year

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

This just arrived in the mail.

Now to load the HVSC onto an SD card along with the 700+ D64 images I had transferred from my floppies earlier on.

[LMan]

Rocks!!

[Analog-X64]

Indeed that is very awesome.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Luckily I've had a chance to play with it over the weekend, and so far impressions are very VERY good. I briefly had a go at a mates 1541 Ultimate rev. 1 back in February (which prompted me to order one myself straight away), but since his unit was all set up and ready to go I didn't get to mess around with the settings.

My initial worry was that I couldn't find any mention of loading a freezer-cart onto it anywhere - the reason turned out to be that it's as simple as going into the 'cartridge' choosing between Final Cartridge 3, Action Replay (4.2 and 6.0), RetroReplay 3.8 (default), Super Snapshot, Epyx Fastload and a bunch of others. I stuck with the default RR since it seems to be very similar to the Action Replay 5 I used back in the day.

The beast also emulates an REU up to 16 Mb, so I really need to fire up GEOS at one point. Sure, it's expensive. But it more than makes up for the cost the second you start using it.

Only downside I've found so far is that you cant mount D81 images on it, so it can't run the 1-disk version of Neuromancer.

[Commie_User]

Impressive: http://www.1541ultimate.net/content/ind ... &Itemid=20

I really wouldn't have expected so many features for the money. It could do with one more though - MIDI. One which can emulate the various makes, such as Sonus or Datel. If I bought one of these I would still want to use my expansion board to have MIDI as well.

Great stuff though, I'm absolutely stunned they can do so much on what must be a budget price.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

With the exception of the built-in cartridge emulation everything that the 1541U2 does is related to storage, so I can't really fault Gideon for not including MIDI.

MIDI is more of a not-for-everyone niche thing, really. Whereas everyone needs a kick-ass storage solution. Especially since the 1541 emulation has no problems with all the weird custom loaders and other hacks that people implemented back in the day. Haven't found anything that doesn't run on it yet.

[Commie_User]

I couldn't say it was a bad plan to leave it out either. A MIDI port would maybe seem as out of place on this thing as it would be on a real 1541.

There is a logic though. MIDI would be an extra data handling task which also isn't catered for very much these days. (I can't see any new MIDI gear outside the MSSIAH-only one.) Looks like the 1541 Ultimate is nigh-on perfect anyway, though even I could do with just that little extra in the Santa sack before I'd definitively want one.

[Marcel Donné]

What a fantastically amazing coincidence!
My poor old 1541 from 1984 gave up the ghost a few months ago and it looks like this is just what I need

[Commie_User]

You may still need a replacement 1541 for fresh backups of your own floppies. Even now, sometimes you're the only person who seems to have a copy of that rare something.





And there's also this Marcel: http://www.syntiac.com/chameleon.html



VGA or PS/2 mouse port on top of inbuilt utilities and stuff. There's my Santa's sack, though still without MIDI. I'd still like compatibility with a couple more brands to complete my range.




Though if it came to a tie-break, I'd probably scout for the Commodore 64 CD-ROM adapter. Well, line out from any old CD player to load in a few scant games from a rare CD.



http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26037


Yeah, I know a serial-connected laptop can be jammed with countless gigs of software images but this seems more hands-on somehow. And a great example of eccentric 80s initiative.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

What a fantastically amazing coincidence!
My poor old 1541 from 1984 gave up the ghost a few months ago and it looks like this is just what I need

I suggest you order one straight away - I ended up waiting 5 months for mine to arrive since Gideon is assembling them in batches. Spend the wait transferring your floppy collection (luckily I had help from Mdz/C64 Heaven).

Like Commie pointed out there's also the Chameleon, but it's 50 euros more. Also, I don't know how the 1541 emulation stacks up against the 1541U (important for running stuff with odd fast loaders) . Best bet is probably to sign up on 1541Ultimate.net and ask around on the forum.

[Marcel Donné]

I suggest you order one straight away

I just did