Welcome to the Jungle ...

Usage - Here we describe all the new features, the release philosophy and some more stuff you REALLY should know. The bottom part has the old introduction with few fixes. Read it or not, it's there to round up the information you can find at this site.

At Mekka Symposium 2001 I got the first prototype of the new hardware which Jens Schoenfeld designed. It has all the features we were looking for and our little developer conference (at McDonalds) was productive aswell (Thanx to all the people there).

The new hardware has extended registers which will allow improved freezing, REU compatibilty and flashing the ROM contents from the c64 directly.

This means, that you are able to update (or downgrade) the hardware at any time you want using a flash utility which can be found in the download section.

The new hardware will also have the option to add a SilverSurfer High Speed Serial Port as it can be used on an Amiga1200 aswell. This will allow you to connect a regular PC, Amiga or Mac and do fancy stuff with the 64 ... (Transfering is the basic, we are looking to implement control routines in some way aswell.) All this can be achieved using a simple null-modem connection which is available even between two c64's when using a cable you can get virtually anywhere.

For more info on the new hardware, please take a look at www.jschoenfeld.com aswell.

Let's go for the Softwarez !!!
There are up to 4 different versions of the CyberpunX Replay ROM available currently. We are looking to straighten that out a little bit, but for the moment you will have to live with it. The 32 KB Versions can be used as they are (as .BIN files) within the VICE emulator. Whenever you convert them using the mcart utility, also CCS and other emus will be able to deal with them. You will have to rename the files to .rom to make mcart recognize them.

The 32kb ROM can be used on the regular Datel hardware aswell. It should work fine on any cart which goes by the name of Action Replay, Action Cartridge or Action Cart Professional. The version of the ROM software doesn't matter as far as the ROM is burned on an EPROM on the cartridge. Whenever you have your eprom on a socket, you are lucky and you could replace the eprom with a 27c256 eprom containing one of the new ROMs ... Your only choice would be to use PAL or NTSC then.

The 64kb ROMs are available as PAL and NTSC versions and can be used using the new hardware or any Vice version > 1.8 using the Retro Replay emulation.

These Romsets will be used on the new hardware mainly aswell and will contain all the nifty features to support the extended registers. The 32kb version will be kept as basic as possible to allow further compatibility with emulators on slow machines and ofcourse the old hardware.

This was just the quick and dirty how to use the section. For more detailed instructions on how to use cartridges with your emulator, please consult the regarding manual. I think with these few sentences, most questions should be already answered. An FAQ Section will soon extend the other pages aswell.

This was the old introduction which is covering version information as far as I found it. If you are interested, read it.
It also has the upper How To Use part with other words again.

Nowadays there are quite some people out there being able to just plug in their SuperCPU and a speed boost kicks their machine to nirvana. Believe me, a great device for sure.

Nevertheless, over the years many carts were developed for various reasons and the SuperCPU appears to be just a logical consequence on what was assembled before.

Many, many fastloaders made their way to cartridge roms and during the years more and more freeze cartridges such as KCS, Isepic, Final Cartridge and Super Snapshot were driven to more or less perfection.

They thought ......

The Action Replay Cartridge developed by Datel and various code-based clones such as Nordic Power and Atomic Power became a de facto standard for most c64 sceners and users.

While each cart has it's pros and cons, the Action Replay series soon showed to be the most reliable and usable one for everyday work.

... and it has it's bugs aswell ofcourse ...

I always worked with Action Replay since I trashed my Final Cartridge III and the Action Replay is an excellent tool for everyday work since it has proven to be quite stable.

Let me try to sort out the different versions of the Action Replay ROM Software. Over the past years I always used a simple own mod of a PAL English V5.0 and when surfing the net and through the years I stumbled over more and more versions of the cart, but when finally comparing all these versions, I found that there wasn't really anything major done. Only Datel managed to do more or less major changes to the cart soft.

English PAL Versions I found started with 4.2 (Pro) and continued with 5.0 and 6.0 (Pro). The Pro Versions or even Professional don't really mean anything. They just extend the name a little. :) ... Some of these seem to have some f-key changes and other text changes applied though. (I also located a PAL V3 version, but that's only 8k. Appears incomplete.)

There are several sub-versions of the english 5.2 aswell, but they strangely enough appear to be changes from the 4.2 versions without the major code update which happened towards the official 5.0 version. This seems to be partly caused by incorrect or confusing numbering from Toolkit and fastload version numbers.

From 4.2 to 5.0 the screen text editor on the freezer was added along with some basic f-key changes. Several bugs were removed and some added aswell. The 4.2 versions don't contain Freeze- and Break-Points and the possibility to restart the loaded parameter files, but still has the nova-copier on.

Version 5 ROMs contain several bugs which were introduced with the Freeze- and Break- Points. ZAP was removed from the Basic Extension aswell as the Novaload Copier from the Toolkit menu. Finally the Pokefinder was added along with the Screen Editor.

Version 6 ROMs which were sold and spread the most, contain the same bugs as the version 5 ROMs, but are reduced message-wise on the nova load copier and extended only with the new copyright message. Most hardcore sceners prefer the blue V5 screen over the white V6 screen, afaik.

The german versions I found around on the net and from people, differ from the version numbering quite a lot and I found 4.2 versions named v5 in german. German V6 and V6 Professional versions seem to be a straight translation of the english V6 though.

There are bad german V6 hacks though, so beware ... :)

The Triad, Triumwyrat and Derko Mods I found on the net are basically just text changes, FKey changes and here or there 'Are You Sure?' removed. Nothing major that is ...

All this isn't very satisfactory, is it ??? Right, we still have Nordic Power and Atomic Power, which kinda use the same railway and are even worse... :))))

History in the making ...

DEEKAY set a weirdo topic sometime back last year concerning the Action Replay. When I asked him about this again in the beginning of 2000 he replied, that a comrade of his, Andreas Brandmeyer and his pal Peter Weiss are working on a new revision of the hardware and they will be going on sale with that sometime during 2000.

I called up Andreas and found out about them having the possibility of adding a 128 KB Eprom to their cart, so it is possible to have 4 different mods on the cart. Meeting them at Mekka/Symposium 2000 lead us to 64 KB ROM images using a free line of the control register of the Action Replay Cart Software. Also reading the cart control register shouldn't fail on the new hardware.

Having talked to Andreas in early 2000 and getting an old german 4.2 Source of the cart, made me resourcing the English V5 PAL Version I used and start modding it for real.

The result can be found as beta revision on the download page. You may use it with some emulator (Vice 1.3/1.4 is fine with me) or add a start adress to the binary and burn it to an eprom using an eprom burner.

27c256 Eproms are used on 4.x to 5.x versions of the cart and they can easily be replaced. Most V6 Eproms are soldered towards the cart, so replacing them is more difficult.

32 KB Versions of the cart will be spread here in A FEW different revisions. I am planning of completing the current mod to have no bugs anymore and be as comfortable as possible.

64 KB revisions will only work on the new hardware in the future or on emulator. They won't be working on the original 4.x to 5.x hardware unless some hardware modification is made. DON'T ask me about that ... I have no idea about that.

I am also pretty sure that most emulators supporting Action Replay .CRT or .BIN Files will have support for 64 KB versions in the future aswell.

Additional info about hardware, sales prices and contact addies can be found HERE.

Suicidal Comment:

Recently some people asked me about copyright ... well ... copyright ... Let me outline the topic. The code, on which my version of the action replay is BASED was resourced from an existing original datel cart and patched all around. It still contains some original codefragments, but I doubt the makers of carts like atomic power and nordic power cared much about their code-base-copyrights when they assembled their carts. The COPYRIGHT for the original code lies back a long period in time and is surely not 100% datel aswell. The best proof for this are bugs found on the various carts, like the one Ninja reported on the monitor. Ofcourse, this doesn't make the code freeware, but hey ...

"I am a cracker, Action Replay is a freezer ... this makes us copyright breakers by default. :)"

Incase you feel concerned in some way, join www.babysitter.com or something similar. I am doing this for a piece of good software and nostalgics.

/cz

Now grab the binaries and the updated manual, switch on your emu or burner and enjoy the new smooth ware .... l8rs ...