FINALLY !
The Retro Replay Hardware is shipping since the 1st of October 2001 !
This beautiful new cartridge for the expansion port of your commodore 64 or 128 computer
can be ordered NOW and a first picture of the first hand-soldered final version can be seen here:
Click to enlarge
300 cartridges will leave production at the end of September and will be manually
flashed and checked before shipping starts.
To get the Retro Replay for only 99 german marks/50 € please place a call or email
Jens Schoenfeld directly at the adress below.
To make absolutley sure to get a cartridge, you will have to contact him before the
5th of October, since at that date Jens will start shipping the cartridges to the
resellers around the world. Whenever you are late, you could miss your chance in
getting a brand-new feature-rich Retro Replay !
Contact Jens at:
Jens Schoenfeld
Individual Computers
Roermonder Str. 228
52072 Aachen
Phone: +49 241 12077
Fax: +49 241 12088
(Don't forget your bank account and the permittance to draw money!)
(Mostly germans will be able to do booking this way.)
(An often asked question: No, Jens can not handle credit card orders.)
Email: jens@schoenfeld.de
To read a detailed history about the hardware development, please read
THIS(local copy) document, which contains an explanation of the c64-registers which
will be available with the new hardware, aswell as details about flashing the Flashrom.
Here we will just give you a detailed description of what is possible with the
new Retro Replay cartridge.
- First of all: The Retro Replay Cartridge is a quality made product with gold-plated
wires and a black mainboard. See the picture again and imagine that the final product
looks pretty much the same.
- The Retro Replay Cartridge is Action Replay ROM compatible and can be flashed
to run about any version of ordinary Action Replay 4.x to 7.x ROMs, aswell as
the new Cyberpunx Retro Replay ROMs.
- A 128kb FlashROM allows you to upload many different ROM versions, where up to
64kb of the FlashROM can be used for running a cartridge ROM.
Flashing the new ROMs works in plain C64 mode, so no additional hardware is needed!
Using a jumper you can select between two banks and have 2 different ROMs on the
FlashROM.
- Control for the FlashMode and for selecting the wanted Bank is achieved with two
hot-pluggable jumpers.
- $DE00 read bug fixed
- the freeze-logic was re-developed from scratch and now beats all other freezers safety-wise.
- high quality buttons
- freeze button digitally softened (no double freezes, no locking up here)
- extended logic to allow switching of the IO-area.
This way either $de02-$deff or $df00 - $dfff are used depending on the software which is
flashed on the selected ROM bank. Special software which allows REU compatibility will be
available soon.
- 32kb of additional RAM available.
Unlike the original Action Replay, 32kb of RAM are supplied with Retro Replay.
Assembler programmers will be able to utilize the RAM pretty easily and the
new implementation of TASS Macro will use it.
The planned packer/cruncher will rely on this feature aswell.
- Expansionport to allow connecting a RS232-Interface "Silversurfer".
This high-speed serial connector allows up to (theoretically) 460800 baud with
16 Byte FIFO and a connection to nearly any other computer around.
Software support is planned and will be realised very soon (According to Groepaz/Hitmen). :)
- The mainboard is designed to fit into most existing covers, but will be delivered without.
(We were unable to get that many covers and we would have wanted them transparent or so.)
(While people seem to really badly want a cover we can just say: get us all the stuff and
properly support us. We are not doing this for money, but for piece of good hardware
and ofcourse to make our c64 live easier and more comfortable aswell.)
- A short manual explaining the basic functions will be supplied aswell.
It will be far from complete, because the online manual is easier to maintain and
a printed version would be outdated very soon.
This will force most people to finally read it aswell. :)
- Beta 4 of the Retro Replay Software will be available more or less soon. :)
Meanwhile, the shipped carts will be equipped with a PAL Beta 3.x ROM.
The other FlashBank will contain a ROM with a Flash Utility.
This can be saved to disk, so we don't have to supply 300 disks.
A newer (faster) version of the Flash Utility is already online.
We are working on support for REU mainly now and concentrate on finishing
the other promised features.
- Drawback for 128 users: When Retro Replay is plugged into a C128, it will also start in
128 mode. We will supply a hardware patch which will change the behaviour, so
pressing the cartridge reset will take you to 64 mode, while the 128 reset
is for the 128 mode. (my preferred behaviour)
Dirk 'Skern' Klettke has reported a simple patch to change this behaviour.
A detailed description will be available soon.
The software will feature all the funky stuff like Monitor, Freezer, Grafics-Ripper,
extended Basic Command Set, Pokefinder, Screeneditor, Spritekiller, Fast Disk Routines and
Copiers as you already know them from previous ROM versions.
Future revisions will include built-in TASS Macro, Sprite- and Char-Editor, direct REU support
and much, much more.
stay tuned !
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