1541 Ultimate 2

[Demon Cleaner]

This new piece of hardware has been recently released, and it's quite interesting for old Commodore lovers:

http://www.c64scene.com/c64/function...og.php/?p=1729

[Buleste]

It's taken an age to arrive but it is finally out although still with a few niggles. The official site can be found here.

[Teho]

That looks handy, might have to get one of those.

[Harrison]

That does look good.

So this is basically a floppy drive emulation system, allowing you to put a load of disk images onto a memory card and load them up so the C64 thinks it is booking a real disk?

Is it a better solution that previous memory card hardware that has been produced for the C64? I've read in various places of incompatibility with many software titles with other units.

[Buleste]

As it emulates a 1541 it has more compatibility than other systems like the MMC replay etc. It's still not 100% and multiple disk games can still have issues but it's as good as you can get.

[Harrison]

So it is more compatible with multi disk games that other solutions? I remember reading that everyone was having problems with the other systems for this.

I also read that you can select the disk images either from a ui or directly on the unit using built in buttons to swap disk images during a game. Is that true, and how does it allow you to navigate the images directly? Does something appear on screen?

Devices like this make is very tempting to buy a C64 as it makes the whole system much more compact and easier to use for a bit of retro gaming.

[Buleste]

If you remember old C64 Action Replay carts you had 2 buttons. A Freeze and a reset. The U1541-II has a third menu button which brings up a menu allowing you to access disk images. Other sdhc card devices didn't allow you to do disk swaps although I think the 1541-III did I'm not entirely sure. You can also use cart files that have been converted to .bin so you can use action replay images and also some cart games. With the USB post you can plug in a USB Ethernet stick and also connect to the net (although I'm not entirely sure how fully this is implemented yet). If you want you can also plug in speakers and have the U1541-II make all the noises a 1541 would including some of the music.

Word of warning. This is a one man operation and whilst Gideon does his best it does take a while for him to complete his orders. SO if you want one order one now and shop around for C64's as it'll take at least 1 month for you U1541-II to come through.