Final Cartridge III for C64 - Damn it's awesome!

[fitzsteve]

Hey all!

I got a Final Cartridge III for my C64 and all I can say is WOW, what an awesome bit of kit

I'm new to using a C64 as I never had one growing up, we were a Spectrum household lol but I can see how this would have been a must have accessory.

I'm still learning all the features as the manual is quite in depth and it's loaded with so much functionality! The reset button alone is a god send :rainbow:

So far I've been using the Disk utility to load programs from the Desktop, I found that pretty useful and the Disk loading speed is nice and fast. I thought it was pretty cool that I could save stuff right to the root of my SD card in the SD2IEC, that's awesome.

I've also been playing with the Freezer function, I was able to save my progress in a Game (by backing up to Disk) and re-load it again, that's really useful for long Games what have no save like the Dizzy Games

I haven't tried the auto fire feature yet but I'm feeling the need for some Silkworm action very soon!

I want to thank SkyDivingGirl for sending me a copy of the manual, it's been really helpful, thank you!

Anyway I'm off to explore some of the other cool features

By the way, if the C64 experts have any tips or secrets let me know!

 

[SaviorX]

back in the day that was the best way to 'dump' commercial games that came on cassette to floppy, just load and dump directly from the splash screen to disk and you had the game on floppy...

 

[Retrograde]

Have an AR VI on mine, it's a bit simpler than the FC III but the turbo loader and disk utility programs are a godsend in their own right!
It's sort-of like having a turbo board for a 16-bit rig, even if these don't provide any computational speedup.

I mean it's not even funny how much faster an AR or FC loads from real drives than base speed or the speed of a turbo tape even.

 

[demolition]

I tried the dump to disk function but couldn't make it work, not even by saving the BASIC prompt after a reboot.

Basically it dumps two files on the disk, and I guess one is the actual dump and the other is a loader for when you don't have a FCIII?

When I try to load the file it just ends at a ready prompt when I run it?

 

[fitzsteve]

Hey demolition, I had to run the smaller of the two files and my Game loaded (pretty damn fast too!) when I tried to load the larger of the two files I just got sent back to Basic!

I've had a couple of lockups whilst loading games, it looks like the FCIII has an issue with the SD2IEC but reading the SD2IEC blurb there is a fixed firmware

 

[SkydivinGirl]

@demolition

You are correct, the smaller file is the loader. The main thing is that you *MUST* load the loader using ,8,1 instead of just ,8. This then loads and automatically runs the larger file.

@fitzsteve

I'm so happy you are enjoying the cartridge. It really does change the whole computer.

The game freezer is definitely a wonderful feature! It nearly always works on games that are just a single file (no additional disk access after the initial load). However, multi-file games that load more data from the disk drive will often fail. The primary reason for this failure is that the 1541 drive has it's own processor. Freezing the game saves everything in the C64's memory, but it does not save anything from the 1541's memory. When a frozen program backup tries to access the program in the 1541's memory, it crashes because there's nothing there.

The only thing I like more with JiffyDOS over the FC3 is that the dos wedge command is smaller. For JiffyDOS, it's just the @ character while the FC3 is DOS". Still, you can get the DOS" command types automatically using the F8 key.

Please let me know if you ever have any questions about the FC3. I've had plenty of experience using the cartridge.

Heather

 

[Paradroid90]

Hi Steve its great to see you are becoming more of a 64 junkie

Have fun with the FC III

 

[fitzsteve]

Thanks for the info Heather, as always it's appreciated.

It's good to know about the multi loading Games save me wondering what was going wrong

I just found if I reset the SD2IEC the backup saves to the root of the CF, now that's cool as it's super fast to load them up again from the Desktop, I'll be saving all my favorite Games in this way I think!

I do have one QQ...

I wonder if you know of any faster command like the %* command I used to use with my (previously your!) Epyx faster loader instead of typing out Load"*"8,

 

[demolition]

I will try the freezer function again.

So the FCIII fast loader works fine with the SD2IEC? Did they implement special support for it, as I doubt they made full 1541 emulation?

I am still using a normal disk drive, but have considered getting an SD2IEC.

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Press F5. It will load the first program on the disk. You can also do a directory listing on a disk that has multiple games, move the cursor to the beginning of the line that has the game you want to load, then press F5. It will load the game on that line.

Definitely look at the Function [F1 - F8] commands in the manual. It gives you your best shortcut reference.

Heather

---------- Post added at 16:22 ---------- Previous post was at 16:20 ----------

So the FCIII fast loader works fine with the SD2IEC? Did they implement special support for it, as I doubt they made full 1541 emulation?

The SD2IEC has full compatibility for the FCIII fast loader.The SD2IEC will work with it just as well as it does with JiffyDOS.

Heather

 

[demolition]

Yep, F shortcuts are really nice. F7 to show listing, move cursor to line and press F5. Couldn't be much simpler.

 

[TheCorfiot]

Hey Steve

Any chance of an upload of the manual pls mate, sounds awesome..

TC

 

[demolition]

Quick search gave me this:

http://ar.c64.org/rrwiki/images/7/70/Final_Cartridge_III_english_Manual.pdf

 

[TheCorfiot]

Quick search gave me this:

http://ar.c64.org/rrwiki/images/7/70/Final_Cartridge_III_english_Manual.pdf

Thanks dude...
I have the Rom loaded on my turbo chameleon but never used it...
Might just program an Eprom

 

[Exilent]

Sometimes when it locks up it better to not use the cardridge for loading or trurn it off . Type off or kill to turn it off.

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Exilent is correct that the fast load does not work with every program. The nice thing is that you can usually load the first program with the fast load cartridge turned on (to get the fast load on that file) then type KILL to turn off the cartridge before you type run.

Heather

 

[Merlin]

back in the day that was the best way to 'dump' commercial games that came on cassette to floppy, just load and dump directly from the splash screen to disk and you had the game on floppy...

As long as you had got past any copy protection first (allegedly)...

 

[Sam]

advertising

advertising

:blased: hope it's allowed :readit:

someone (me) has one for sale!!!

 

[ChrisUnionNJ]

:blased: hope it's allowed :readit:

someone (me) has one for sale!!!

Just start your own wanted thread..

 

[SaviorX]

back in the day that was the best way to 'dump' commercial games that came on cassette to floppy, just load and dump directly from the splash screen to disk and you had the game on floppy...

As long as you had got past any copy protection first (allegedly)...

what copy protection?
you are loading a game off of a tape..into memory..then dumping the contents of the c64s memory to a 'memory state' file on a disk...which you can then re-load back into the c64s memory...

which btw you can legally do regardless, if you happen to own that tape...its called a legal backup (so you don't have to load it from tape every - single - time)

which is actually funny since people are constantly talking about using the sduiec which is almost entirely used to download disk images not legally owned by anyone to get free software on thier c64s....

no one ever mentioned anything about circumventing any copy protection (which i have yet to come across on a cassette anyways)

"the paranoia is strong in this one"