UK1541 user feedback

[MagerValp]

I received my UK1541 today, promptly unpacked it and tested it with the two SD cards I use with my 1541U and 1541U2. Unfortunately I don't get very far, presumably because the beta firmware is incompatible with my SD cards (one 512 MB, one 2 GB).

Usually I get a little status text when it power on:


Then after a reset an empty dir listing:


Only reset works, pressing fire results in a crash:


I'll see if I can pick up an 8 GB SDHC card tomorrow and try that instead.

 

[kisiel]

ok, maybe it will help, try to format 2GB card in windows system as is mentioned in manual and copy some files , because it looks like boot loader is working.

 

[MagerValp]

Yes, it's FAT32 formatted (with FAT16 it doesn't boot), and there is a single d64 on the card called u4gold-a.d64. Same with the 512 MB card. I can't get it to display a dir listing and fire crashes it.

 

[kisiel]

so please put some files not one. I have no support for 512MB this is also in manual on line. I started project in 2013, went for shopping and bought what was on market at this time. But all procedures are made partiality with support for old card but I can not test it.

 

[MagerValp]

Yes, I tried with a bunch of files and directories too, same thing. Since it appears to be accessing the card fine the bug is probably at a higher level, e.g. in directory parsing or similar. I can make a disk image of the card for you if you want to try restoring it to one of your cards.

But I'll pick up an 8 GB SDHC card tomorrow, as you say they are easy to come by.

Edit: image of my SD card here http://termos.hg5.gu.se/tmp/mvultimate2.zip

 

[kisiel]

Yes maybe is because of non sdhc card.

 

[MagerValp]

Success with a 4 GB SDHC card I picked up today!


It happily loads and runs Ultima IV (using my uload m4 irq loader):


It sometimes gets stuck on this screen though, and I have to reset or power cycle a few times to get past it:

 

[MagerValp]

After playing for a while the loader hung. Resetting the drive emulation left it in a state where it tries to load files but fails with load error. I can (slowly) get a dir listing, but not load anything:


Unmounting and mounting the d64 again fixes it.

 

[kisiel]

Yes, this is what I call misaligin after core reset, needs to be done properly. Unmounting and mounting is a temporary solution.
Update 0.40 is coming soon to provide:
- fixed problem with AR fast format, again same mistake.
- dual disk copy in both direction from 1541-II and UK.. is still some issue to fix.

Maybe I will find a reason why UK is not working with 2GB card. PPL will stuck in this situation sooner or later.

 

[grue74]

New 8Gb Transcend class 10 microsd card, formatted with windows 8.1 with settings like the wiki suggests.



And inserted to UK1541

 

[plazma]

I tried the UK1541 during the weekend. All the games and demos I tried worked ok. I used a breadbin model. The display and IR sensor are partially blocked.

kisiel: what signals are used from the user port? Only +5V power?

I'll try to fit the UK1541 in an box and extend the wires.

Is there coming support for JiffyDOS? I won't use this much without JiffyDOS drive ROM support. It is too slow compared to SD2IEC or 1541UII.
It does work with JiffyDOS installed into the C64 but with regular slow speed only.

 

[kisiel]

kisiel: what signals are used from the user port? Only +5V power?

Not only, 8-bit port, ATN, and Power / GND. So at least 3 wires are necessary.

Support for all ROMs are on my TODO list so I do not see problem with Flash inside Cortex M0.

I prefer to use Action Replay to speed up loading. Expansion Port is Free !!!

 

[plazma]

kisiel: what signals are used from the user port? Only +5V power?

Not only, 8-bit port, ATN, and Power / GND. So at least 3 wires are necessary.

Support for all ROMs are on my TODO list so I do not see problem with Flash inside Cortex M0.

I prefer to use Action Replay to speed up loading. Expansion Port is Free !!!

What is the ATN signal used for?

 

[Tom-Cat]

Received my device. Here are thoughts after quite some hours of work:

The device is really well made (if Kisiel makes these all "by hand" then he is really good). Love the little display... for some people (those that don't have perfect sight) it could be a problem to read the directory entries since the display is tiny and the font used is tiny too. But for me it is OK.
The remote control works fine too. Good choice of buttons used, basically never pressed the wrong button by mistake. Also the range is good (you have to sit by the computer anyway because of small display).
Didn't try the joystick control yet, no need for it

I used a 8Gb SanDisk class 4 SD HC card. Worked perfectly. Left it factory-formatted, just copied the d64 files over and plugged it in.

I tested on a C64C. So far results are very good. Works fine as the only device on the bus and together with SD2IEC as device #8. Some demos/games need it as only device on the bus though - I just unplugged the sd2iec and it was fine with those.

Tested lots of demos (from EoD, Comaland, Coma Light 13, Wonderland XII, Deux Ex Machina, 2nd Reality, etc.) and they worked very nicely. Also the games I tried worked fine.
If the games use their own loaders you need to reset the drive after you reset the c64 (this particular c64 doesn't reset the IEC when the c64 is reset), the button CH+ normally works fine for this. As Magerwalp reported sometimes there is a problem and loading becomes REALLY slow, then unmounting and remounting a d64 works.
Also kernals Exos3 (or Tornado DOS) worked fine, speeded up loading very much. Action/Retro replay speeder works too.

Groepaz gave me some pointers to demos/games that could be problematic and - it was so. So here they are:

Newcomer Enhanced - UK1541 goes into DEBUG screen right after you load the boot program.

Primitive 7 Sins by Albion Crew ( http://csdb.dk/release/?id=69879 )- standard d64 but UK1541 doesn't want to mount it properly. Directory loaded is empty/strange.

Addams Family Motiv8 ( http://csdb.dk/release/?id=61054 ) - freeze after trainer

Cafe Odd by Reflex ( http://csdb.dk/release/?id=788 ) - same as Primitive 7 Sins - it doesn't mount it properly/at all... empty dir shown in both browser and c64.

If other UK1541 users and kisiel can try these it would be great ... aparently the last 3 can't be run by the 1541u2 either.

Anyway I am VERY satisfied with the UK1541. We knew it cannot be 100% from the start, but if Groepaz wouldnt point these out specifically because of problems on other hardware this would be a 100% device for me.

Best regards,
TC

 

[Tom-Cat]

Primitive 7 Sins by Albion Crew ( http://csdb.dk/release/?id=69879 )- standard d64 but UK1541 doesn't want to mount it properly. Directory loaded is empty/strange.
Cafe Odd by Reflex ( http://csdb.dk/release/?id=788 ) - same as Primitive 7 Sins - it doesn't mount it properly/at all... empty dir shown in both browser and c64.

There is some VERY strange behaviour happening with my UK1541 here.

I tried these two demos and I could not mount the .d64 images on UK1541. However another user could mount and run them ok.
So I copied them 5 times to the SD card. When I compare the copies on the PC everything is OK - they are all the same, no problems.
But on the UK1541 side I can only mount some of them, around half. Strange

Any idea why ?

EDIT: I copied 100 d64 files to the root now and some of them cannot be mounted ok (empty dir and only one "@@@@@@@@@@@" line in the browser directory window), some get read only partially (@@@@@@@@@ file somewhere in the middle and then stops) - some of these get read ok on the c64 directory though, some not, some crash. This is VERY strange. This is a new SD card (SanDisk 8Gb class 4) which is perfectly readable on the PC - all files are ok).

EDIT2: It seems the problem is linked to how you copied your files to the SD card. If the card is formatted and you copy all files to it in one go - they are all nicely sequentially written to the SD card, then there is no problem. As soon as you start removing some files and making directories and moving them around then the problems start on the UK1541. So if the files are nicely stored in sequential sectors on the SD card it is ok, as soon as this is not the case there are problems.

Tomaz

 

[kisiel]

Thanks for reporting this bug in FS (deleting / more files in main dir). Limited memory in Cortex M0 is root of problems with FS.

Mounting of d64 is limited to d64 35 track and 40 track without map of errors, reason is limited memory.

 

[dudz]

Ok so, today i picked up the uk1541 from the post office

so first task was to find an SD card that works (from a couple i have laying around, i didnt want to specifically format and prepare one for a first quick test) - this didnt turn out so easy as i thought. turned out that the device does only accept cards with a partition table on them, and "superfloppy" format will not work. (a lot of my cards are in this format) however, even when i finally found a card that worked, a bunch of strange things happened - probably because of the above mentioned filesystem problem (i rarely format my sd cards but keep deleting and overwriting files all the time).

so then i prepared a proper blank card (you may want to add this info to your info page... in linux using gparted create a partition table type "msdos", add one fat32 partition, format/apply) and copied some directories full of d64s in one go. that things work better however, it still feels a bit instable and often i wasnt sure if a particular problem could be the result of a for some reason wrongly mounted image (filesystem bug) or actual drive emulation.... also i had to powercycle often to make it accept the sd card and/or mount another image properly, both of which makes further testing a bit hard. these seem to be the most important bugs/problems at the moment _because_ besides that, quite a lot of stuff seem to work already... some specific problems:

"trans*form/focus" shows corrupted graphics

"pollwp.prg" from VICE drive tests shows only one transition on the r/w protect sensor when changing a disk, but it should show 4 (compare with VICE or real drive). this is required for a couple of turn-disk detection things. should be easy to fix

i tried running a couple other tests from VICE repo, but most seem to hang immediatly - which might be a problem with the protocol used (which is the same in all of them). or perhaps another filesystem screwup? i cant tell =)

(and please, mercy with my eyes.... consider using a larger font on the left side of the filebrowser =P 8x8 is cool!!! ))

 

[kisiel]

Ok so, today i picked up the uk1541 from the post office

"pollwp.prg" from VICE drive tests shows only one transition on the r/w protect sensor when changing a disk, but it should show 4 (compare with VICE or real drive). this is required for a couple of turn-disk detection things. should be easy to fix

No fix for this. Close disc with tape and check again in real drive.

 

[Tom-Cat]

I think the biggest priority should be the FS bugs fixing... it is really bad that you get erratic behavour when your SD is fragmented, this will drive customers crazy - random d64 not working and then when you save them again they start to work. This is bad.

 

[kisiel]

Please use defrag because in Cortex there is only 8KB of RAM, chunked files needs to have more memory space.
The same problem is with sorting, there is also some programs to sort directory etc.