Penultimate II+ Auto-configures RAM for all programs.

[8bitDenial]

Something pretty cool I discovered about the new future was 8-bit PUII+ cart, is that - while it’s known it will auto-configure RAM for its INTERNALLY held games - it also auto-configures for any games loaded from an SD2IEC.

For example, booting the cart and pressing F8 to load “*” boots up the 8k+ FB browser with 28519 BYTES FREE (I believe by default, this boots with the full 35k available).

However, regardless of which game or program I load (unexpanded, 3k, 8k+) from my SD2IEC, it just loads and runs.

This also works, if I load using the DIRPLUS v7 browser instead of the more common FB browser.

An auto-configuring RAM pack? I’d’ve killed for this, back in 1983.

A VIC-20 with JiffyDOS, PUII+ and SD2IEC IMHO, looks to be the ultimate combo.

[Mike]

That had been discussed in the thread "New penultimate-plus-2-cartridge" some time ago already.

The PU+2 does do no magic here though: it merely inspects the load address of the file (and tries) to config the RAM from that: unexpanded RAM with $1001, +3K RAM expansion for $0401, full RAM expansion for everything else, which pretty much are the three mutually incompatible RAM configs that are relevant - see my sticky post "VIC-20 Memory Layout" in the Programming section.

However, as I mentioned in the first thread I linked to, that method is not foolproof:

I did look on the future was 8bit and It did say "The PU+2's Built in File Browser will automatically select the correct memory config when loading from SD2IEC or DISK File Favourites gives you easy access to PRG, D64 or CRT images from your SD2IEC."

That is a very strong claim. However, the PU+2 file browser can't do much more than guessing a sensible RAM expansion from the load address of the file. If a load address if even present, that is. Sometimes however, the load address is not even a good indicator how the file should actually be loaded - prominent example are MG picture files, which feature a load address of $10F1 for their normal use within the BASIC extension that creates them. These files can however also be loaded to the normal BASIC start at $1201, which will then expose a BASIC program stub and starts the built-in display routine upon RUN.

To eludicate: what happens when you load this file - paradroid.prg - with the PU+2 file browser? Cross check with the file in the SD card home directory: select at least a +8K RAM expansion, enter BASIC, do LOAD"PARADROID.PRG",8 (*not* ",8,1"!) and then RUN.

That one didn't succeed from the PU+2 file browser, though loading the file "...",8 - with +8K RAM expansion - then worked:

When I used the file browser with 8k it came back with a syntax error in 0, but when I loaded it in basic with sd2iec it worked there was a picture of a droid with an arrow to a skull with red writing??

So the browser didn't get this right even though this file format (with its idiosyncrasies) exists since 2008 - yes, that's exactly what it's supposed to look like.

To repeat: MINIGRAFIK and the given file format have been around since 2008, and they have gotten quite some 3rd party use as well, so the people at tfw8b should have been aware of this.

[8bitDenial]

Despite this, everything I have loaded from my SD2IEC so far, works just fine.

For my personal requirements, it seems like a (near; given your comments) perfect solution.

I'd much rather use the PUII+ than manually re-configure RAM pack dip-settings on a per-game basis.

Each to their own, I guess.