Hacking Vic-20 cartridges

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 4:30 am

6502dude wrote:
aneurysm wrote:damn
make a hesmon cartridge
Don't do it just for Hesmon (because it sucks).

But what should you use if you want to run the monitor natively on the VIC?
I found Hesmon to be resonable. Does anybody know a better one?

vic user · Post by **vic user** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:39 am

But what should you use if you want to run the monitor natively on the VIC?

I don't know which monitor cart. ROM i have, but i have one on floppy and i just load it to its proper bank and then run it.

chris

aneurysm · Post by **aneurysm** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 1:01 am

6502dude wrote:
aneurysm wrote:damn
make a hesmon cartridge
Don't do it just for Hesmon (because it sucks).

I use built in monitor within C128 when doing 6502 stuff on CBM equipment.

ok....
damn, i should get off my ass and try crossplatform development

KilrPilr · Post by **KilrPilr** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:16 am

6502dude wrote:I haven't seen a cartridge yet that has uses sockets for Roms.

Sockets + ROM or Eprom + cartridge cover presents a bit of a physical clearance problem (it will not fit into Vic-20).

This is another reason to leave top cover off your hacked Vic-20 cartridge.

Or you could take a dremel and expand the size of the cartridge opening on the vic-20. Not that Ive tried this but I do have plenty of spare housings I could try it on. Then you would be able to use those thicker carts.

I would like to do this mod as some carts I own are very tight getting them in and out of the vic and im afraid the labels will get scratched or torn from this. The carts I can think of off the top of my head that are tight are my data 20 16k ram cart and tank atak cart. Most umi carts are tight it seems.

Leo

vic user · Post by **vic user** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:36 am

i'll have to check, but i have one of my vic's where i took the bottom part of the case of an old vic (two prong power) and attached a top part of a case (the rainbow logo one) and i can swear that i get at least a cm or more clearance for the expansion port.

chris

KilrPilr · Post by **KilrPilr** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:51 am

That would be great for the tight carts but prolly wouldnt be enough for a socketed eprom cart. Maybe though.

Leo

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 5:05 am

I use Hesmon, and I think it's better than Vicmon... And Hesmon is a great deal better than the built in monitors of the Plus/4 and C128...

/Anders

Thomas Hechelhammer · Post by **Thomas Hechelhammer** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:05 am

Boray wrote:I use Hesmon, and I think it's better than Vicmon... And Hesmon is a great deal better than the built in monitors of the Plus/4 and C128...

/Anders

OK, I like the build-in-monitor of the C128 very much, but I prefered writing code on dasm and then moving the binary with SC to my floppy.

What's the main-problem of any monitor?

It usually (always

) uses memory-locations where I want to put my code in.

Tinymon has the advantage of being very small, all monitors on cartridges are BIG FAT things which want the place where the program lives which I examine or work on.

We'll need something like Action Replay on the VIC, which has it's own RAM / ROM and puts the regular memory in the background.

-- Thomas

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:05 am

I've never used Action replay, but the monitor on TheFinalCartridgeIII is the best one I've ever used... The reason I don't like the C128/Plus/4 monitor is that it disassembles and displays everything in hunks, not line by line. In other words, you can not just go down with the cursor keys to see the next line, you have to repeat the command and a new bunch of lines are displayed...

Anyway, there are versions of Vicmon reallocated to some different memory locations: 2000, 6000 and B000 (and Hesmon is located at A000):
ftp://ftp.zimmers.net/pub/cbm/vic20/roms/tools/4k/

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 2:25 pm

Many monitors have their own extentions or new commands for quick trace, view memory in PETSCII, disk commands etc. I also prefer the line by line action. Frankly I have never had the need to use any VIC-20 monitor a lot so I couldn't tell which I like best. Daniel mentioned some interesting relocation command in Hesmon before, so maybe it is good for extra features?