Unfortunately, I still don't own a digital camera, so you'll have to live with my verbose explanations:carlsson wrote:
I didn't buy all the homemade ones, only the most interesting ones.
1. Black, slightly oversized case (14*9.5 cm, compared to the standard 14*8 cm) which has been modded to fit a switch on one side. The case reads "SPECIAL CARTRIDGE by audio computers", but I believe it is a generic case with four screws for easy disassembly. Inside is a printed card with the marking "32k system x-rom". There is room for a 8K chip, but it is empty. There are a bunch of chips, of which two TMS4416-20NL and room for two more. Those are the same type of RAM chips as the Commodore 16 has, by the way. It appears to be a memory expansion up to 32K with optional ROM. When plugged in, it identifies as a 16K expansion. If I flip the switch, the first 8K block seems to be disabled, but the second block still holds any data I put into it.
2. VIC-1110 8K RAM cartridge modded with two times four DIP switches. Despite once have being modded, it is hard to open without cracking it, so I didn't. It appears to be a fully switchable 16K expansion as follows:
LEFT 0001 RIGHT 0000 = 8K expansion
LEFT 0000 RIGHT 0001 = 8K expansion
LEFT 0001 RIGHT 0010 = 16K expansion
LEFT 0001 RIGHT 0100 = 8K at BLK1 + 8K at BLK3
LEFT 0001 RIGHT 1000 = 8K at BLK1 + 8K at BLK5
If more than one switch in each block is ON, that block is disabled just like if all switches would be off. I didn't dare to configure both sets of switches to the same value. Apparently, it does not support 3K expansion.
3. Grey/white (top/bottom) cartridge with only the company label. Case by Handic. It appears to be an 8K memory expansion. No switches, but once opened, it reveals two empty sockets and a total of four HM6116P chips, which indeed are 150 ns 2Kx8 RAM chips, and it sums up to 8K. The sockets are labeled to take one 4K EPROM each, and there are solder pads to select which block the EPROMs should go into.
4. White Handic cartridge with homemade software: "Extended Basic by Zyntax Zoft". Inside a small card from Datatronic with two sockets, one filled with the Extended Basic EPROM. It boots with the following screen:
Code: Select all
*** EXTENDED BASIC ***
3581 BYTES FREE
READY.
5. Ditto homemade cartridge: "Spell it big". Same kind of card and configuration inside. Appears to be a BASIC program stored in BLK5, as the instructions tells you to POKE44,160:RUN. The program was written by Stefan Modin (probably one of those who got paid 5000 SEK/month) on January 4th, 1983. After some slow initialization involving copying character set at double size to RAM, one gets to choose colours on border, screen and characters, and is then presented with some kind of full screen editor where you can type messages. Probably some keyboard training course for people with bad eye sight. When a line is full, some strange action takes place to make room for a new line.
Oh well, nothing really amazing, but still a nice trip. At least I have memory expansions enough to sell.
In my previous message, I didn't mention that the guy had a drawer full of empty VIC-20 cartridge cases, the white variety from Commodore or Handic. He also had a few of those Datatronic boards, but unpopulated. I guess it might be interesting to someone as well, i.e. for manufacturing Leif's disk utility cartridge. Perhaps they should not be widely distributed, in case it a risk of creating false copies of other cartridges.