ak tronic EPROMkarte 256k

This is an ancient device for the Commodore 64 I got a few years back. The on-board chip appeared to be corrupt and only now I've had a chance to re-write the binary, which gave it life.

What is it? Truth be told, I'm not exactly sure what it is intended for. I guess it can be seen as an alternative storage device. It works as a 8-chip "carousel" cartridge EPROM switcher with the software-based selector menu burned in the 9th chip.

Hold your horses, though, it won't run your freeze/fastload cartridge collection. Even if the device accepts 8K, 16K and 32K chips, it will only run 8K-sized chunks which rules out most games. I tried Gateway to Apshai 16K binary, but it won't run.

(As an aside, it seems some early C64 games were a bit minimal not because the programmers couldn't do more, but because they wanted to fit the games inside a 16K cartridge space...)

This is model 2140 from ak tronic, perhaps from around 1984. There's some info on net but less binaries to replace the corrupt chip. After some searching, I could find the binary for the on-board EPROM, for a similar REX 9574 card from Rex Datentechnik.

The device binary was inside a D64 disk, so I had to take two bytes off the beginning to get the 8192 byte length. A similar procedure needs to be done for any emulator cartridge files (.crt), but more bytes have to be stripped off. The CBM80 identifier is helpful, but I don't see it in all binaries, what's with those carts?

The file length is usually the best clue, 16384 for true 16K binary, 8192 for 8K and so on.

Running the C64 I am greeted with a menu for selecting one of the 8 chip slots, show the directory or enter the "modul master", which I guess is a tool for annotating the chip contents.

After selecting the chip I have to select what kind of chip it is, a 2764, 27128 or 27256. If the chip is larger than 8K, I also have to select which half or quadrant of the chip I am running.

A couple of boring 8K things I got up and working:

-Assembler and Monitor (SYS 700 for asm and SYS 32777 for monitor)
-Calc Result (needs a disk so it's a dongle really)

If you insert 8 x 32Kb EPROMs on board, you get the theoretical 256k, but in 32 x 8k portions.

For burning a 16K EPROM I can append two 8K files to make up a 16K binary with the cat command on Linux:

cat filename1 filename2 > output_filename



Switching EPROMs from software:

Looking at the manual, there are a couple of routines to access the chip memory without resorting to the main menu.

After exiting the card menu, this should run it again (if the control EPROM has been selected).

X=PEEK(57280): SYS 64738

BIT $DFC0
JMP $FCE2

Card addresses:

$DFC0 (57280) : Switch the card on/off
$DFE0 (57312) : Switch control/user EPROM
$DFA0 (57248) : Select the EPROM chip #

This way an EPROM can be selected:

POKE 57248, half/slot
X=PEEK(57280): REM switch on/off the card

The user EPROM needs to be on too.

The half/slot value is construed this way:

2764 8KB chip:$30 = 48

27128 First half: $10 = 16
27128 Second half: $30 = 48

27256 1/4: $00 = 00
27256 2/4: $10 = 16
27256 3/4: $20 = 32
27256 4/4: $30 = 48

The lower nybble indicates the eprom slot 0-7. So $31 (49) selects the second half of the 27128 at slot #2.

In assembler, this subroutine selects/deselects an EPROM:

* = $C000
C000        LDA #$10        A9 10
C002        STA $DFA0       8D A0 DF
C005        BIT $DFE0       2C E0 DF
C008        BIT $DFC0       2C C0 DF
C00B        RTS             60

Then call $C000 (49152).

The first half of the first 27128 EPROM now occupies space from 32768 onwards. Then SYS 64738 ($FCE2) runs the cartridge if that's what is needed.

For some reason, selecting slots was not always successful, the manual indicates $10 and $30 for selecting the 8K halves of a 27128 chip, I tend to find that $20 and $30 work more consistently... but perhaps not always.

I've not been able to reproduce these anomalies reliably. I found myself checking whether the cart memory was truly present, scanning the memory contents from $8000 (32768) onward. Possibly I don't understand something, or the card is a bit faulty from age.

For this reason I've not tried to change the control EPROM code, because the selector there at least works reliably. This also makes me think there is more to know about the routines.

Oh, and when the cart is on (57280), Basic seems to behave erratically and the disk device fails to work.

Sooo... Maybe it's not a too useful device in these days, but let's see if I can come up with something fun. As the EPROM memories can be paged in via software, for example some kind of animation could be played back from the chips.