SuperCard Plus ROM
#1
Is there any legal way to get the ROM of the SuperCard Plus (as an image) for using it  in an emulator like e. g. VICE?
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#2
You could pull the ROM from your board an dump it in an EPROM reader.
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#3
Does that mean one has to buy SuperCard Plus hardware in order to use it in an emulator?

That feels quite strange. You see: Having hardware produced, buying it, and then not using it. That's not what we should do with the resources on earth.

Can't you sell digital images of the ROM instead?
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#4
Using Supercard+ in an emulator makes no sense. You are not copying any disks, and I am not completely sure that it would work. I have only looked at it briefly when they added it to VICE. I didn't try any of the features other than to see if an error message was generated about not having the board there.

Until I can verify that it actually works, I won't consider making a digital image available. Again, I am not sure what the point would be here. You can't generate any type of disk image from this setup.
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#5
(07-28-2022, 01:51 AM)admin Wrote: Using Supercard+ in an emulator makes no sense.  You are not copying any disks, and I am not completely sure that it would work.  I have only looked at it briefly when they added it to VICE.  I didn't try any of the features other than to see if an error message was generated about not having the board there.

Until I can verify that it actually works, I won't consider making a digital image available.  Again, I am not sure what the point would be here.  You can't generate any type of disk image from this setup.

Actually, you can make images this way, which is the whole point.

You connect a c64 with a real 1541 with a supercard plus installed as drive 8
then as drive 9 you connect a pi1541 with the supercard plus ROM setup

In this configuration you can make a working G64 disk image from a floppy disk directly, with copy protection intact,
at least for everything the supercard plus can handle.

The other alternative available now, without the supercard plus rom is to use the Ramboard.
similar setup. connect a c64 with a real 1541 with a ramboard installed as drive 8
then connect a pi1541 as drive 9 - pi1541 has ramboard emulation built in.

this way you can duplicate any floppy disk that Maverick with ramboard can handle.

I guess as an alternative method could use supercard plus utilities and change ram board memory address.

But this won't work with some of your stand-alone copiers that depend on having a supercard plus installed.
there aren't a lot, but there are a few.

And of course, this doesn't work with all copy protections, as the G64/Vice combination is limited.
multi-density protection is an issue, for example. But Vice has improved a lot, and there is also "Denise" which is a nice c64 emulator

Of course even with the rom, pi1541 doesn't have support for it. and not sure if it was used as a drop in replacement for the ramboard
if that would work or not. the address is wrong. so, there's that.

But I'm not sure why I never thought of this method for creating G64's of heavily copy-protected disks before,
would have saved a lot of time! assuming it works.
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#6
ALL of the copiers on the Supercard+ disk *require* the Supercard+ hardware (8K RAM and 8K EPROM).

I have made copies with the 1541U2 (original version) modified to support the Supercard+ ROM, and that works.
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