1541 Ultimate
More info
- Creator
- Gideon Zweijtzer
- Type
- Cartridge
- Successor
- Ultimate 64
A cartridge that impersonates a Commodore 1541 disk drive, right down to the processor inside it, and loads disk images from memory cards.
The 1541 drive was a computer in its own right with a 6502 CPU, and a lot of C64 software, fastloaders and demos especially, ran custom code on it. Cheap SD adapters that merely translated file commands therefore choked on copy protection and trackmos. The 1541 Ultimate, developed by Gideon Zweijtzer in the late 2000s, emulates the whole drive in an FPGA and runs that code too.
Later revisions (Ultimate-II and II+) added USB, REU emulation, a freezer and networking. It mounts D64 files directly, which made it possible to work through an entire CSDb listing on real hardware without burning a single floppy.