ScuzzBlog: Diaries December 2020
Entry 1st December 2020: Post 1: C64 Cartridge - Full back-up.
C64 Cartridge - Full back-up.
I never really made any effort to collect cartridges and have very
few. I did however secure a few of the more dubious cartridge
gadgets that, whilst purporting to be back-up tools, I sense were
used to copy games. I really don't know as I have never used them.
I do find the Simons BASIC cartridge very useful and I see that KCS
are responsible here for the Power Cartridge. You may recall that
KCS also made the Power PC card for the A500. The manual states that
the Power Cartridge provides a quick loader, memory monitor and
total back-up.
The Trilogic Expert cartridges are pretty blunt about being able to
freeze any program and transfer the contents to disk and from tape
to disk and visa-versa. They also boast a rocket loader for speeding
up the load process, I assume.
I can well understand the need to enhance and speed up the processes
involved in programming on the C64 but I guess if tools were made
available to hack into commercial software then somebody is going to
use it. I really don't know. I hadn't intended buying these cartridges.
They were offered to me by a seller of a 1581 and Opal Vision and so
I just bought the job lot. The cartridges sit in a box in store and
it'll probably be another three years before I retreive them again.
There was a recent question on Reddit about these cartridges and the
one discussed had a battery inside. I assumed the battery had long
failed rendering the cartridge useless. From my own experience with
older kit supporting memory through batteries I found them to be
pretty useless as the battery never lasted very long.
Anyway with names like Freeze Machine and Game Killer I can only
surmise what purposes these little gadgets were put to. I like the
one cartridge named Freeze Frame which captures screen images. Or
so I believe. Could be wrong. The EXOS V3 has a directory listing
facility with command inputs that intrigue me. May look into that.
Anyhoo all back in the box. I was tempted to play Terminator but in
truth I have the game, pretty much, on the Amiga.
C64 Catridge - Full back-up.
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