Hi Tony,
welcome on board. You haven’t missed much:)
Well, I guess I’m the right person to answer your questions.
I’m writing all of this for the second time, because the phpBB-system simply knocked me out, when I hit the Preview-Button
and all was lost!
What’s involved?
Not too much. You get a cheap Chinese copy of the „Willem Programmer (PCB5.0)“ on ebay for 35€ and an UV-eprom eraser box for about 20€. Plus shipping. That’s it. Downside: You need an „old“ PC or Laptop with a genuine parallel port, sitting on the genuine „IBM-PC“ IO-addresses. The somewhat rudimentary programmer software (it has to be downloaded) needs it. I did not manage with an USB-to-parallel adapter or a PCI-interface card. Maybe I’m just too dumb. Anybody else here who could? Or you buy a better programmer. There was a discussion going on somewhere else on this board.
The eraser box is a simple plastic box with mechanical timer and „UV light bulb/tube“. It comes with an American power plug, but made for 230 VAC. I’m using a travel adapter.
After some investigation, my setup now is working reliably and well. Very simply and fast. No problems.
The programmer is able to program all kinds of components. By the way, the USB connector is just serving as power supply not for reading or writing any data. I’m using a standard AC/DC adapter instead. The included Centronics cable is used for data transmission.
Should I do that?
If you just want to burn four eproms for the multi cartridge, it probably does not make sense to buy all that stuff. I can help you out.
But if you are interested in that archaic method of data storage, or if you want to build something with a simple memory and no busses and so on, then parallel eproms probably are the simplest components you can find.
How does it work?
When you have made up your mind, I can tell you the necessary steps to burn the eproms for the cartridge. It’s really simple and straight forward. Just concatenate 8k rom images to a binary resembling the size of the eprom, burn that binary with the help of the burner’s software. If there is an error, put the eprom into the eraser box for 30 minutes or so, check whether it is completely blank, burn again.
SD-cartridge emulator?
Of course, it can be built, we simply need a volunteer who does that.
Like you, I’m using the marvelous HxC-floppy emulator for disk programs. The multi cartridge is supposed to fill the gap for the (Dragon and Tandy) rom images. It simply is a „32 roms in one“-device. Some people describe software tools that convert rom-images to disk files. I never did that and I do not know, whether that works well. Probably better on a Dragon 64, than on a Dragon 32, where the programs have to be relocated to the lower bank. Manual analyzing and changing might be required?! But then, the HxC could do it all.
For the moment, I think the two devices solution (HxC for floppies and multi cartridge for roms) is ok.
Best regards,
Rolo