MMC Replay and RR-Net for C-64

[Jim Brain]

Roger Pugh wrote:
> I am contemplating buying a MMC2IEC for my SX64..  link here....
>
> http://www.nkcelectronics.com/mmc2iec-commodore-disk-drive-emulation-devic.html 
>
>
> anyone with experience of theses??
>
>
>
>
> roger
If you can wait, I would hold off for a better NKC version.

The NKC hardware is OK, but it has a few problems in the PCB layout, and 
it has upgrade problems (the uC is too small).  THe author is on the 
PETSCII forums and I believe he is considering a new run with a larger 
uC and a better layout.

Regardless of whether you buy a current unit or new one, I would highly 
recommend you reflash the firmware to, or ask for  a preinstalled copy 
of SD2IEC, which is a new set of firmware that offers a lot of features 
over the original MMC2IEC firmware 
(http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/MMC2IEC)  In the interest of full 
disclosure, note that I have recently gotten involved in adding features 
to the SD2IEC firmware, though most of the features predate my involvement.

While resurrecting my uIEC project to finish it (it's an IEC to CF/IDE 
interface, along the lines of the MMC2IEC), I found the SD2IEC 
firmware.  Initially, I was planning to incorporate some of the neat 
features of the codebase into my firmware, but the more I learned about 
it, the more I liked it, so I eventually scrapped my firmware and 
modified SD2IEC to run on the uIEC hardware.  I added long filename 
support, and helped with multiple partition support. 

The firmware (and by extension, the hardware) is very capable now.  The 
latest firmware supports up to 2 physical drives, with up to 16 FAT16/32 
partitions per drive.  It uses the CMD HD syntax for CD/MD/RD commands 
and other things like partition directories (I added that day before 
yesterday).

Once the SD2IEC firmware has been flashed onto the device and the 
bootloader installed, one can update their sd2iec-based unit to the 
newest code just by putting the new firmware on the root directory of 
the primary card and resetting the unit. 

Jim