One of the devices that gets part way to IsacKuo’s inexpensive flash storage solution for Commodores is Jaime Idolpx’s Meatloaf. It’s an impressive use of an ESP32 board to provide an Internet-connected disk drive plus local program storage on µSD card. It requires very little additional hardware as the ESP32 is 5V logic tolerant.
It extends the C64 by adding JSON parsing to the network interface, so there are already several web apps communicating through Commodore BASIC.
The downside that it’s currently serial IEC only, which means that transfers are going to be … unhurried, at best.
FujiNet is a similar project, but with a much larger cross-platform scope (Atari 8-bit, Apple II/III, Tandy CoCo). It’s a bit less DIY than Meatloaf, though.
Maybe it’s worth reimplementing the GPIB/IEEE-488 stack, maybe reusing what’s found on the PET and its parallel implementation? (Meaning, there’s already a solution, which should be widely compatible to BASIC.) A cartridge could override the buil-in ROM…
True, but that’s much more expensive/complicated. I’ve seen Meatloafs that were ESP32 boards soldered directly to half of a Commodore serial cable, plus an SD card and micro-USB cable for power. That’s it.
Hiya… Meatloaf now has JiffyDOS and Epyx Fastload support. So it is now faster loading things if you have those upgrades.
IEEE-488 support for Meatloaf is on the list as well as support for WiC64 apps. If you aren’t familiar with that little device you should check it out too.
We have been testing DolphinDOS support already too. It will require a bit more hardware to connect it to the user port and a different kernal rom or kernal cart.
If you are mostly interested in an inexpensive cartridge solution, check out IRQHack64. I’m actually looking at hacking together one but with an ESP32 and the Meatloaf firmware too of course.
I was browsing and saw the mention of Meatloaf so I thought I’d chime in. I hope that’s ok. I’ve done a lot of research regarding inexpensive devices for loading data on a C64.
Being inexpensive was one of the goals for Meatloaf. If you can solder 6 wires you can build one for less than $10 worth of parts. There are some really nice ESP32-S3 boards that you can get for about $5 that work great.
Happy to share some links to buy one if that is allowed in this forum.
I am a member for the FujiNet team btw. The Commodore FujiNet is based on Meatloaf code. I’m responsible for all of the Commodore stuff on the FujiNet side.
I love that people are still building things for these old computers. Happy to help how ever I can.
Of course! Thanks for replying. Meatloaf is a very neat project.
I’d never heard of IRQHack64 before. It really does look like a cheap and fast interface with high compatibility. The project could use a little more visibility/love for sure.
WiC64 looks more on the expensive side, plus has hardware duplication: an ESP32 and an ESP8266?
For ESP32 boards, I’ve been sticking with a couple of vendors: LOLIN (aka Wemos) and WeAct Studio. They’re not the absolute cheapest, but they tend to provide schematics/documentation and the PCB finish is good.
It is a neat project. Kind of old now and I tried to get in touch with the developer but never heard back. Still a cool option to explore.
Oh… the ESP8266 is not needed for normal functions. It is an option for wireless serial monitor access.
I love the Lolin boards. I love the D32 Pro and the S3 Pro is now my current favorite. I wish it broke out more GPIOs on the headers. I would be nice if the I2C connector was SPI instead with an extra line for interrupt.
This is a knock off of the Freenove S3 board but very inexpensive and comparable to the Lolin S3 Pro. It has more GPIOs broken out too.
There is an issue with it that has to be corrected and I believe that is why they are so inexpensive. The CS line on the sd card slot is not tied to a GPIO or to GND. So the slot is not usable without a quick little mod. You can easily solder a wire from CS to the shell of the card slot to ground it or run a small wire to GPIO 41. It may need a pull up resistor though. I haven’t tried that yet but I did ground it to the shell and that solved the issue. I picked up 100 of those boards to bake some Meatloafs.
(I tried to attach an image of the mod for that board but I’m not allowed to posted images yet.)
