{"id":3782,"date":"2021-12-07T16:38:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T15:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/?p=3782"},"modified":"2023-03-28T08:58:07","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T06:58:07","slug":"creare-una-cartuccia-c64-da-un-prg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/creare-una-cartuccia-c64-da-un-prg\/","title":{"rendered":"Create a C64 cartridge from a PRG"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the Commodore 64 there are many programs that we can use, or we can create new ones, to load them there are different possibilities between cartridges and peripherals, but if we want to create our own cartridge with the program that starts automatically?<\/p>

I'll show you a simple system that requires a few steps.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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What do you need?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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First let's convert our .PRG file into a .CRT cartridge format
For this step you need to have Python installed on your computer, find it for both Windows and Mac or Linux.
Let's download the called script now prg2crt <\/a>downloadable here<\/a>.<\/p>

We run this script from the terminal or Python command line. (let's assume we convert the myprog.prg program to cartridge.crt image)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tpython prg2crt.py myprog.prg cartridge.crt\n\t\t\t\t<\/code>\n\t\t\t<\/pre>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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We now have a crt file that we can load into an emulator like the Vice and verify that everything is working.
However, this file cannot be written to an eprom, we must first do another step to remove the header that the cartridge has.<\/p>
For this step we need the VICE emulator which has a tool called cartconv<\/b>\u00a0which we will need to transform the CRT file into a binary that can be written to the eprom.
Below is the command to give to cartconv (-i input file) followed by the name of our crt (-o output file) followed by the name of the .BIN file<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tcartconv -i cartridge.crt -o mycart.bin\n\t\t\t\t<\/code>\n\t\t\t<\/pre>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Once this is done we have the binary file that can be written to the eprom, we have created a cartridge !!!<\/p>
Attention! however, we cannot use any cartridge, if the program is within 8k we can use any cartridge such as the Versacart<\/a>\u00a0but if the program is bigger (I've never tried the Versacart up to 16k) in this case we have to use a magic desk<\/a>\u00a0capace di indirizzare tutta la memoria. Questa cartuccia pu\u00f2 gestire 2 fino a eprom da 512k.. non vi bastano? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>
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I hate using cartconv ...<\/h4>
AHH yes? Then you'll have to do it by hand!<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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If you don't want to use cartconv, you can safely tinker with the crt file by opening it with a hex editor and removing the cartridge header.<\/span><\/p>
Not only that, every 8k of data there will be a new header, so these lines must also be removed.
ES: $2000, $4000 .. etc.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Per il Commodore 64 ci sono tantissimi programmi che possiamo utilizzare, oppure ne possiamo creare di nuovi, per caricarli ci sono diverse possibilit\u00e0 tra cartucce e [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,6,40,195,145,194,193],"class_list":["post-3782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-c128","tag-c64","tag-cartuccia","tag-commodore-128","tag-commodore-64","tag-crt","tag-prog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retrofixer.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}