Final Cartridge

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Final Cartridge Screenshots
Final Cartridge Screenshots
Technical Info
ROM TFC/FC2: 16 kbyte

FC+: 24 kbyte

FC3: 64 kbyte
RAM None
Hardware features TFC/FC2/FC+: 1 Button Reset

1 Switch On/Off
FC3: 1 Button Freeze

1 Button Reset
Manual PDF: XX pages

PDF: XX pages
PDF: XX pages
PDF: XX pages
PDF: XX pages

PDF: XX pages
CRT ID TFC/FC2/FC+: 13
FC3: 35
Programming See Tech Section
Attention please!
Work is still in progress here!

The Final Cartridge by its name and its successor, the very popular Final Cartridge III, are likely the second most spread cartridges or merely cartridge family after the Replay series. Final Cartridge was developed in Holland by H & P Comp (Home & Personal Computer) with the first versions hitting the market in the middle of 1985. The continued development and small updates were spread with new production runs it appears. There were five different ROM versions of the Final Cartridge III until now for example.

Versioning your cartridge is not that easy in this case though. Checking the so far available screenshots to the right you will see that FC1 and FC2 use the same menu with just the scrollen revealing a II. The FC+ went unemulated for a long time and is a pre-FC3 as a ROM dump by Markus Brenner approves. It is carrying the string "(C) SJATON80 FC3" on an otherwise empty and inaccessible eprom bank. FC1 through FC+ share much of the same hardware but the FC+ has a slightly different wiring leading to different behaviour. The overall payload of FC+ is 24kb put on a 32kb eprom while FC2 and below came with 16kb.

A larger update on the ROM size and hardware was done with the release of the Final Cartridge III (FC3) coming with 64kb of eprom content. Banking was simply not avoidable anymore. The FC+ was sold for just a short time and it appears that quite some code also made it into the FC3 in very little time but investigations are still pending on this issue. It would have made sense to rewrite parts of the cartridge at this point just taking over portions of the previous ROMs.

Some confusion could be added here but unless we found the correct ROM backing us up we will stick that into the Trivia section here.


  • FC2: has fast loader, freezer, monitor, fkeys, dos wedge stuff - looks like just a few drive handling and timing things got changed - about 300 hexbytes change - no apparent change on functionality - the dump has a string "noddy 260788" - which seems like someone modded into it? Cart ROMs use $8000 - $BFFF and no more.
  • FC+: "(C) SJATON80 FC3" on the _unused_ eprom bank - most of the rest pretty much looks like an enhanced FC2. One of the two version we found also has "EPROMMER II" on some unused area - A hint to the used eprom programmer software. The two versions found of FCplus contain a few changed routines but again no major function was added it seems. FLOAD and TLOAD were introduced after FC2. Cart ROMs use $8000 - $BFFF _AND_ $E000-$FFFF at apparently the same time.
  • FC3: Major overhaul - many things were added and the hardware was changed to allow banking - a freeze button was added.


fuck, this is going to be long ...


Wonder where this is coming from: vice?

- here is another doc: http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/documents/chipdata/Final%20Cartridge%20III%20Internals.txt (equally wrong) 

   The Final Cartridge 1 + 2

   - any access to IO1 turns cartridge ROM off
   - any access to IO2 turns cartridge ROM on

   The Final Cartridge 3

   - 4 16K ROM Banks at $8000/$a000 (=64K)

        Bank 0:  BASIC, Monitor, Disk-Turbo
        Bank 1:  Notepad, BASIC (Menu Bar)
        Bank 2:  Desktop, Freezer/Print
        Bank 3:  Freezer, Compression

   - the cartridges uses the entire io1 and io2 range

   - one register at $DFFF:

    7      Hide this register (1 = hidden)
    6      NMI line   (0 = low = active) *1)
    5      GAME line  (0 = low = active) *2)
    4      EXROM line (0 = low = active)
    2-3    unassigned (usually set to 0)
    0-1    number of bank to show at $8000

    1) if either the freezer button is pressed, or bit 6 is 0, then
       an NMI is generated

    2) if the freezer button is pressed, GAME is also forced low

    - the rest of io1/io2 contain a mirror of the last 2 pages of the
      currently selected rom bank (also at $dfff, contrary to what some
      other documents say)



Weblinks

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