EasyFlash 3 hands-on

At the end of last year skoe released the EasyFlash 3 design. Just like the original EasyFlash, the design is open source, so basically anyone is able to start making those. It’s likely that these boards start surfacing from different sources. The first place selling assembled EasyFlash 3 cartridges I found was Retro-Donald’s Sinchai-Shop, and mine’s from there.

There are already at least two board designs. One like mine here, a short cartridge with buttons on both sides. The other design has longer board and the buttons are at the back in the usual way.

You North-American folks are probably pleased to know that RETRO Innovations is going to manufacture and sell them as well.

And yes – this is your JiffyDOS on a stick .. err.. cart solution!

Seriously, calling EasyFlash 3 just that is a vile devaluation (and I’ve seen it already happen). It’s much more than “just” a KERNAL on a cartridge.

New hardware for C64, part 1

My C64 hobby has lately been more active than in ages. I have even ordered some new hardware for the good old machine! And I really mean new; additional hardware that has been produced in the 2000s! This is not the first time for me though, I got myself the Retro Replay many years ago. This time I ordered 4 Player Interface and the RR-Net ethernet module from Protovision-Online.

RR-Net and 4 Player Interface

This was the first time I order anything from Protovison-Online. Everything was simple and my order was posted in few days. The items were packed very well, but still there was a minor drawback. RR-Net comes with a 5,25″ floppy disk with Contiki operating system. Somehow the disk was bent against something and damaged. I simply emailed Protovision about this and they sent me a new disk! Excellent customer service, and my overall impression of Protovision-Online is nothing but positive.

And now a brief overview of the hardware I got.