Some people just want a SD card solution for their Commodore 64/128/VIC20 the cheapest way possible. So I came up with the “Pennnysaver Edition”. It has the bare minimum you would need to load your games and programs from a SD card, but with the possibillity for upgrades later. It can be used with your Commodore 64 or 128, VIC20, C16 or even the Plus/4.
Pros:
– You will never face the potential compatibillity problems assosiated with the much discussed 7406 chip, since its not needed.
– Its extremely cheap to make and easy to solder with a minimum of parts.
– The PCB is ready for all the extras that I made for the full version, including reset switch, 5x menu switches, output for OLED screen, speaker that can be disabled with a jumper, power LED, activity LED, output so you can solder your own cable for the Commodore serial port, and it even fits my 3D printed case!!
Cons:
– You will not be able to use other devices at the same time on the same serial port as the Pi1541 Pennysaver, since I removed the 7406 chip and its assosiated parts. I recommend the full version if you plan to do so.
– It can’t be upgraded to “Option B”
SD CARD SETUP
1. Format an SD card to Fat32.
2. Download the Raspberry Pi Firmware from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
4. Copy the files bootcode.bin, fixup.dat and start.elf (found in firmware-master\boot)) into the root folder of your SD card.
2. Unzip the supplied zip file (pennysaver.zip) to the blank SD card. (This will create a folder called 1541 in the root folder of the SD card. This is where you can place your Commodore disk images and folders).
3. Copy over a file that contains a 1541 ROM image into the root folder of the SD card. The ROM must be called dos1541 or d1541.rom or d1541II or Jiffy.bin.
4. (OPTIONAL) Copy over a file that contains a CBM font ROM (eg vice-3.1\C64\chargen) into the root folder of the SD card. The ROM must be called chargen
5. Copy your disk images and folders into the 1541 folder now found on the SD card This is the root contents on my SD card. Just an example.
The only difference between this setup and the one from my full version, is this setting in the options.txt file found in the root folder of the SD card: “splitIECLines = 1” must be changed to:
“// splitIECLines = 1”
This project can be purchased on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/kirsti_73
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