Nov 012014
 

After years of inactivity I decided to release two old project, which I started to work on in 2010, publicly on my GitHub account. I have not produced any prototypes yet, so they are currently more a draft. Both projects use a flash EPROM to store the data in the cartridge. The first one is a simple Amstrad Plus / Amstrad GX4000 cartridge, which can be equipped with an original ACID protection chip or with a Xilinx XC9536 CPLD for ACID emulation (you can read more about the emulation here).

SimpleCartridge

The second project is the design of a flash cartridge, which can be programmed on a PC via USB and used in a Amstrad Plus / Amstrad GX4000. You can read more about the design in the README.md.

flash-cartridge

Maybe someone with more time is interested to take over the projects, otherwise I will work on them every now and then…

  4 Responses to “Amstrad Plus / Amstrad GX4000 flash cartridge”

  1. Well, the AM29F040 will be very hard to find these days, especially the PDIP package… There should be enough space on the board for a second PLCC socket containing a 349SF040 or similar.

  2. Hi Nil,
    yes, that is a problem, but I haven’t worked on the design for a long time and I wouldn’t use PDIP anymore (SMD for the win!). The design needs to be changed and I am even not sure if I would still use V-USB and an Atmel microcontroller. Maybe a bigger version with an already build in USB interface would be more suitable for it.

    CU Octo

  3. If there will be GX4000 multicart. I like to buy one.
    Any news of this project?

  4. Hi Mika,
    I uploaded this project to GitHub in the hope that anyone will do a fork and catch up with it. This didn’t happened, but there is an awesome multicartridge called C4CPC (C4CPC – Cartridge for the Amstrad Plus / GX4000), which loads ROM images directly from a SD card. At the end of the Wiki entry, you can find a link to the discussions in the CPCWiki forums where you can contact Gerald to ask if there is still a C4CPC cartridge left. Normally I would write a news posting about such an awesome hardware, but the author produces it in his free time as a hobby and a too high demand would put him into founding a business just for it, so we decided not to write a news posting about it.

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