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.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close