Kung Fu Flash Cartridge

Hi!

Inspired by Carsten’s RasPIC64 project and my experience with Tapecard SD I have created a new cartridge called Kung Fu Flash and released it as open source.

Kung Fu Flash can emulate different cartridge types, load PRG and D64 files from the microSD card and support EasyFlash 3 USB. It is what I call a Software Defined Cartridge, where a fast microcontroller emulates cartridge hardware in software.

You can find the project here: https://github.com/KimJorgensen/KungFuFlash

This is still work in progress; there is no write support, only the PAL version of the Commodore 64 is supported and the latest version of the gerber has not been tested yet.

Thank you. Yes, it is quite flexible and hopefully not too hard to build.

I still amazed with the performance you can get out of a STM32, even though it was close to the limit when implementing VIC-II reads and 2MHz reads for the C128.

Thank you

Please note that I haven't tested the latest gerbers yet as I'm still waiting for the PCBs to arrive. But let me know how it goes should you decide to build one.

I'll keep you updated once I have tested the new PCB.

Quote from pastors

Hope it will fully replace the SD2IEC...

Not quite. It will only support single-load files from D64.

For multi-load games you will still need a disk drive/SD2IEC or an EasyFlash release of the game.

Quote from bigby

I have to admit curiosity got the better of me. So I ordered a few of the PCBs and some components.

I know the feeling and have good news for you: I just got the new PCB assembled and it works fine. The only difference between mine and the one on github is the silkscreen logo.

If you buy the microcontroller in China there is a chance that it is not erased and has the read out protection enabled. In that case you need a ST-Link v2 and the ST-Link Utility from ST to unlock it.

Quote from bigby

I have a cheap ST-Link v2 clone, too. I hope that'll do.

Yes, that is fine I also have a cheap clone. Just make sure to use the software from ST.

Quote from bigby

Yesterday, I took a brief look at the schematics and at your code and I must say again that I'm very impressed. I like the simplicity and flexibility of your design and also how you build on some previous work (like the EF3 protocol, DraBrowse, or Frenetic 's work) instead of inventing everything from scratch. Well done! Now I'm very curious to see how all of this works in practice.

Thank you! One of my goals was to keep it as simple as I could, you can always add more features later. Building on other people's work saved a lot of work and shows where open source really works well.

Please post some pictures once you got it assembled.

I got some new cartridge cases to test my idea of placing the LED close to the reset button and use a transparent button cap. TFW8b was nice enough to include additional button caps upon request, and here is the result:

It works fine for some angles behind the C64, but it is hard to see the LED from other angles:

I have ordered some ultra bright LEDs to see if that helps, otherwise I may have to move the LED on the PCB to a better place for this to work.

Of course a clear case won’t have this problem

Nice. I have added a BOM to the release in GitHub if you haven't ordered all components yet.