The Retro Shack: The Ultimate II+L Cartridge Review

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In this episode, The Retro Shack reviews the latest revision of the greatest cartridge ever made for the Commodore 64, The Ultimate II+L.

Ultimate II+ Lattice Features:

  • Full, cycle accurate emulation of two real Commodore 1541, 1571 and 1581 diskdrives.
    • Uses .D64, .D71, .D81 and .G64, .G71 files stored on USB stick
    • Supports .G64 / .G71 files as well (Read/Write)
    • Configurable bus IDs
    • Configurable ROM
    • Memory expansion
  • Built-in Speaker; outputs drive and floppy sounds
  • Support for USB storage devices (stick, card reader, and even HD)
  • 100 Mbps Ethernet port (for use with Telnet or FTP)
  • FAT/FAT32/exFAT support, with sub-directories and long filenames
  • ISO9660 support with Joliet, for reading .ISO files and access external CD/DVD drives through USB
  • Battery backed up Real Time Clock
  • Command Interface module with UltimateDOS
    • Accessible module through I/O space that allows direct commands to Ultimate-II
    • Ultimate-DOS, I/O space driven direct file access to SD/USB
  • Dual SID implementation
  • Ultimate Audio module
    • Up to 7 voices of sampled audio simultaneously
    • Accessible through I/O space
    • 8- or 16bit samples
    • up to 48 kHz sample rate
  • Built-in SID player; plays SID files on either ‘real’ SID or emulated SID.
  • C64 cartridge emulation, with support for many CRT files:
    • Final Cartridge III
    • Action Replay
    • Retro Replay
    • Super Snapshot
    • Epyx Fastloader
    • Custom Ocean / System3 carts (up to 512K)
    • Easy Flash
    • … and many more
  • Commodore 1750/1764 REU
    • REU Compatible
    • Size selectable from 128K up to 16 MB
    • Can be combined with compatible cartridge roms
  • Flexible freezer menu
    • select, mount, create disk images, browse disk images
    • create new directories, delete files
    • Ultra fast DMA load of single file programs (.PRG files on USB, inside .D64 or .T64)
  • Configuration screen, with resident settings
  • Tape emulation, through special USB3.0 cable to tape port of C64*
    • Load .TAP files to C64
    • Capture tape data from C64 to .TAP file
    • Capture tape data from a datasette and store it as .TAP file
    • Write .TAP files back to tape, using a Commodore tape deck

Hardware Specifications:

  • Board size: 62 x 90 mm
  • Sturdy ABS plastic case
  • Lattice FPGA with 25K LUTs
  • Full size 6-pin DIN connector (IEC)
  • 8 MB Flash ROM
  • 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM
  • Three USB host ports
  • One 100 Mbps Ethernet port
  • Stereo audio output
  • Stereo audio input
  • Specialty USB 3.0 port with USB 2.0 signals for storage device OR cable to tape adapter board (for C2N emulation), or other future features.
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