Use more data, bankswitching?

[Thelen]

More or less I'm walking against the boundaries of loading data to my 64kb 800XL (with bitmap data, level data, programdata) - especially with my VBXE project.

 

Right now I'm compiling with MADS a .xex, this is working nice and quickly in combination with Altirra and the Atasm MS-code plugin. Probably lot's of data can be loaded to the vbxe from a disk image (dir to .atr - which is great tool!) but that's not the quickest way to test and debug a lot(loading times)- So I am reading and thinking about some bankswitching, that way I can copy data from cartridge banks to the VBXE... But I really don't have any exprerience with making a bankswitching cartridge image - with Mads.

What is a good way to go? What kind of cartridge or format is good to use (hopefully a bit easy ) And, how to do that? 🙂

 

Thanks again!

Edited October 6, 2022 by Thelen
typo

[glurk]

I can't help a bit with MADS, as I don't use it.  But the XEGS cart format is dead easy!!.  You have (always) a bank from $A000-$BFFF and can then (for a 128K cart) have 16 banks (# $00-$0F) from $8000-$9FFF and select them by writing the bank # to $D500.  They switch instantly.

 

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Cartridges#section-Cartridges-XEGSCarts

 

I'm pretty certain that they are the easiest / simplest bankswitchers to use.  I made a utility for myself using this, and it worked straight away, it was very easy.

[rensoup]

I think there are only 3 that worth using. Megacart, SIC!, Atarimax. They're somewhat similar. Megacart might be the simplest, not sure if it's worth supporting the other ones... I'm guessing most devices out there support it ?

[Thelen]

Thanks both for your replies 🙂 Will need some time to sort it out - how the compile and get everything in/from a cart. Or support a memory upgrade and load everything from disk is also a interesting idea - but then the people who can use it will be more limited (what is the percentage of users who have a VBXE in their 8 bit?)