65XE without ECI port

[zork]

My 65XE NTSC does not have ECI port (only cartridge). Is it possible to connect Turbo Freezer 2011 to it? I got an expansion but it is only for ECI port. 

 

I guess it is not possible to do it from cartridge port as it is missing important pins but maybe from SIO?

[TGB1718]

From the manual:-

 

There is a small number of models from the XE series (mainly 65 XE) which do not have an ECI port.

These models only have a “Cartridge” port and have no “Expansion” 11 1 Installation port. The freezer can unfortunately not be used with these XE models.

[Rybags]

The required signals aren't really SIO related though ECI does have audio in.

In theory you could pick them from the motherboard but to interface something in that way would be messy.

[zork]

Makes sense. So from the other way around -- is it possible to save state of a game using any existing cartridge on the market right now? I do not really care about other features of Turbo Freezer but saving the state of a game to play later would be a very nice feature to have.

Edited February 3, 2023 by zork

[Rybags]

Save state - not really.  About the best you could do with a conventional cart is have it switchable so it can be dormant when you load your game.

Then activate it and press Reset, the cart could write out Ram contents.

Though almost equally you could just hotswap in a cart that does your memory dump and press Reset.

I used similar method for a few games in the day though it was by a Ram-based modded OS.

 

The big problem with that method is the game needs to be able to survive a warmstart, which some don't.  Plus it's not a true save state.

 

Alternatively you could have a modded OS that can dump out Ram contents which would provide a closer function to save state.

But I think the Freezer actually has some shadowing onboard?  Possibly it keeps a copy of some write-only hardware registers so that it can provide a more stable and likely to function save state.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Rybags