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General Category => Amstrad CPC hardware => Topic started by: keith56 on 11:05, 01 July 17

Title: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: keith56 on 11:05, 01 July 17
I'd be interested in hearing from CPC owners with more than 128k of usable ram - in otherwords 6128+XMEM, 464+256k etc... whatever you're using...

The reason for this I'm coding my next game with added features for systems with 256k total (so 4 usable 64k banks) - what I'm really interested in is whether there are people with only 192k usable (64k+128k upgrade or 128k+128k which overrides the internal 64k upgrade)... if such users are a reasonable proportion of the 'expanded' CPC user base, I MAY program for that configuration

Also are there any users who know their memory maps oddly - mapping to banks other than C4-C7,CC-CF and D4-D7 .. I understand the sillicon disk does not map to these banks?

Now I know that someone is going to answer "You should make your game support EVERY possible combination - dagnammit!" - or the like, but i'm already supporting 464,6128,464+,6128+  with 1 or 2 player and Multiplay joystick adaptor - and I don't want to be testing and debugging this thing until I die - so I want to check what potential users are really using - if everyone who will play this has the XMEM, I don't want to waste my time testing support for something that literally zero users will ever play it with.

Thanks for reading!
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: tjohnson on 13:01, 01 July 17

Hey Keith, I have no expansion on my CPC having recently rediscovered my fondness for it.  I can't imagine I will ever purchase a ram expansion for it thought, prices seem off the scale.  Another thought, would you consider making a larger CPC+/GX4000 cartridge game, utilising the extra plus features and storage capacity of a cartridge.  I'm sure I read that the largest cartridge size was 512kb.
Cheers Trevor
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: keith56 on 13:15, 01 July 17
I'm afraid there won't be a cartridge version of the game, this is a Disk based game, and because disk loading is very different to cartridge loading it is a lot of extra work for me to develop the software to support both
I doubt the full game will compress down to 512k anyway.
The game will be open source, so anyone who wants to rewrite the disk routines and recompile all the files will be welcome to do so - but as no-one has expressed any interest in doing so for my last game, I can tell you now that they wont!
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Bryce on 13:56, 01 July 17
My 6128 has 512K (DKTronics) attached when required.

Bryce.
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: ||C|-|E|| on 17:19, 01 July 17
I have the X-MEM plugged by default, so it is 640KB in my case  :)
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Skunkfish on 19:26, 01 July 17
Great to have a game coming out making use of extra RAM, I can't really think of any other games that use beyond 128KB.
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Maniac on 20:43, 01 July 17
I have a 6128 plus with X-Mem so 640KB again.
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: villain on 21:40, 01 July 17
6128 with X-Mem
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: robcfg on 22:06, 01 July 17
6128 with Symbiface II here so 576KB I guess.


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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: ASiC on 00:31, 02 July 17
6128, 6128+, x-mem and symbiface 2


Finaly, proper usage of extra memory ( apart from symbos and future os)!


I'd love to see hardware expansions being used from more software.
And why not go the extra step and have a hdd installable version?!  :D
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: keith56 on 01:46, 02 July 17
Good to hear everyone's got big memory upgrades!

Quote from: ASiC on 00:31, 02 July 17
And why not go the extra step and have a hdd installable version?!  :D

All file access is done using Amsoft calls and filenames,
Assuming your HDD emulates standard Amsoft/parados functionality it should work - you would just need to copy all the disks contents into one big disk/folder and it would play fine. There are cases where the same file is on multiple disks, but if the filename is the same, so is the content
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: 00WReX on 08:42, 02 July 17
6128 with X-mem.

Cheers,
Shane
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: radu14m on 10:08, 02 July 17
same here: 6128 with X-mem.
it"s more than enough !
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Targhan on 13:08, 02 July 17
No memory expansion, no need for one :).
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Carnivius on 15:11, 02 July 17
None.   Just stock CPC 464.
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: roudoudou on 16:40, 02 July 17
got an XMEM but remember most of expansion RAM on the CPC+ are not compatible will all bank switching modes
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: andycadley on 18:18, 02 July 17

Quote from: roudoudou on 16:40, 02 July 17
got an XMEM but remember most of expansion RAM on the CPC+ are not compatible will all bank switching modes
And pretty much all of them will corrupt banked memory if it's paged in whilst writing to the ASIC (even the "standard" 128K pages if it's not an internal expansion)
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: MissionComplete on 21:13, 05 July 17
464 and 6128 + X-MEM
Title: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: angelcaio on 21:17, 05 July 17
464 +  XMEM  (576 kb)


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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: CraigsBar on 23:50, 05 July 17
Xmem on 6128plus and cpc6128  symbifaces (x2) on the shelf

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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: buzby on 15:54, 08 July 17
464 & 6128 with roam board


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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: ||C|-|E|| on 16:23, 08 July 17
Quote from: buzby on 15:54, 08 July 17
464 & 6128 with roam board


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Be careful and close the doors when you are outside!  :)
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: bjt on 09:00, 12 July 17
464 + internal X-Mem, it rocks

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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Shining on 11:24, 12 July 17
Cause I need that much for something, I'm coding:


6128 + X-Mem + Y-Mem = 1152 kB.
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: CraigsBar on 11:50, 12 July 17
Quote from: Shining on 11:24, 12 July 17
Cause I need that much for something, I'm coding:


6128 + X-Mem + Y-Mem = 1152 kB.
I am still hoping for the external 4mb board lol it will complement my m4 beautifully.

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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: Kris on 12:40, 12 July 17
Quote from: CraigsBar on 11:50, 12 July 17
I am still hoping for the external 4mb board lol it will complement my m4 beautifully.

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+1: Even if today there is no real needs, it could be very interesting to have such RAM expansion (on CPC, we have to propose hardware before the needs to have new hardware).
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: roudoudou on 12:44, 12 July 17
Quote from: Kris on 12:40, 12 July 17
+1: Even if today there is no real needs, it could be very interesting to have such RAM expansion (on CPC, we have to propose hardware before the needs to have new hardware).


Those cards are emulated since a long time, there is still no software using it  :-[
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: CraigsBar on 12:44, 12 July 17
Quote from: Kris on 12:40, 12 July 17
+1: Even if today there is no real needs, it could be very interesting to have such RAM expansion (on CPC, we have to propose hardware before the needs to have new hardware).
Well symbos will use some of it for multitasking.

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Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: zhulien on 10:27, 21 July 17
6128Plus + X-Mem + Y-Mem = 1152 kB, I also have the multiface 2 in it, does that extra RAM count?
Title: Re: How BIG is your expansion!!!
Post by: GUNHED on 15:28, 21 July 17
4 MB RAM internal (chips from the PC) and 2 MB Flash (chips from the PC). And software for it of course. Oh it's an 6128.
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