Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

• New VGA controller with new modes and VIC-II sync.
• Tripple buffering mode added for properly displaying IFLI pictures.
• Scale-2x video scaling algorithm added.
• Scanline emulation added.
• In cartridge mode real CIAs registers and interrupts are used (allows use of a modem).
• In cartridge mode real VIC-II registers and interrupts are used (allows use of a lightpen).
• Fixed I/O assignments for FPGA (lower power use).
• Lowlevel SD-card functions now use multiple block reads if possible, which increases linear reading speed by about 40 to 50% (most noticeable on large files, such as REU images)
• BUGFIX: fixed error handling and timeouts of the IEC routines, which makes all related operations more robust.
• BUGFIX: added missing timeouts to SD-card functions.
• Joystick port 1 now also works for navigating the menus.
• BUGFIX: on some C64s pressing shift would result in phantom keypresses (F1/F2) under some conditions.
• NEW: various new VGA modes and other options for the new VGA controller (see manual)
• Improved loading speed of file inside T64 images.
• Improved keyboard handling to make the browser a bit snappier.
• BUGFIX: the size of the character ROM saved by the ROM saver was incorrect.
• BUGFIX: .wav player stops at the end of the file and does not continue playing garbage.
• BUGFIX: files bigger than 2k are displayed correctly by the .txt viewer.
• BUGFIX: when copying files out of a t64 image the resulting file was missing the last two bytes and/or the last block was missing completely.
• BUGFIX: filecopy from/to a IEC device did incorrectly abort after 1 block.
• BUGFIX: filecopy filename character set conversion was broken.
• BUGFIX: AR/RR ROM was not correctly disabled when autostarting programs from the filebrowser with AR/RR enabled as default cartridge.
• NEW: added DOS wedge command (see manual)
• NEW: added load and save commands (see manual)

Download: Chameleon 64 beta firmware 8b (1549)

source: beta.icomp.de

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

• fixed REU, transfer length register is 1 after a transfer completes.
• fixed REU 512K wrap around.
• fixed cache controller preventing corruption when accessing 0x1FFFF0000 – 0x1FFFFFFFF
• faster SDRAM controller. More memory bandwidth for turbo.
• added slowdown modes to the Turbo settings. Offering CPU speeds of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.
• added native updater program (see manual) to update the fpga core without an usb connection.
• make menu item active when pressing a hotkey, so it is selected when going back to the respective menu.
• correctly mute/unmute second sid in menu freezer.
• clockport- and rr-net- items in options menu are correctly disabled if either is not available.
• if found, load and run update.prg from sd card (chameleon updater)
• if “boot from sd card” is enabled, load boot.prg from sd card (regular c64 boot program)
• improved navigation in one panel mode, cursor right enters subdir/image and cursor left goes one level up.
• improved quickfind, just type a filename quickly to jump to it.
• mount menu is skipped if there would only be one active item.
• when returning to the menu from the sid player by pressing left/menu button it will go directly to the filebrowser.
• added gfx viewer for various multi-color and hires formats.(see manual)
• added wav player (see manual)
• added filecopy (F5 in two panel mode, see manual)
• set $030c-$030e to 0 before starting prgs, increases compatibility with certain packers.
• .sid files which actually contain a basic program can now be run correctly.
• re-read destination panel after copying image.

Download: Chameleon Beta-7b release (1578)

source: beta.icomp.de

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

Differences from Beta-6f to Beta-6g:

• Implemented bit-fade in SID when no waveform is selected.
• Implemented bit-fade in SID when reading write-only registers.
• Added bits to detect in menu when disk-images need update after write actions by the emulated drives.
• Implemented “door” on emulated drive, when open drive will read dummy bytes.
• Fixed CPU instruction timing bugs discovered when comparing emulated 6510 against real 6510.
• CPU irq/nmi timing fixes.
• Implemented bit-fade on I/O port of emulated 6510.
• Fixed SID stereo mapping for D500 and D700.
• Four timers added at addresses D0AA to D0AD for menu (it can’t use CIA timers when freezing).

Download: Firmware Chameleon Beta 6g (1417)

source: syntiac.com

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

Differences from Beta-6c to Beta-6d:

• Cartridge emulations.
• Turbo speed increase: Eliminated one clock cycle from critical path.
• Turbo speed increase: Writes to memory concurrent with next instruction fetch.
• Turbo speed increase: MMU caches last used CPU slot.

Download: Firmware Chameleon Beta 6d (1434)

source: syntiac.com

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

Differences from Beta-5b to Beta-6:

• Fixed RAM mirrors for 1541 drive emulation.
• Fixed reading from emulated SID.
• New cartridge emulations.
• Disk track lengths set to 6256, 6672, 7144 or 7696 bytes.
• Implemented disk-change with button.
• Input latch emulation in VIA emulation.
• Implemented SDR register in CIA.
• Implemented real IEC bus disable bit.
• VIC-II timing fixed for mode bits (MCM, BMM and ECM)

Differences from Beta-6 to Beta-6b:

• 1541 emulation: fixed IEC timing. All known speedloader problems are gone now.
• 1541 emulation: VIA6522 timer fixes.
• 1541 emulation: VIA6522 register r/w fixes.
• New cartridge emulations.

Differences from Beta-6b to Beta-6c:

• Auto speed option for turbo feature. Slows down on IEC bus accesses.
• PS/2 Page up/Page down alias for F1, F7. Easier navigation in the File-Browser.

Download: Turbo Chameleon 64 beta firmware v6c (1430)

source: syntiac.com

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

Beta-5 to Beta-5a:

• Fix crash when turbo limit is set in menu without activating turbo. (or when disabling active turbo with button while a limit is set)
• Fix D030 mirror of the turbo bit emulating C128 2Mhz mode with Chameleon turbo.

Beta-5a to Beta-5b:

• Eliminate spurious resets by masking reset line in standalone mode.
• Fix keyboard matrix so joysticks are properly emulated (IR, numpad) in standalone mode.
• Block normal button functions in menu mode (only exception is reboot by pressing 0.7s on right button)

source: syntiac.com

Turbo Chameleon 64 is an extremely user-friendly cartridge that can be used without opening the computer. It is just plugged to the expansion port of the C64.

The Turbo Chameleon 64 cartridge can also be operated as a stand-alone unit (since it’s basically an FPGA computer like the C-One or the Minimig in a C64 cartridge case), replacing the computer, the floppy drive and the heavy power supply.

When used as a stand-alone unit, a USB power adapter or active USB hub can be used as a power source.

Changelog:

• Framebuffer writes now use MMU.
• Framebuffer writes can be switched off (buffer can be used by software)
• Cartridge buttons emulated on PS/2 keyboard (F11,F12 and PrintScreen)
• Chameleon can use real BASIC and Kernal ROMs in machine in cartridge mode.
• Emulated IEC bus can be disconnected from C64 (Chameleon is drive emu)
• FLI bug fixed.
• Added Stereo SID support.
• Turbo feature added.
• Relative CPU speed displayed in VGA debug bar.

source: syntiac.com