MACH 5

MACH 5
Technical Info
ROM	8 kbyte
RAM	None
Hardware features	1 Button Reset?
Manual	PDF: MACH 5 C64/1541 Cart&Disk Manual PDF: MACH 5 C128/64 1541/1571 Cart Manual PDF: MACH 128 Cart Manual PDF: MACH 5 Manual v2b Addendum TXT: MACH 5 Manual Project64.txt
CRT ID	MACH 5 - 51 MACH 128 - ?

MACH 5 by Access Software was available around 1984 and a follow up named MACH 128 was introduced to the market a little later. Like most speeders in this category the cartridge was well known mostly in the USA.

JC @ Basic Bytes resolved the mystery we had about some MACH-5 dumps next to sending us an unknown ROM!

The discovery led to renaming the binaries and suffixing them with _128 as they come with one added function when being bundled onto a MACH-128 ROM: TOGGLE C128 KEYS. On powerup screen a "true" MACH-5 will display e.g. MACH-5 LOADER V.2A ENGAGED! while the C128 bundled ROM comes with e.g. "MACH-5 V.1B WITH WARP-DRIVE!". Many thanks again for noting that as we somehow completely ignored this (or didnt dive deep enough) so far.

Functionality

• Fast serial I/O (1541 floppy disk drives, 1571 and 1581 with later versions)

Lord Crass tested this cartridge a little more excessively and even though the 1581 is not mentioned on manuals we found so far, it is supported by Mach5 v3a cartridges. It currently boils down to: "Only v.2A is compatible with both NTSC and PAL. Other versions are NTSC-only, except for v3.A, which supports 1571 double-sided mode and 1581, and is compatible with NTSC/PAL only with 1581. With 1541/1571 it is NTSC-only."

The discovery described above makes this description sound strange as one would expect that MACH-5 versions bundled for MACH-128 would work with 1571 drives.

Hands up whenever you feel like investigating!

Emulation

To create the eprom contents for a real "MACH 128" cartridge EPROM a "MACH 5" and a "MACH 128" ROM have to be concatenated - Under linux e.g.

cat MACH_5*.bin MACH_128.bin > MACH_128_full.bin

should work. Add a loading address whenever burning the resulting file a C64/C128 :) It does not make much sense to join these binaries for emulator use.

C128 emulation in VICE currently lacks CRT support, so running MACH-128 binaries currently won't work. STILL we want your ROMS! JC from Basic Bytes created a Youtube video on Dumping a Commodore 128 Cartridge ROM - ReplayResources awaits your results.

Tech

The usual theft from mach5.c from the VICE emulator reads:

    This cart has 8Kb ROM mapped at $8000-$9FFF.

    The $9E00-$9EFF range is mirrored at $DE00-$DEFF.
    The $9F00-$9FFF range is mirrored at $DF00-$DFFF.

    a write to IO1 selects 8K Game mode
    a write to IO2 disables the cartridge

Missing

• more MACH-5 ROM Dumps
• more MACH-128 ROM Dumps

Tech

Ripped again from mach5.c from the VICE emulator

    This cart has 8Kb ROM mapped at $8000-$9FFF.

    The $9E00-$9EFF range is mirrored at $DE00-$DEFF.
    The $9F00-$9FFF range is mirrored at $DF00-$DFFF.

    a write to IO1 selects 8K Game mode
    a write to IO2 disables the cartridge

Binaries

Cartridge_Speeder_all_rr.c64.org.rar contains:

• MACH-5 NTSC V.1A .bin and .crt
• MACH-5 NTSC V.1B .bin and .crt in two versions
• MACH-5 NTSC V.2A .bin and .crt
• MACH-5 NTSC V3.A .bin and .crt
• MACH-128 V.1A, V.1B and V2.A .bin
• MACH-128 v2a with MACH-5 NTSC V.1B (v2) Texthack by "WAHLS" .bin (thx to Josh!)
• MACH_128_Utilities.D64 - while the header says MACH 5 this disk came with the 128 version

• PDF: MACH 5 C64/1541 Cartridge&Disk Instruction Manual
• PDF: MACH 5 C128/64 1541/1571 Cartridge Instruction Manual
• PDF: MACH 128 Cart Instruction_Manual
• PDF: MACH 5 Instruction Manual Addendum for v2b
• TXT: MACH 5 Manual Project64.txt

Weblinks

• MACH 5 at Retroport.de
• Multi Easy by Lord Crass at CSDb contain Easyflash3 versions of MACH5