Posted By
TLC
on 2009-11-20
09:09:13
|  Re: Mass-storage: CF/SD/MMC cards and others?
1.) For a great number of disk dependent stuffs, true drive emulation is "needed". Typical examples are demos and games that load content from drive by themself.
Stuffs that load/save data files from drive upon "request" (tools, except for drive tools) usually don't care about the exact type of the drive.
A lot of otherwise 1541-specific stuffs do detect, or can at least deal with non-1541 drives (fall back to standard routines). Back then most people had 1541 drives, yet their programs usually had to work with other people's 1551s (that they usually didn't have themself)... in cases like that, they ultimately let the progs just fall back to use standard routines... which come handy here, too. But there's no general rule here. Some do, some don't.
2.) I was wrong. Thanks for quoting that URL. It was pretty much not obvious that this card can also work as a standalone device.
Then yes. It's fine, it should work as a full 1541-compatible unit. I'm sorry. ...As a personal note: even though I find the 1541 Ultimate a bit overkill (because of added features not useable with the Plus/4), being a "perfect" 1541-reproduction might make it the ideal (although a bit pricey) option...
3.) I don't know. Please note that custom 1541-routines are only concerned if the program depends on loading from some storage device by itself. A great majority of stuffs are one-filer programs, you load them from storage and they won't try accessing any storage devices anymore -- you could even load them from tape. There are obviously no problems with these (other than the long loading times because of relatively low speed of standard I/O routines).
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