Friday, September 30, 2016

New Vicmon version found

I was digging through my collection of Vic carts when I happened upon an plain looking cart entitled Vicmon2.  I remember being given this cartridge back in about 2009 from a fellow member of The Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club.

Intrigued, I decided to give it a try and see what, if any, differences I could find.  Imagine my surprise at this:


Interesting.  This version is color coded!  The commands all seem to be the same and I have found no other real features other than color.  But this got me curious, so I dumped the rom.  I checked Zimmers and they had 2 roms named vicmon 2.  Surely this was just one of those...  After comparing the dumps, it was definitely "new"

I am not sure if this was someones personal modification or some unofficial release, but it was definitely cool to find.  I will be sending the dump to Bo to host with all the other images he has.

Now I wanted to see what was inside...



 So there it is. a modified original commodore PCB with a 2816 EEPROM.  Conclusion? Most likely a homemade hack of Vicmon.  But finding something that doesn't seem to be out there anywhere is definitely getting rare these days!