it uses a 1541-II rom, but doesnt really specifically emulate the 1541-II (just like the 1541u does, or even VICE)
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I just got my Chameleon a few days ago! It is really cool all the features it has (I love Easy Flash emulation since I don't have a real EF). The turbo mode was the real selling point with me and works awesome in word processors to speed up scrolling. I am having a mixed bag of results with games in turbo though -- however it is a "beta" so there will be further bug fixes.

Now is a good time to buy one if you live in America since the price has dropped to $258 (I have seen it as high as $280).

http://www.vesalia.de/e_chameleon.htm

I have the 1541 ultimate as well (which I love), but there is a long waiting list generally. I literally got the Chameleon in about 10 days from overseas shipping!

I have questions about the Chameleon as someone mentioned on another thread the it works as a motherboard replacement. As I'm not much of a gamer but rather a developer I'm looking at the picture of the cartridge and I'm puzzled.

I understand it works as a standalone unit but on this mode how do you connect:
- a C64 keyboard?
- a joystick?
- a cassette player?
- a disk drive?
- a cartridge? And does it work with IDE64, SuperCPU or other complex cartridges?

Ok, thanks. I found information from here too. Is it possible to connect a cartridge to the cartridge port if using some kind of adapter to match the pinout. Crazy, yes but could any cartridge work this way?

I can confirm you do get I/O collisions. Experiment tried and failed already
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Some great news about the Turbo Chameleon 64:

"...So as communicated before I've been working on a new VGA controller for
the Chameleon core (like forever . It is now about done and it all
works as planned. The previous controller, called COP (Chameleon Object
Processor) is removed. Although I liked the concept of the multi
overlapping screens and higher color possibilities in reality they were
not so useful on a 8 bit machine even with the turbo speedup. So the new
controller doesn't have these features and is a lot simpler and
therefore quite a bit smaller in size. This allows the pixel-clock to be
increased and the logic-gates and FPGA block memory to be reused again
for other features in the future.

The new VGA controller offers fully sync'ed 50 and 60 Hertz modes. This
feature was requested by many and COP could not do that. For those
without 50 Hz capable monitors (or if you don't like the flickering)
there is also as an alternative a completely new triple-buffer mode.
This blends two frames together and works really well to get stable IFLI
pictures on your VGA monitor. Due to the blending it also hides the
jerkiness of fast scrolling screens quite a bit on vertical frequencies
other than 50/60 Hz.

The VGA logic offers a kind of a plug-in system where different
algorithms can be put in. Currently there is the "Scale-2x" algorithm in
there. This "invents" extra pixels to artificially increase the screen
resolution. Some like the effect and others don't. It will be an option
in the menu, the default will stay nearest-neighbor scaling (doubling of
lines and pixels) like it is now.

I've also done some fixes to get modems and lightpens working in
cartridge mode. Unfortunately it seems I have misplaced my lightpen, so
I was not able to test it yet. In cartridge mode the core will now use
the real CIAs and VIC-II registers and handle the machines IRQ
interrupts and only switch to emulation of the CIAs in standalone or
docking-station mode. I hope that solves most (all) of the user-port
device issues.

I will send a test core to Tobias later today with a final description
of all the VGA register bits so he can update the menu system. I hope we
can make a release soon.

L8r,
Peter"

Source:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/chameleon_64/

Is there a 100Hz/120Hz mode? That would be the ideal solution, I think. With something like 400x300 you'll also see nice scanlines on a VGA CRT monitor.

I once made a video mode like this in Linux and it was the bomb for MAME. Looks like an arcade monitor, but without flickering. Also no tearing since it's exactly twice the refresh rate.
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This may be a dumb question, but is this firmware or hardware change? I have one I bought last December and am looking forward to the fixes.

Thats really good to hear about the video improvements

best regards,
- dink

Thank you for the explanation.

Today I ordered my second Turbo Chameleon 64 this time I gave a try with Amigakit.

Chameleon’s user manual can be found here if someone wants to take a look:

http://beta.icomp.de/bin/Chameleon_usermanual.pdf

It is a good user manual!

ok... Reading this thread I didn't see this asked directly so I figured I ask. I am really looking at the VGA portion of this. The 1541 Ultimate II you basically can turn off everything and only enable the REU, or a drive, or a cartridge if you wanted. With the Chamelon, can I disable everything but the VGA out? I am interested in using this for my arcade machine. Someone says scrolling games seem to be smoother. I want to be able to use another cartridge with it and just use this for VGA out. It doesn't load into a menu automatically, does it?

Is this possible to use it as a VGA only output?
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you dont have to use the additional features ofcourse.... however, using it combined with another cartridge is neither supported nor recommended and will likely not work anyway. chameleon emulates pretty much all game cartridges though, so that shouldnt be a big problem.
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so, here it is...

Code:

good morning betatesters :) i have just uploaded a new beta... this release fixes most known bugs in the menu software and adds the long awaited brand new VGA controller. in detail: FPGA Core:     - 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). Menu Software: --------------   - 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 menus:   - 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. options:   - NEW: various new VGA modes and other options for the new VGA controller          (see manual) filebrowser:   - 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 monitor:   - NEW: added DOS wedge command (see manual)   - NEW: added load and save commands (see manual) direct link: http://beta.icomp.de/bin/Chameleon_Beta-8.zip have fun!

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http://www.hitmen-console.org http://rr.pokefinder.org
http://magicdisk.untergrund.net http://ftp.pokefinder.org

Installed beta 8 last night. I'm hooked on 50hz with scanlines enabled! Beautiful. I'm using an old (2003) Sony LCD SDM-S81R and it worked with both 50hz and VIC-II SYNC (50.2hz) modes. The Sony manual says it supports 48-75hz vertical so I pretty much expected it to. :)

There is a confirmed disk regression in beta 8 with a few demos when using cart mode. Artillery activated its hidden part the first time I ran it. So it was not all bad :)

Good Times!