Everybody's doing “Kung Fu Flashing”

So, I've been refurbishing some “breadbins” recently and as usual, find myself grabbing my Ultimate 2 cartridge to run through my tests. This involves making sure that disks load, cartridges and “prg's” boot correctly, plus my favourite option (from back in the day) cassettes load correctly.

And then I started thinking. What if I didn't have the Ultimate cart? I mean, it is

an expensive bit of a kit and not everyone needs all of its features. (It has a plethora – like Ethernet, multiple virtual drives and RAM disks but most people don't need these advanced options.)

And so I borrowed a Kung Fu Flash from AMI64 and decided to see what it could offer me. Now, for the record, I do have a few “modern” solutions for storing and retrieving data on my faithful Commodore 64's but this was one that had passed me by. You see, the thing is that, you don't need every peripheral “out there”, just one or two to cover all the options.

I use (for example), an SD2IEC reader when I need portability and quick plug'n'play features. I also use it to cover all my Commodore machines (plus 4, VIC 20 etc) so it's a great all rounder if you like to use more than just the C64. SD2IEC (with adapters for power) cover pretty much every 8 bit Commodore computer.

Added to that, I do also have an Easy Flash 3 cartridge and this is great for testing multiple kernals and it provides easy access to my BBS software (for when I fancy hopping online) for example.