CONTENTS
The Ultimate2+ and the Ultiamte64 have a built-in ethernet port which you can use to connect the U2+ to your network or directly to your modern computer.
The Ultimate2 does not have an ethernet port, but it does have a USB port. You can connect the U2 to your local network or modern computer using an USB2LAN adapter. Any USB2LAN adapter that uses an AX88772/-A/-B chip should work.
The Ultimate64 also has a radio chip (ESP32) which is not yet used for networking.
The Ultimate2+ is included in the Ultimate64, any reference to the Ultimate2+ in this document also concerns the Ultimate64.
To connect the Ultimate cartridge to your network you will need an ethernet cable. Connect the ethernet cable to your local network. Most likely you can connect it to the switch of your modem/router. The modem/router will likely use DHCP to serve your Ultimate cartridge an IP-address.
You can check and see if the Ultimate cart has a working network connection by checking the Net0 status in the Ultimate menu. If there is a working network connection it will say 'Link Up' at 'Net0':
For the U2+, when the link is down, it will look like this:
This means that when the link is down the U2+ will show its MAC address. If the security policies of your modem/router needs the MAC address in order to serve anydevice on your network an IP address, then use this address.
On the U2 I believe that when there is no USB2LAN adapter connect, there will be no message shown at all. It will only show this information only when the USB2LAN adapter is connected.
If you don't have the means to connect your Ultimate cartridge to a modem/router, you can connect the Ultimate cartridge directly to your modern computer. This means that you can only reach the Ultimate cart from this computer and not from other devices on your network (better security).
To configure such a direct connection, you can configure your Ultimate cartridge to something like this:
Make sure to disable DHCP. Otherwise your U2+ will query for an ip-address from your router/modem.
For this to work, you will also need to configure the ethernet network connection for your modern computer. To connect to the Ultimate cart, you will need to use a different IP-address than the one you have chosen for your U2+, but you will need to use the same net mask. E.g. IP-address: 64.64.64.65 and Netmask: 255.255.255.0. Note that in this example you should only change the last number in the IP-address.
Make sure to make a note of the IP-address. You will need this address to reach the Ultimate cartridge on the network.
At the time of writing there are 4 applications:
- remote control (using telnet)
- file transfer (using FTP)
- using tcp port 64 (raw socket)
- accessing the network / internet from the C64 (UCI)
It is possible to completely control the Ultimate cart via a network connection. You will need a telnet application to do so. I will not go into details on how to configure your telnet application. Most standard telnet applications will work out-of-the-box with recent firmware releases.
Modern operating systems usually do not come with a standard telnet client. This means that you will need to install a telnet client yourself. You can use your favourite package manager. On macOS you can use homebrew (https://brew.sh) and simply type 'brew install telnet'. The telnet client is started from the command line. For Microsoft Windows Operating System you can use PuTTY (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html)
Please make sure that your telnet / terminal client supports vt100. The Ultimate remote screen operates at 60 columns by 24 rows.
To connect to your Ultimate cartrdige simply type on the commandline of your modern computer.
- telnet <ip-address>
e.g.
- telnet 192.168.2.64
- telnet 64.64.64.64
If you use Microsoft Windows Operating System, open your telnet client and make sure to type the ip address in the 'host' input field of your telnet client before making a connection.
Once you're logged in, the screen will look like this:
Once you are connected to the 'remote menu' you can fully operate the the U2 and U2+ like you're used to do using the Ultimate menu on your C64.
To transfer files from and to the Ultimate cartridge you can use the file transfer protocol, also know as FTP.
The easiest way to use FTP is use one of the many FTP-clients.
Windows: * Filezilla * winscp ...
Mac: * Filezilla * duckuck ...