I might just try this on my plus/4 since I have almost no use for the plus/4 and zip software for it and the only peripheral I have is a standard 1541 or 1571 drive (which was not the drive designed for it, but it works)

Might be fun for me.

May want to try pulling the cart out and see what it doesn without the cart, you may find you just have a dirty cart slot and the best solution is, two steps.

Run a regular pencil eraser across the leads of the cart and blow out the slot with compressed air, if any oxidation or corrosion exist, try to figure a none damaging way to clean them too.

I've had my vics display odd characters in failed cart boots (partial connections, not clean enough to start the cart, but enough to tell the computer try to boot the cart.

Booting without the cart will get the normal boot screen if the computer is internally ok.

PlanetM.U.L.E. is the best modern version I've seen (and getting better all the time)

Working on making the current release closer to the original, and they also are creating a new version with new features.

www.planetmule.com