Commodore 1541 disk Drive.
I cannot find the original thread I said this in before so I'll start a new one.
I am thinking of getting a commodore 1541 Disk drive for my old bredbin.
I am interested in getting the mark one to match the style of the the bread bin.
I am thinking of getting a commodore 1541 Disk drive for my old bredbin.
I am interested in getting the mark one to match the style of the the bread bin.
- What is a good price to pay for the 1541?
- Am I foolish to go for the mark one over the mark 2?
- Is it worth getting a 1541 for my Commodore 64?
Post edited by Scottie_uk on
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Comments
I think 1541-II is more reliable than the 1541, but the 1541 sure looks better next to the breadbin! :p I don?t really now what they go for, maybe 20-30 euros where i live.
Personally i wouldn?t get either, it?s just too much hassle with floppys, not to mention they?re not that easy to get hold of nowadays (unless you're planning of starting to collect boxed originals).
I f you're serious about your c64 then you should absolutely get an uIEC/SD
http://www.jbrain.com/
or the much more expensive 1541 Ultimate
http://www.1541ultimate.net/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=7
which is more compatible and will load most of the fastloaders.
Then you can download d64's from the net, put them on a SD card and start playing!
I've got another one round my parents, but it needs testing and cleaning. If you haven't found one suitable, or if you can't find one, then PM in a couple of months, and see if I've had any luck with it. What sort of price are you looking at?
They are big and heavy, you may want to look into the sd2iec which is an SD card emulation of them, not perfect for reasons I really don't want to look into but seem to work OK mostly.
Drop me a PM if you'e interested.
S
I'm lucky I paide ?10 for mine (along with the machine) over the car boot sale.. It had problems working so I dismantled it and found the problem to be a loose drive belt (soon fixed) and spent a couple of pounds on some new screws (the old ones were all broken and worn out).
either drive is fine, BUT get a fastload cart.. e.g. action replay or even a cheapo fastload cart.. errm a few companies do em. IF you don't have one.. or get a machine with jiffy / dolphin dos .. BUT with the parrallel cable.. other wise it's not SO fast. or put boot trilogic on every disk..hehe
if you like demos then YES!!! is the short answer.. www.c64.ch is a place to start.. there are more places of course.
emulators are pretty nice on c64.. winvice etc. just not the real thing.. you could also buy a DTV64 and mod that back to a machine and even use the drive on that :)
having a c64 without a drive is only half the pic.. not really like a +3 in the sense, but some releases are disk only.. manic mansion , zak mckraken, project firestart , defender of the crown to name a few..
of course there is a wealth of cosine releases you can get from www.cosine.org.uk ;) :D
but c64's and demos.. well :) check out things by Crest, Blackmail , Booze Design to name 3 of MANY :)
(you can tell I'm a diehard speccy user huh? ;) )
forgot to say, to port stuff from / to pc.. your gonna need a cable.. hopefully ya PC has a printer port on it
http://sta.c64.org/xcables.html
So I was just dicing whether or not to say, ok love go and get me this one... then point her to ebay.
that + the pc cable are pretty much a must.. or you could use Retro replay + RR-NET.. but that isn't cheap (ethernet on 64).. much like Winston is doing I guess.
I have some disks at my parents, but no disk drive.
I almost got a black 16k the other day for ?5 at a boot sale. I could have then transplanted the parts and made a black Commode 64, maybe even put a Sinclair stripe. But then I told myself, 'get a grip' and I let is pass. :D
I think I will get a drive and then maybe later one of them fast load cards.
I remember when I was a kid of about 12, a friend had a commodore 64 with a 1541, and he had a mag that showed how you could turbo load by sorting two pins on one of the edge connectors using a paper clip.
A very silly thing for a mag to publish, even if it did work I bet loads of kids killed their computers.
I'm about 80-90% sure you thinking of .. the magic reset switch.. that people trashed their machines doing.hehe
it was a soft/warm reset, so you could poke games, and then SYS back into action.. well assuming you hadn't overwritten screen mem etc.
or just get the trilogic software, and use boot trilogic on all the disks.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/TRITON-QD-COMMODORE-64-DISK-DRIVE-SYSTEM-Very-Rare_W0QQitemZ190353020478QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_VintageComputing_RL?hash=item2c51ec963e#ht_4243wt_907
I had a TIB ultimate drive.. I still have it SOMEWHERE..hehe BUT it takes the cart port, if memory serves..
to give you an idea >
Commodore 1541 5.25" drive
Intro ? 48 seconds
Main Game ? 130 seconds
Commodore 1541 5.25" drive (plus Action Replay Fastload)
Intro ? 8 seconds
Main Game ? 11 seconds
TIB 3.5" Ultimate Disk Drive
Intro ? 3 seconds (virtually instant, as drive takes about 3 seconds to initialize)
Main Game ? 6 seconds
(However, if there is more data on the disk, times may be substantially increased).
off wiki...
There was one other 3.5" floppy drive available for the Commodore 64. The "TIB 001" was 3.5" floppy drive which connected to the Commodore 64 via the expansion port, meaning that these drives were very fast. These devices appeared from a company in the United Kingdom, but unfortunately did not become widespread.
it was a decent drive just WAY too late in the game to be serious competition against 1541
it would be nice if they figured out a way of doing it via usb to put an end to printer port issues.. since well some machines are printer-port less :)
Think it already has been done:
http://www.commodore16.com/index.php/component/content/article/70-upgrades-a-mods/335-xu1541.html
S
it lacks of 1541 full emulation, protected etc fastloaders does not work, like the 1541-ultimate, but almost all the games are on cracked d64 images
(in fact i managed to build a 3100 onefile games collection so I don't need anymore to 'cd' on D64 images..)
Its fast when you have JiffyDOS (has support too for the fastload of Final Cartridge-III) , I can load large games in *seconds*.
One feature of this uIEC/SD is the CMD harddrive partition, you can have a 16MB file as HD (directories etc).
As for real drive, i prefer the 1571 or 1541-II
chris
not really, some groups only fixed a the bootstap/loader
i.e.
if track checksum = correct THEN crash.. was basically changed to "don't crash"
to make a disk copyable and to get the first version out.
also IFFL'd files probably won't work.. until they can do 100% emulation, no point.. there are a few track / sector loaders that are used to test how good thesr things are. The timing is also an issue.
I did see for the USB interface before. ?38.. WAY too much.. ?10-15 fair enough.. but thats pretty much the cost of a drive
It was advertised as a VIC 1541, but its actually one from the early Commodore 64 era, and the chit in the box ( says January 1983).
As I picked it up in person I also managed to blag some extras. I got with it Simons Basic cart boxed sealed mint, music composer cart boxed mint, sealed mint 10 pack of Sony floppyies, and 20 random floppies I also got two interesting books:
It turns out it belonged to the sadly passed on uncle of the seller. I'm telling you the stuff he had, he would have been a credit to the world of retro computing.
They had two commodore computers and disk drives both mint, a boxed mint commodore printer, and loads of boxed and still sealed C64 game disks.
In addition to the commodore stuff, a grundy new brain, two mint 6 switch woody Atari 2600 and loads of boxed and still sealed Atari cartridge games.
He also had a vast array of Oscilloscopes, counters, and other measuring equipment, and boxes upon boxes of old CPU's and IC's some stamped intel 1976. He also had packets of old 5"1/4 disk drives un opened, and loads of motherboards which did not look of the IBM compatible type.
Aparently they threw a lot out, I bet they lost some real gems. I didn't have the heart to blag anymore but I did do my best to tell her what was worth more than give-away prices.
Long post I feel like Egwf.
http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books/pdf/Compute%27s_Programming_the_Commodore_64_The_Definitive_Guide.pdf
is highly recommended if ya wanna do some coding.. hhmm PRG is more like a reference guide literelly..
if you just go to that site, there are loads of books :)
as for coding, if you get yourself an action replay 5 or 6.. it opens up a new world. I mean it has an inbuilt monitor, BUT you can get into the mechanics of things to figure them out. I'm sure folk here did the same with the multiface etc.
if you don't get a coding cart, then you should get turbo assembler, thats a well used assembler loads used :)
if you did any ASM on the speccy and wanted to do 6502, some things are the same. but things like how you print onscreen and the modes are different etc.