0036 How compatible is the Enhancer 2000? (A clone of the Commodore 1541 disk drive)
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2024
- On today's SMMC, we have a VIC-20 computer and an Enhancer 2000 clone 1541 disk drive to look at. These were found by a local viewer at the Goodwill bins, which is one step removed from e-waste. Lets see if we can get these things working!
0:00 Intro and the VIC-20
12:52 Enhancer 2000
-- Video Links
Enhancer 2000:
www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Enhance...
Enhancer 2000 ROMs:
www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cb...
Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:
my-store-c82bd2-2.creator-spr...
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
Adrian's Digital Basement (Main Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.com/products/digi...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress.com/item/33000...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-MI...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Logic-DS...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
amzn.to/3b8LOhG
www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/itm/14-16-18-20-...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-5-10PCS-...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress.com/item/32537...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/misterblack1?tab=r...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorecomputerclub.com/
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino - Наука та технологія
You’re right about Goodwills in each area being managed differently by location! Although we do have bin stores here out here too, known as Goodwill Outlets, where you have big blue bins where everything costs $1.50 per pound or whatever. I’ve visited them a few times on LGR Thrifts but like, 90% of the time I find nothing but literal garbage so I rarely bother.
Okay onto the rest of the video now :)
Here in Oregon I've gotten 27" monitors for less than $15 (electronics are $0.69/lb). You don't know if it works till you get it home, but in my case I got 2 fully functional monitors. Lots of times we go it's crap.
Yeah our Goodwills here have the bins at the main distribution centers
@@chemmerling that’s a nice price per pound.
A few years ago the Goodwill operating company in Ontario, Canada went bankrupt.
@@evensgrey The one in Alberta is still running.
"Fish are frogs" was part of a insider joke attributed to Bryce Nesbitt of Starpoint Software (and later Commodore). The whole phrase was "Fish are frogs on odd-numbered Tuesday mornings". I didn't work for Starpoint, but I lived close to their headquarters and the staff used to visit our local Commodore user's group (plus you can find it hidden on various other Starpoint products). It makes me wonder if they helped with the Enhancer 2000 ROM.
So glad I was able to offer up something you weren’t that familiar with.. The only reason I knew about the Enhancer 2000 is from David Murray’s video about Commodore clone drives. As for the Vic-20 badges, I harvested the original ones on there and the ones on there are ones I got on Etsy and poorly cut down to fit on my TheVIc20.
Ohhh! No wonder (about the badge) That's too funny. I ended up using the case on my ZIF-64 anyway -- so I stuck the C64 badge on it. :-)
22:35 "While we wait for this to load, let's..." most frequent phrase uttered by Commodore owners
I have both an Enhancer 2000 and a 1541. When swapped the 2000 with the 1541, loading times went from kinda slow to unbelievably slow. The 1541 went right back in the box. I'd still love to get an Indus GT drive for both my Atari and C64. It has an LED showing the track number, error code, or disk type.
Isn't the drive speed limited by the famously buggy IEC interface on the C64? So, how can the Enhancer 2000 be any notably faster without some kind of fastloader?
I want a MSD-2, mostly so I can use it on my VIC-20's IEEE interface.
@@geekwithsocialskills I'm envious, man. I like making outlandish hardware configurations that would have been absurdly impractical and expensive in the '80s. I tried hooking up two 1581s and two SFD-1001s to an unexpanded VIC-20 but I didn't know that you lose access to the IEC bus with Commodore IEEE cartridge. Oh well. I really like the MSD drives, hope to score one soon.
I was just going to post; I have an Indus GT and am experimenting these days with modifying its EPROMs to be more... "accepted". Some demos and games (ones which use IFFL) expect the "1541" status string in the error channel, and will refuse to load if it finds "Indus GT". So then, Adrian: try loading Solar Jetman C64 from disk on your Enhancer and see if it loads OK.
p.s. Adrian & VWestlife: thanks for all your awesome videos!
Here's the box of the Enhancer 2000 showing the feature list: thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images4/1/0317/06/vintage-commodore-comtel-enhancer_1_fd52bae339f2047377afcd0f7cf3d017.jpg
My first disk drive was the Enhancer 2000, in fact my mom wrapped it and kept it at our next door neighbors house till Christmas. Well ironically that year I was house sitting that house for the neighbor through the holidays so myself an a buddy one day went over and I VERY carefully unwrapped it pulled it out and rewrapped the empty box to use the drive during the first week of Christmas break from school. I also unwraped some games. hehe Then 2 days before Christmas I brought it back over and put it in the box and rewrapped it. On Christmas morning I was still just as excited to open it as now I had a taste of using it for part of a week. My parents never knew of this till around 2011 when I shared this story with them and one of our older kids. My mom was blown away and said I always had very good wrapping skills even at 13, but she was more shocked at what length I went to and how devious it was!! HEHE
I don't have that exact drive now but have another Enhancer 2000 I recently picked up. It was a GREAT drive but did not load 5-7% of my games due to the copy protections. Back then I would take the drive in to get tested/serviced and it would always pass. One time a tech said they are great drives but only about 97% compatible with c64 disks. Later when I got a 1541 all my disks worked that would not on the enchancer. I still notice this to this day with the replacement Enchancer 2000 I have.
Still my favorite floppy drive with a great adventure story with it back in the 80s!!!
The Enhancer 2K was also my first floppy drive. Upgraded from the tape unit. Absolutely the worst thing ever. It got to the point that every piece of commercial software I _risked_ purchasing would end up w/breath holding/"puckering" and whatnot fearing the copy protection would cause the drive to 'shit the bed'. Most of the time it would and I'd have beg/please w/the vendor for a return. Which was increasingly rare.
On my birthday in '87 I got an Excerator Plus FSD-2 (infinitely more compatible w/1541). I took the Enhancer 2K out to the driveway and smashed it against the concrete _MANY_ times. Quite thereapeutic.
Adrian, a little more detail on clone drives for the Commodore 64. A lot of clone drives took the approach of basically shuffling the instructions around (and adding filler bytes where necessary to keep code length the same) to make them look different but behave the same. Some examples are the Blue Chip BCD/5.25 and Rapid Access FD148. If you look at a disassembly of the code, all the strings (like error messages) are at exactly the same memory location, all the functions are at the exact same location, etc.
One drive that was a little different was the Commander C-II. A big chunk of the code ($C100 to $CEE1) is moved up by one byte. This unfortunately means that any fastloader that expects this code to be in the usual location won't work. Also, they obfuscated addresses. JMP $C1C8 might become JMP $81C7 (which is a mirror of the ROM... due to incomplete address decoding, the RAM and ROM is mirrored several times in the 64K address space). It's still a line-for-line copy of Commodore's code. All they did was move code and obfuscate addresses.
The Enhancer 2000 2.0 is based on Commodore's code as well, and at several sections throughout the ROM, it uses the same trick of shuffling instructions. It doesn’t just have swapped instructions though - big chunks have been completely rewritten, including the send and receive code on the serial bus and the GCR encoding/decoding. It would be interesting to analyze what the advantages of these new implementations are! (The original Enhancer 2000 1.0 ROM was practically a literal copy of the 1541 ROM, which of course Commodore sued them for. The same thing got the first MSD-1 drives in legal trouble.) The interesting thing is that the 2.0 ROM is compatible with (most) fastloaders, while the 1.0 ROM (which is a near-exact copy of Commodore's code) was not.
I recall reading the review of the first Enhancer 200 drives in Ahoy! magazine. They were so impressed with the compatibility of the drive with various copy-protection schemes geared to specific 1541 quirks that they got suspicious. When they popped out the ROMs and got gibberish in a standard reader, they got more suspicious. They then used the internal copy routines to drop the ROMs into the buffers section by section and move to a computer, and discovered they were bit-identical, just with some of the data lines switched around so they couldn't be read by a ROM reader without a non-standard adapter socket. They put all this in the review, and told Commodore immediately, so by the time the review got published the drives were al but impossible to find.
Nice! Random note: when you do a "@N:DISK,8" that isn't formatting device 8, that's assigning a DISK ID of 8 to the disk. This only really matters if you had two drives and THOUGHT you were formatting device 9, let's say. You'd actually format the disk in 8 and then assign an ID of 9 to that disk.
I think to format a device other than 8, you would do "#9" and then the N command, but it depends on the wedge.
FWIW, I normally like to use a 2-digit ID if possible!
And with a little bit of trickery, you can change all five characters at the end so instead of it saying ”45 2A”, it could say ”SUPER” :-)
@@madmodders and with more trickery, you can even animate directory
Kudos to all modernish developers - they have apparenty been able to identify the actual HW and make the routines act accordingly.
Back when I lived in Portland, I'd occasionally hit the Goodwill bins and try my luck. There was a lot of garbage to be sure (since it's mostly rejects and unsold stuff from the retail stores), but sometimes you managed to pick up some good scores. One time I picked up a huge stack of vintage AD&D campaign manuals in perfect condition, and I've also picked up the occasional PC big box game and piece of vintage computer software. Most of the time I left with nothing, but it was still fun to play the Goodwill lottery when I had some spare time.
Avenger, Radar Rat Race, etc. are the arcade clones originally commissioned by Commodore Japan from HAL Labs, and one of the developers that worked on them was Satoru Iwata, who went on the be the president of Nintendo, and HAL Labs became one of Nintendo's most important developers.
I actually have worked at one of the Goodwill outlets in the past, and you might like to know that once the item hits the bins or the outlet which the stores called, if nobody gets it there they actually send all the stuff to companies overseas that buy the stuff. So a lot of times Iraq India and other such places actually will get this stuff donated to them. So it doesn’t really end up in the trash so to say. Pretty interesting
It may well end-up in landfill overseas...
I'm glad i didn't know about the disk drive for the c64 when i was a kid... Loading from the stupid tape took ages (like several minutes) and you often had to do it twice or three times because it would give errors.
I had an Enhancer 2000 with my first C64, and I have very good memories of that thing. Unfortunately I sold it along with the computer when I was trying to get a newer setup at the time and was no longer using my 64. I have since collected more 64 systems and 1541 drives... but I haven't been able to track down one of these again for the nostalgia. No idea what my unit's ROM version was (nor did I know how to tell, at the time), but it ran everything I had to throw at it. I didn't have a BASIC enhancement/fastload cartridge, though.
Great to see someone doing some real poking at one, to be honest!
Chinon ended up making some of the simpler and better direct-drive mechanisms for Commodore's 1541-II, while other 1541-IIs still received a belt-driven mechanism. This is the first time I've ever seen an Enhancer 2000 in action. Thanks for the video! -- JC
I still have an old PET 2031 FDD which I used for a little while on a kit-built computer. I stopped using it because it refused to reliably read disks. You could format a disk and it would work for a while but then after a few weeks, it suddenly would start giving errors. You could reformat it and it would repeat the cycle. And it didn't seem to matter what brand of disk you used, either.
The 2031 used a parallel interface which had the General Purpose Interface Bus, (IEEE-488 standard). It was a 16-wire system with 8 wires for bidirectional data, a ground wire and 7 wires for signalling. I can still remember building the interface (7 ICs) and programming the computer to use it. If I remember correctly, there was one "ATN" (attention) wire used for sending commands and the data/command transfer signal used two lines effectively in differential mode.
Last time I tried it, it wasn't even booting and when I tried reading the ROMs (on a MiniPro), one of them gave inconsistent data on each read. Still, if you're interested in it I might be able to send it to you. If I ever do decide to add disk storage to that old computer again, I'll probably install a dedicated controller and use a standard drive.
My very first computer and cartridge game was a Vic-20 and Avengers! So nostalgic seeing it again! I think me and Adrian´s the same age, I was born in 1975.
Lol, I just brought home an Enhancer 2000 today to figure out what it is. Thanks for doing my homework!
What a great little drive! Certainly a lot smaller and cooler than the big commodore drive. I hope we're gonna see more of it.
You should 3d print a Commodore logo for it.
I had this disk drive for my C64 as a kid. Never ran into compatibility issues, it was great.
Our Goodwill stores here in Charlotte, NC take anything that looks like tech to a specialty technology store called the Grid where they resell it with exuberant markups.
There used to be a time where you could waltz in and find old Apple IIe/IIgs machines for $5-20, but those days are long gone when Goodwill decided that they could capitalize on Nostalgia.
I'm lucky if I see so much as a cheap DVD player. Thrift stores in East TN are dead for anything electronic, let alone anything *interesting* electronic.
Yeah, I bought a C64 5 years ago from goodwill's auction site for $53. Now they go for well over $150 even in untested condition. Kudos to Goodwill for making the extra money the current market affords them - at least locally they have some very good programs. But I wish I'd gotten into repairing C64s when they could be had cheaply since I don't have people sending them to me on a whim.
@@RodBeauvex I find odd things here and there outside of Charlotte, but we’re pretty much in the same arena as you are for most of the state. Nothing like what the thrift stores had when I worked out of TX or CA.
@@Dorff_Meister My personal system of values don’t really align with what they are doing. I don’t know if it’s the same now, however, in the past, less than 1/8th of their profit actually went to charitable work in 2016. I’d be more willing to part with that market rate if I actually know it was doing good rather than funding some C level’s inflated 500k salary at a 501(c)(3).
Not my intent to sound political, it just doesn’t sit well with my own values when I’m paying 2x the rate of something they received for free when I could buy from a private party. Feels dirty.
But I do echo your repair comment as well - I kick myself in the butt for not holding on to crucial things like SID chips.
Totally agree. I actually live about 70 miles from Adrian and the Goodwill in our small town has, over the last two-ish years, transitioned into asking ridiculous prices for any thing that is electronic or photographic gear. I used to love going there, finding a cool thing, paying under $10. I don’t make a lot of money, so it was always thrilling to find something cool. Not now. As you stated about your store in NC, all of the stores in Oregon are, I believe, part of the same main Goodwill Industries of the Willamette, stuff gets donated to lots of stores and donation sites in parking lots. Lots of the good stuff gets put up on the goodwill auction site. I feel like EBay and people reselling stuff purchased cheap at Goodwill on EBay has total screwed the thrift store industry for people like me. Also, the explosion of anything that is “vintage”, whatever that means, going for $$$$.
I have a *later* Blue Chip drive that is awesome and completely compatible with everything I've ever tried (the earlier model I had originally purchased sucked in every way, and the company sent me the newer model as a replacement), so it's conceivable that later Enhancer 2000s are more compatible than earlier ones. By the way, one reason my Blue Chip drive is so awesome, besides having full compatibility, having direct-drive, running cooler, being bulletproof and reliable, and having a write indicator light (surprisingly useful!), is that it actually uses its track 1 sensor, which means that it never does the head-knocking thing (yet maintains full compatibility).
Yes, Adrian, You are correct! The VIC-20 that you are working on that came from the GOODWILL BINS indeed has a EURO type keyboard. These EURO type keyboards were installed on some Transitioning U.S. and Canadian VIC-20s when they went from the earlier 2 prong Power Supply VICs to the Later C64 Type Power Supply type VIC-20 CRs... That Plastic VIC-20 Name Badge IS NOT an original, but a European REPRO VIC-20 Badge that someone has put on that VIC-20! ...So the machine was obviously in someone's spare parts and worked on in the last 10 years at least. ;) Keep up the great videos...! Tony K. (Commodore and Ti/99 Collector...Melbourne, Florida)
In my C64 days, i used both an Enhancer 2000 and an Oceanic 118N Disk drive.
Both were fully compatible to the 1541, except for some rare copy protection schemes.
Even Burstnibbler cable-installationss worked, if you changed the roms to copies of 1541 stock roms.
The biggest difference was the price (about half of the 1541) and about 20-35% higher speed.
A lot of Disk ][ clones used the Chinon F-051 drive mechanism. (I think some Laser 128 machines used it, too.) It makes a lot of sense that they'd reuse the same mechanism for this drive.
This product was actually made and released by Chinon themselves.
@@6581punk isn’t that what OP is saying?
Pretty cool drive (both as a product and thermally too apparently!), but as you've shown previously, even a 1541 (and 1541c) can be made to run cool with the use of a switching power supply, I fitted mine with a Meanwell RD-65A 5v+12v supply and it runs cool as a cucumber, but the size of this Enhancer 2000 is pretty neat given it sits nicely beside a VIC-20 or C64 without being a massive beast like the Commodore ones... :)
Commodore did offer a model with an external Power supply eventually with the 1541ii. It was basically half a 1571 without the burst Mode...
good find there, that vic 20 sure is worth finding keys for.
Awesome video Adrian! Looking forward to when you have a Coleco Adam to restore! ;-P
Had one of those when I was a kid! Neat
The Enhancer 2000 came along around 1985 at the latest. In junior high, I knew a guy who had an Enhancer 2000, and we fellow Commodore geeks used to call it the "Dehancer 2000" because a ton of major titles wouldn't run on it. I felt for him, because the first third-party drive I bought had the same issues (and a lot more on top of that), but like I said in my other comments, Blue Chip replaced my drive with a tremendously improved version that works with everything, so of course I still gave him a hard time about his drive, like everyone else. 🥴 If I had known at the time that a newer and far more compatible Enhancer 2000 was available, I would have told him to contact the manufacturer to see if he could get it updated.
I was hitting up the Goodwill bins one day and found four Nintendo Wiis one power box for them all but no other cables it was like $6 to buy them all. I also found somebody's handicam with a video in it and curiosity got the best of me so I bought that too. It had some random videos somebody's hunting trip on it. I know some archivists that are really interested in old "vintage" random footage maybe I should convert it someday. This guy's hunting trip to be immortalized for all time. All because he left the video inside the camcorder that eventually made its way into a Goodwill and got picked up by a rando who wants to archive things... Lol
Portal on the C64?, I wanted to see more of that. Nice
I had an Enhancer 2000 back in the day. It worked with all but a few forms of copy protection. I always used a Mach 5 cart for fast loading.
Interesting -- I'd love to do some comparisons to the drive with and without the 6502 and stock ROM. Unfortunately, I really don't have any original copy protected software for my C64
You are the Grand Master!
I could visit Goodwill a thousand times and never find any old non-PC hardware, let alone in a buy by the pound bin.
That's an interesting 3rd party Commodore drive. Nicely designed PCBs and overall an example of something not designed to be as Tramiel cheap as possible and yet it was only $149 in 1985.
Someone should send you an Indus GT drive for the Atari 8-bit machines.
I like that Enhancer 2000 drive. I like that it is as highly compatible with the stock ROM. I do have another 3rd party drive which is the Oceanic FSD Excelerator+ It is also very Highly compatible and have only on the rarest occasion found anything that it won't work with. It is also reputed to use a slightly altered copy of the 1541 ROM. Even heavily copy protected disks usually work well with it and of course Fastload routines as well as the Epyx Fastload cartridge. It also has an external power supply and direct drive spindle motor instead of a belt driven spindle. Nice little drive.
Apple II disk drives initially used Shugart mechanisms (as did Commodore's early PET drives), but they switched to Alps clones of this mechanism before long.
does anyone else get excited seeing a new Adrtan's video and do the 8bit dance party dance?
I think I had that drive and loved it
There were two versions of the Enhancer 2000... the first one (which I have) actually uses the Commodore 1541 ROMs, identifies itself as a 1541 and, as far as I've been able to tell, is almost entirely compatible. Commodore put some pressure on them later on, preventing them from being able to use the official Commodore ROMs, so the manufacturers made and put in their own ROM. That version identifies itself as an Enhancer 2000, and has compatibility problems because of it.
David (The8BitGuy) had a video on floppy drives and he showed off various clones too. It's crazy that these Commodore stuff lingered in Goodwill stores long enough to make it to the bins. Clint showed the bins but only in 1 episode of Thrifts I think.
Cool looking drive. Much less bulky than the 1541.
The Action Replay fast loader uses the C64 function keys as one-touch hotkeys for $, Load, Run, List and Load "*" etc.
This makes it very quick and easy to display the directory or load "*" just by hitting the appropriate F key. Depending on the version, F1 loads and runs "*", and F3 lists the dir.
You can even move the cursor up to the line of the program you want to run, and hit F1, and it will load and run that program. Very useful. The DOS wedge also has some useful shortcut commands.
The speed of the fast loader varies between Action Replay versions. On some versions it's the fastest fast loader on the C64 (excluding those that use custom ROMs.) It really is a fantastic cart.
Chinon does more than disk drives. In the late 70's, I had a movie (film) camera made by Chinon
The first VIC -20 I got in 1982 apparently had a PET keyboard on it, the key caps were really square. It didn't work though so it went back to Toys R Us.
Back in the heyday when I got my first C64, my first drive was an Enhancer 2000. I bought it rather than a regular 1541 for 3 reasons - it was cheaper, it was smaller, and it was a tad faster (it's been a LONG time, but I think doing speed tests on it, it varied from disk/program from about 5% to 30% faster). I think that's the reason that it doesn't work with a lot of the fast loader games out there, is that the built in fast load collided with the software fast loads.
Eventually my drive started to fail, and by all accounts, it appeared that it's alignment was off about 1/4 to 1/2 a track. By that point, I had already repaired a few C64's and 1541's, 1541-II's, 1571's, etc. so I took my Enhancer apart to try to realign and recalibrate it. That's when I noticed a HUGE problem with that drive, you can't adjust the alignment on that drive (or at least I couldn't figure out how to). So, unfortunately, my love/hate relationship with that drive can to an abrupt end that day.
One of my C64s was $2 at a local thrift store, because they thought it was just a PC keyboard. :-)
They do bins here in North Carolina, too. In fact, I live in the Asheville area near Clint LGR and the main, large Asheville store on Patton Ave. does bins. Usually nasty, dirty stuff no one wants. Lol
RE: Cryptic messages in the ROM, I found all sorts of wierd stuff examining commercial disks with a sector editor on the Apple //e back in the day. I found the Lyrics to "Exhuming McCarthy" by REM on the Wings of Fury disk. I suspect that it was part of an Easter Egg, but I never found what activated the Easter Egg 😂
We used to score some decent electronics from our local "Goodwill". Sadly they now have a retired ol' fart that "runs" the electronics section. His former job was running an appliance store that used to deal with anything from receivers to speakers...anything electronic.
His "Go To" pricing method is to hop onto eBay and see what people are asking for the items or comparable items. He then figures in shipping costs, etc.. And that's the price that gets slapped onto the equipment. What we could pick up for a decent price now costs almost full 'retail'. We're not "Flippers" that buy and resell at the local flea markets or swap meets. I'm into vintage computers and electronics, and the wife is into vintage audio. We dialed our visits back when she found a fairly decent 8 track player, but they wanted $59 for it. She picked up two for $5 bucks a pop at the local flea market that just needed cleaning.
I commented once that just because someone wants $100 for an item on eBay doesn't mean someone is willing to pay that amount. He just said "Someone will want it...." and walked back into the warehouse section.
Nice that those pc were able to be recovery except for the keyboards that maybe with some 3d printer can be made some keys.
Even if they are on sale here still very valuable on price and people cherish the few ones that work. Even non working are expensive.
Even though "three blind mice" on a loop is a pretty obnoxious music track, I always felt like the mice were more appropriate for the game than race cars.
Goodwill is all over Canada too, like Value Village.
I had an Enchancer 2000w (I guess that was a Rev number). I bought mine from Protecto Enterpizes and can't remember if I was just told it was better or that original 1541 was not in stock. I was not impressed with it and was amazed when my originals actually worked. I always regretted that purchase when I'd go to my friend's house and the floppy worked on his original 1541.
Your odd keyboard behavior reminds me of an experience I had with my own C64 way back when. I had a QuickShot 2 Plus joystick for the 64. It had an autofire switch that would continually press the fire button. Well, if you had the joystick in port 1, it would send a random bunch of garbage to the screen. The normal behavior was for a button press to trigger a space bar press. But the QuickShot 2 Plus joystick sent different characters. If I remember right, they were different characters than what you're seeing, but the behavior was similar.
I got a VIC 20 complete half-boxed (bottom of the styrofoam) with a matching serial number and power supply. I bought it over 2 years ago for $17, and I know it turns on, that's all :)
Goodwill's are also in Canada
It was about 1986 or so when I got mine. Couldn't get a 1541 anywhere. I got it with a bundle of a Freeze Frame cartridge but I already had a Action Replay MK2 so sold it to a school friend. I remember getting the Eidolon on disk and it wouldn't boot due to copy protection argh. Many of the other drives were naughty and were in fact clones of the 1541 using the original ROMs which Commodore wasn't too happy about.
I don't think I've seen anything other than old PC hardware at a thrift store for maybe 25 years. So I''m amazed someone found Commodore hardware.
I sort of vaguely recall the Enhancer drives being sold at Target around the mid 80s for only a little cheaper than the 1541. IIRC the worry was always the copy protection schemes. How much of that is FUD vs reality I'm not sure.
Funnily enough, those Enhancer drives now seem to sell for more on Ebay than the 1541!
23:17 Great. First contact with ET and you've killed the communication 😆
@15:45 "Initialize" is just used to inform the drive that it should flush it's disk ID cache and get a current one from the disk - this way you can use disks with the same ID, although that is not recommended at all. Adrain has figured that out correctly later on before the format hiccup that has been covered enough in other comments.
The ghost of Commodore past was trying to contact you! LOL
Used to work at the goodwill clerance center in San Antonio, they put a bin out for an hour or 2, then anything not purchased after that is taken to a compactor. No recycling.
Still go in there about once a month or so to see what I can save. Best find was a 2010 Alienware 17" laptop... pretty heavy so it was about $20. Never found any vintage stuff other than console controllers.
Avenger is a really good Space invaders knock off for the Vic20. First game I had for my first home computer. Hot stuff in 1979.
Chinon... There's a name I haven't heard in a long while.
The VIC-20 had both types of keyboards. The one you showed can be repaired with parts off eBay.
Goodwill hubs do the bin thing nationwide. Whatever sits in the stores long enough and doesn't sell is sent to the hub or distribution center or whatever they call them and put into the last-chance bins. These things are giant bins so even if you find one that's full, you're probably never going to get to see what's in the bottom of them. When I was thrifting I'd go early to see them while they were full and I could get down to about halfway to see what was in them and then I'd leave and come back a few hours later when the bins were half-empty to see what was in the bottom half. Almost never did I find anything worth it in these bins so I quit doing it pretty early on in my thrifting adventures. And the stuff that was worth it was usually trashed beyond salvage because they're just thrown around and dumped in the bins with no regard for what's already in them and stuff gets crushed.
We saw an apple 2 with dual disks and monitor at the bins on airport way. All looked good, but someone got it before we did.
During this recording, at the bins (also known as a goodwill outlet), electronics are $0.69/lb. No matter what it is. If it plugs in with cables or is electronic (like an alarm clock) it's less than $1 a pound. Other things are more expensive per pound.
I had one of those drives as a kid. I had a mate who had an Excelerator Plus, a much snazzier affair, slimmer with a single dual-colour LED. (It was the eighties, we were more easily impressed in those days...)
The one (and only) game I couldn't get to load was Katakis, which was a shame as it was a good version of R-Type (as opposed to the dire official version). My mate gloated about that for what seemed like weeks...
Chances are that's called a "Euro" keyboard because the font on it is (a variation of) the "Eurostile" typeface: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostile
We do have Godwill in Canada as well
Goodwill has a small presence in Western Canada. The number (and size) of stores seems to be declining in recent years, however. I have never seen the "bins" at Goodwill (or any other thrift store in Canada).
Here is Colorado the Goodwill Outlets (bins) they take all the computers for recycling and normally won't sell them even if you find one. You can luck out with 64s as they think they are just keyboards. Found a COCO 1 once at one. Also an IBM 5150 clone. That was a bit harder to convince them it was just a keyboard.... but I did lol
That agreement Dell (and maybe some others) have with some of the regions’ management to recycle all computers really strikes me as collusion. Especially since the idea was to keep people from buying a used Windows 98 machine and make it more likely to buy a brand new one - they certainly weren’t thinking of 8-bit home micros as their competitor in the same way! Just a sucky policy all round, destroying retro computers and nudging basic task users to machines they don’t really need.
Omega Race was my favorite.... Still pay it on pc from time to time...
Nice.
If you want to make a kind-of hacky custom label, you can use the kind of double sided tape that's thin (not the foam kind) stuck to the back of your label and trimmed to size with a sharp hobby knife from the rear. If you want to be really fancy, you can print it in colour and get a can of clear glossy spray lacquer to make it shiny. As for what to label it with, if I were you I'd try to get someone with an intact label to take a nice high-resolution photo of it, and use that to make a reproduction label.
I had an enhancer 2000 as my only drive. It was a lot smaller and quicker but there were some compatibility issues from memory.
I'm for an Adrian's Digital Basement logo.
Damn. I'm in Portland. Guess I need to get my ass to the Bins.
Your ZIF64 heard you say you wanted a repair video; it just wanted to help!
Midway was the US rights holder for Space Invaders until Taito entered the US market in the mid-1980s.
in CT we have the the outlet center with the bins. Definitely need gloves and hand sanitizer after digging through them, they're a bit nasty sometimes. I found an N64 there a few years ago, and was like $3. And a BeOS CD
Was talking to a friend from PA recently, who said they had the outlet center as well with the bins as well.
There is actually one more earlier step for goodwill. If the item has perceived value, it will be listed on their auction website and never be put out on the floor. I have bought a couple C64s (kind of overpriced, lately ) from their auction site. In fact, I just finished troubleshooting a C64 that I think came from them - it needs 4 new ram chips (4 test bad, but they are all MT) and it had a bad power switch. I've learned so much about c64 repair from you, Jan Beta, etc. Thanks!
Next thing you know, goodwill will start removing the SID chips and sell them separately. :)
@@brianv2871 Ouch. Like some of the completely stripped C64 boards you see on ebay that are STILL way overpriced.
17:17 That's because you formatted the disk using 8 as the ID; the ID needs to be 2 characters.
I just tried it with DolphinDOS and got the same result.
There was a JiffyDOS for it, but in the transition from CMD to Retro Innovations the Enhancer one was lost. JiffyDOS mad it more compatible with with 1541 Copy protected software.
At one point some one made a bounty for the JiffyDOS ROM, but I lost track of it.
Another cool video 🙂 very interesting to see the enhancer 2000 board, and his resemblance with 1541. Don’t know, maybe you could download and print the original la el on adesive paper… about the poor Vic, I don’t know if the keyboard is called “euro style”, I don’t recall to have seen this kind here in Europe 🙂.
Keep with your great work Adrian, and thanks.
It's because the font is literally named Eurostile. (Or Microgramma, the older version with no lowercase.)
@@stevethepocket thanks!
We had a goodwill end of the line bin store here too. Not by weight though. Books were .75 each. Electronics was like a buck an item. Was OK if you were looking for parts. Most items were in pretty bad shape, and only got worse as people banged stuff around looking for something.
The fussiest of nitpicks regarding Avenger's name: if they'd called it Space Invaders, it would have been a trademark, not copyright, dispute, and probably from Taito (the developer) or Midway (the American rights holder at the time), not Atari.
17:45 that number is the blocks on the floppy drive, like the wii does i guess
7:53 that's what she said
I have three of these drives, one is white one is light brown and one is a darker brown, they all have different roms, one has commodore 1541 dos, and one has the same as the video, dont remember the third one. Will have to try the MOS 6502 and see if that helps it be more compatible. DUCK BILL latch mechanism was neato. The most compatible clone drive is the Oceanic 118/Excellerator+ that seems to load anything.
The original ROM in this drive was just the 1541 ROM with some of the data pins swapped around. That would make it software compatible but modified ROMs for fast-loaders wouldn't work.
I was today years old when I learned that fish are frogs, and to beware the hidden c0pyright notice.
Avenge me, Adrian - they have invaded my space! 🤣
07:52 Said the actress to the Bishop!
I think the "difference" in the key size is an optical illusion because of the different font
On the lower board, I saw a couple of jumpers near the rear - just wondering if those were drive ID select?
Regarding the header pinout on that floppy drive. The VZ200/300 (aka Laser 3xx) floppy drive used the same pinout as the Apple floppy drive. I suspect vtech simply repurposed their Apple clone floppy drive, which looks identical to the VZ drive from the outside, for the VZ and built their own minimum cost 99% software FM controller. The only differences with the pinout are +5 is supplied from the drive to the controller and no 12V at all. The RPM seems to have been lowered to 85 by shaving the pulley on the motor spindle to ridiculously thin.
goodwill has an "outlet" that has "the bins" in Salt Lake City, UT.
That settles it, then. If I ever get to take a trip to the US, Disney, tourist sights, shopping for established brands... All out the door. I'm going to plan the trip based on the locations of Goodwill stores :P
You will rarely find Commodore stuff at Goodwills anymore. Most of it gets shipped to the online Goodwill store, which is an eBay like site.
@@dennisp.2147 Oh well, I can always look for the odd apple II and early x86's. The way things are scarce in my neck of the woods, even the simplest things would be welcome.
I could really use parts from that CR VIC keyboard.