Faulty 1541-II Repair (plus C64 Fast Loader fight!)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- In this video I repair a faulty Commodore 1541-II disk drive sent in by viewer Eric. In addition, I continue testing 3 more C64 fasterloaders. Which will be the fastest?
0:00 - Intro and 1541-II Repair
18:00 - Fastloader comparison testing! Action Replay 5 vs Super Snapshot 5.2 vs Final Cartridge III
--- Video Links
Action Replay 5
rr.pokefinder.org/wiki/Action...
Super Snapshot 5.2
rr.pokefinder.org/wiki/Super_...
Final Cartridge III
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fin...
EasyFlash 3
store.go4retro.com/easyflash-3/
1541 Diag Cart
blog.worldofjani.com/?p=2180
Adrian's Tools (for the EasyFlash 3)
github.com/misterblack1/ef3-c...
Commodore 64 Drive on PC by Tech Tangents
• Commodore 64 Drive on PC
Portal for C64
www.jamiefuller.com/portal/
--- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
Jonard Tools EX-2 Chip Extractor:
amzn.to/2VazxDS
www.jonard.com/Products/EX-2-...
Wiha Chip Lifter:
amzn.to/3a9ftWw
www.wihatools.com/precision-c...
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/
--- C64 Stuff
JaffyDOS:
blog.worldofjani.com/?p=3544
C64 Test Harness I use:
• Building a Commodore 6...
C64 Homebrew cartridge PCB: (used for the DeadTest / Diag Cart I use)
www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-64...
EasyFlash 3 Multi-Cart:
store.go4retro.com/easyflash-3/
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Music during time lapse:
Raindropsies_2SID by Wojciech Radziejewski (Shogoon)
csdb.dk/release/?id=160314
Intro music by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino
Outro Music:
Raindropsies_2SID by Wojciech Radziejewski (Shogoon)
csdb.dk/release/?id=160314 - Наука та технологія
Because there are so many comments around this package and my use of gloves, time to clear some things up.
- Editing: I edit my videos. Do not think that what you see in a video is all that happens. If I left everything I shot in the video, you would he watching boring videos that were hours long.
- Gloves: the gloves I wore were not waterproof but unless viruses on dry cardboard have the ability to jump thought a few mm thick material, this is not an issue. These were not disposable gloves but I took them off and threw them on the floor where they sat unused for days. This virus can not live on dry material past around 24 hours.
- Hands: even with gloves I still washed my hands thoroughly after I was done unpacking the drive.
- Surfaces: I cleaned all surfaces with disinfectant after unpacking the box on my desk. Again, transfer of a virus from the box onto my dry desk would be highly unlikely anyway. This viruses are not airborne and need a liquid medium or something like sweat or oil to transfer.
- Removing gloves: some people don't seem to understand it is possible to remove gloves without touching the outside. This is hilarious because if that's the case, why does anyone including healthcare workers even wear them? It is extremely easy to remove gloves especially this kind without touching the outside with your hands....
- Box contents: some people think that the contents of the box can also be contaminated. This package was in transit for days before it got to me. Viruses do not last anything close to that amount of time on dry and clean surfaces. The biggest thing is that packages are subjected to cold and hot temps while in transit which makes it very difficult for pathogens to survive. This is no different.
personally i could care less if you use gloves, unlike other people
but i choose not to, and thats the beauty about living your own life :) you can choose what *you* want to do
Did you also clean the yellow knife you used?
CouldN'T care less. Saying could means that you do care somewhat
Adrian's Digital Basement I’ve read it lasts only a few hours on cardboard.
I’ve heard 72 hours and someone even told me recently it can last for a week on hard surfaces. Who knows at this point. All I’m saying is, are we really going to let this bug stop us from licking postage tape? C’mon! That’s no way to live.
It takes a brave man to admit when he needs help to get his floppy working again! Great vid, look forward to seeing more.
Especially if the root cause was .. dirty head...
A lot of men had floppies back in the ‘80s.
I used to play Krakout in the 80s on my C64. I haven't seen it in soooooo long. I also still have my old Action Replay cart and it works on my old C64 breadbin. Thanks for the great video! I enjoyed it.
yes, but those arkanoid clones are best controlled by a paddle; the C64 has the ability to read analog pots on its game ports so I wonder if there's a chance to hack those games to use analog paddles...
@@alerey4363 katho8472 5 hours ago commented that it supports paddles! I've never tried that, as I don't have paddles for C64. But I will for sure! I will probably build them with slider pots, I think it's more appropriate for this game.
Krakout was indeed fun game :) Haven't played it since 1991 but now that I looked for it, seems to be available on a certain website, so going to download and play it with my Mini C-64.
Always look forward to your content Adrian.
Oh, about Krakout: I also grew up with that xD. You can turn on the music in game as well btw.
And it has support for paddles!
Oh I should have tried the paddles! I actually have a set.
Great game! I spent many hours on Krakout
You're smart to wear the gloves! This is great content, I always enjoy watching you troubleshoot. It's good to know that a little tenacity usually yields good results. Even through your editing you always let us know that there are mis starts and dead ends that you overcome. Great work!
I can't help but watch this and think this would have been a great training video for Commodore employees assembling drives
Thank you for the drive maintenance tips. I have a 1541 and 1571 each likely needing this. After watching several of your videos I broke down and ordered Easy Flash 3 today!
Thanks for another great video. It helps me keep my mind off of what’s going on, I live just north of you in Washington right in the middle of all the fun. I hope you are keeping your self safe and healthy(love the glove usage)
Be careful Adrian, Krakout is a great, fun game, and can be very addictive! When I was a kid, my father often stole my C64 for whole days to play Krakout (and Colossus Chess, and Blue Max), sometimes he went beyond 40+ or maybe 50+ levels. It gets more and more difficult with the higher levels. And the music is actually very good, but it was waaay too fast with your machine. You shoud try it with a PAL C64.
That "80s dance party" music wasn't quite what I expected.
On an unrelated note - it's quite remarkable how unoptimized the stock vanilla loading routine was, considering how blazing quick some of the fastloaders are in comparison. Clearly, the bottleneck wasn't the hardware.
Also, congrats on the new disk drive!
luckily for us those mechanism are still in good shape after 40+ years, so 21st century hacking fixed those software/bios bottlenecks in many ways
A good summary of why the 64/1541 combo is so slow can be found at www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52439
Man those were the times... I actually had an Action Replay back then. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
So much nostalgia in this particular video. I had (and still have) the 1541-II, the Action Replay V and Krakout. My preferred way of loading games with the Action Replay was to hit F3 as a shortcut to list (rather than typing out $), then moving the cursor up to the line containing the program to load and hitting F1.
Thanks for another great video Adrian! I for one liked the gloves, I used Ove-Gloves to open a box outside then the gloves went straight into the wash for a sanitize cycle along with towels while the packaging all went straight into the bin
Awesome video! Gives me hope that some of my funky 1541 drives will be an easy fix after all.
It's always worth a look. Sometimes a cleaning disk is enough but with this it probably would not have been.
Nice to know that some 35 years ago, I bought the right cartridge. :)
Love my Action Replays! Originally got the AR3, and later upgraded to AR6 which I still use.
Glad to see some 1541-II love too. My fave disk drive for sure, it's so much better than the original it's not even funny. No heat issues, much leaner and it seems overall a lot more stable. Looks great too!
What you should try to find is a 1541 Ultimate-II+ cartridge. That truly is *the* final cartridge. :)
Great video Adrian. A 1541 always makes me smile.
The Commodore king uploads once again, thanks for the awesome content Adrian
That repair was interesting, very nice video Andrian !!!
Got a flashback just seeing the Final Cardridge 3 "Desktop". I had a FC3, when I was younger, though it was in the middle of 90s. C64 was my first own computer, which was handed over to me by one of my older brothers.
I'm using a FC3 right at the moment:)
... and a decades old parallel cable (from 1541 to C64, SpeedDOS-like, but only the pure cable without other modifications).
Shocks me always. Loading 220 Blocks in 4.3 seconds. Adrian's stuff was 130 Blocks? So doubled it again;)
I had the Action Replay back in the day. I used it heaps to modify graphics in games, cheat codes, copying disk to tape for friends etc.
The normal fast loader is about 5-6 times faster than normal. So a 200 block program/game loads in about 30 seconds. The warp function of the AR5 is actually 25 times faster than normal. You will only notice it really on the larger programs, like a 200 block program where it will load in about 6-7 seconds. You hear the drive going "tuk tuk tuk tuk" really quick. Its impressive.
Thank you for this video, currently restore a couple of Commodore 64C, and a 1541-II and it wasn't spinning of move the heads, turn out someone before me had it apart and had put the little plastic level at 15:03 in your video, under the metal rail in rides on, which rammed the disk head and motor at the same time when you closed the drive door.
Never owned a commodore. I bought an IBM PC XT with my paper route money. Worked on my brother's TRS-80 prior to that. I still love watching your videos. It's therapeutic.
Datel Electronics is a British company that I remember from back in the day. Somewhere I have a boxed Datel PlusD floppy disk system for the ZX Spectrum, that I've never used. They're still in operation and still making Action Replay cheat systems.
For a company dealing in cheat devices the spectrum of quality of their products sure matched. From actually useful products like the C64 Action Replay to the completely useless Action Replay/Gameshark PC software which had a parallel port copy protection dongle.
I remember that name too but I'm 35 so only just remember as a kid in the early 90s
It's great to see your using one of my fellow Aussie Dave's Eevblog multimeter!
It's really cools to see the mechanisms inside the drive whirring away while it's running! They should make transparent lids for drives.
(Excellent T-shirt, by the way!)
Huh, I have a lightly Damaged 1541 that I want to fix up, giving it a transparent top window actually sounds like a fun mod, thanks!
Very enjoyable video :)
As always
70% IPA is usually better than 99% IPA for cleaning. The water is necessary to help dissolve certain substances.
IPA is very hygroscopic, so leaving it in a spray bottle will drop it's concentration anyway. There's no chance that's still 99%
This video is really good, man!
The 1541-II that I bought a couple of years ago had exactly the same problem. A little bit of maintenance like you did and it’s working ever since. The main difference was that mine wasn’t just yellowed from age, it was literally yellow. I’ve never seen such a bad yellowing before. But some extra long Retr0brite in the Summer Sun (3 days!) did it. It’s looking good now, even though a little bit of the yellowing has come back with time, but it’s nothing like before.
Amazing speed on that AR5 cart! I grew up with a tape drive where a game might take over 5 minutes to load...
Was waiting for you to say "Let's get right to it!" with your usual hand gesture - and then drop the box!!
the ammonia in windex is really good at removing crud.
great video! I have an old disk drive that im about to take apart and clean. So this was a great How-to :)
Nice video again. I have a couple of those disk drives, I have never seen any persisting crud like that. And the magic windex did the job :-)
I "grew up" with 1541-II's and at some point got a 1541C back in the day as well as two 128D with 1571 inside. But now, after watching Commodore videos all over UA-cam, I kinda like -C a bit better because of the fancy track 0 sensor. And even bought a brown 1541 with an Alps drive that only needed some grease. It's a bit like classic cars, you get accustomed to some disadvantages :)
Oh and of course I made the two "oldies" cool with the help of your video, Adrian :)
Yeah the 1571 has the track 0 sensor too but on the 1541, only some of those C models have it. Strange they removed it again on the II!
Thanks for the shoutout! I gotta admit I was pretty concerned that an X?1541 cable may have fried a 1541-II since that's my last functioning drive. I'm glad it was a simple, unrelated, fix though.
I just recently created the same problem for my 1541-II. What actually caused the issue was attempting to restore a particular D64 image onto a floppy. This particular game has copy protection, a custom fast loader and data compression routines. I’m not sure which of those caused the poor floppy drive to make terrible sounding head movements when attempting to restore the image. But after several failed attempts of restoring the image, the drive stopped reading disks. I also thought I had fried the drive until I inspected the head. It was just as tough to clean too.
Nice video Adrian. Keep safe :)
Most places selling tools will also have magnetic trays/bowls, often used by mechanics to hold nuts and bolts, but they work fine for small computer screws too.
In Fast Load on the action Replay , You can use the F keys , F3 to list the Directory then just move the cursor up to the program you want to load and press F1 , no need to type anything :-) or if you only have 1 program on the Disk you just press F1 and it will load the 1st program on the Disk.
Windex to the rescue! Very strange, I wonder what was stuck to the head that glass cleaner could cut through that IPA could not. Great video sir, rock on!
Actually, not that "strange". Unlike plain isopropyl alchol, the glass surface cleaners like Windex do contain also some spesific effective surfactants which improve wetting and dispersing, thus helping also to separate the particles, for example. As the outcome of all those designed properties, the efficiency of the cleaning process gains significant improvement.
That music on the “Syntax 2001” crack screen is from Yie Ar Kung Fu 2. I have always loved that music so much! Anyway, 5 or even 7 seconds to load a 130 block program is incredibly impressive. I have to wonder what the stock tape load speed on a Datasette would be.
Those magnetic parts trays are really handy! Ollie's bargain outlet sells those. I think there brand is steelton. The base has a magnet too so it doesn't slide around.
I remember Dolphin DOS was the fastloader I used to see advertised in the magazines. It would be interesting to see that one added to your speed testing.
Yeah, Krakout! Excellent game with great music!
I am using my IPA that I usually use for my retro repair work in a pump spray bottle (like Jan Beta has his in, if you watch his vids) and I am spraying anything that comes into my house with it such as mail and packages. The information we are getting in the UK is that if you just leave packages for 72 hours the virus should be dead. I am leaving stuff as well as hitting it with IPA so between the two things I am hopeful I am protecting our household. One other thing to watch with those magnetic screw plates is to keep your floppy disks well away from them as it may be strong enough to erase your disks.
At 14:35, *Tri-Flo* is a great product for this. It's silicon based and has a pleasant smell.
Oh I actually have some and used it for a while. I was aware it was silicone based. Thanks!
Wouldn't that extra silicon attract dust in time? I guess that might cause a bigger issue later on and why they didn't use it originally. Nice restoration though!
Wow! I completely forgot about Krakout! I didn't recognize it until that music started, then it brought back memories. Now I'm going to need to go play it!
You know the world has gone completely mad when Adrian makes a video where he doesn't spray anything with DeOxit. ;)
I usually draw one line on one and two on the other.
You could also use 2 different colors
or just mark one...
I recently rescued a 1541-II from going to the trash. I opened it up, cleaned, lubed the rails, exchanged a couple of electrolytics just in case.. the only fault I could find from it was just a really dirty read head. After some vigorous (I mean squeak-squeak off the cotton bud for a good while) cleaning everything just works :-) GadgetUK uses Plastex to clean the gunk. Of course no PSU so I just built one.
These videos will look crazy decades from now, no one will know why you're scared of the box
Pretty much true, because the keyword, COVID-19, was not spoken on the video.
they’ll probably be confused as it is because of this unknown historic word “repair” 😂
Nice repair :)
That Kratout tune sounded real fast though.. The PAL version is more easy on ears in my opinion.
Consequently, I bet fans of the game here would think the PAL version sounds too slow 😂
@@adriansdigitalbasement I wouldn't be surprised if they did 😂
Amazing how nostalgia messes with our perception.
Blooperalert!! :) 27:53 "L DOLLARSIGN bracket" That "dollarsign" looks remarkably like a "questionmark" to me. ;)
Love your videos anyway!
Well, Adrian, I'd definitely say that Commodore is keeping up with you!
1541 lls are SO much easier to fix
than og 1541s. I think that they're overall just plain better.
My 2 1541-IIs I had as a child all broke with the same problem: you turn them on and they keep spinning forever and both LED stay on no matter if connected to a c64 or not, and nobody could fix them here and had no money for a new drive, was always a big drama in my early computer user life.
@@nichderjeniche I had the same, but fixed mine.
I actually fixed 2.
There is a square 44 pin surface mount ic on them that goes.
I did mine when I was a lot younger and better eyesight
@@johngr34 good to know, where did you got the replacement from?
@Mr Guru Did you intend to share the Gerber files because all Gerber links are missing on that page. All that is there are images. Very nice work, though.
i just purchased 2 1541-II drives from ebay yesterday. The timing of this video couldn't be better.
Datel Electronics takes the cake by warp speed! Even without the cartridge it’s ultra fast, and works with tapes to, it changed the commodore era
I used the Super Snapshot with my MSD dual drive. That was the cartridge that worked the best for me. It wasn't so much about speed, but compatibility.
my minidisc lasted 200 days used 2 hours a day.
three of my drives from 1985 works fine. they we're used much more the first 20 years but this shows you old things was built to last. now, or from mid 90's things we're only built to last 1-2 years.
Windex cleans up grime pretty good!
I still have my original Action Replay 5. I saved up my allowance to buy it and was so excited when it arrived. My brother and I used it to 'hack' games, which for our young selves meant swapping sprites from different games into each other. Batman into Yie Ar Kung Fu, for example. Giving the main character in Kung-Fu Master an afro and bell bottoms so he looked like Black Belt Jones. You know...
Good stuff.
Best intro in the game, i rewind sometimes just to hear the beep beep boop boop song
Haha, the Krakout tune on NTSC speed... intense!
The Zoom Floppy from Jim Brain is a great alternative if you don't want to risk it by making your own XE1541 cable. Works via USB too.
Easy flash and KungFuFlash have that functionality by USB port can transfer disk images to real disks and it can transfer tap images to real cassettes as well.
Great video! I did not know that it's safe to use magnetic screws with an older disk drive like that. I know it's fine with computers today.
If I remember correctly, when I used to repair those. The 74LS13 would cause a no read error as well. This is the same chip that is used in cassette data drive. or you could make your own with the same chip.
It was cool to see Krakout- I know Andy Green, Rob Toone, and Chris Shrigley (Shriggzy) really well. We're all from Derby in the UK, and we all live in the US now. Chris, Rob, and I all live in the same town actually. Although I never worked at Gremlin or Core, I used to hang out there most nights after work.
I did work with all three of them at Mass Media though
Interesting that you switched to lithium grease. I was always under the impression that when plastic is involved (in either one or both of the parts that 'move') then silicone grease should be used.
Windex and IPA mixed at 50-50 is good for cleaning printers too.
It dissolves that stuff.
I have a few SID chips that manifest issues on some of the channels but still are good for test purposes. I find that the swinsid should only be used with Dual swipe socket attached to it otherwise it can widen he SID socket. -Mark.
Adrian has a package.
Oh my!
The Action Replay could be used to compress single load tape games. Just load the game, pause at the title screen and then save. This will compress the data and save it back to tape, typically halving the load time.
You do need the AR to load games stored in this manner, and it won't work on games that require multiple loading sessions, but it's very useful if you're not worried about that.
Way back in 1980-something, my first Commodore disk drive was a 1541C; it failed just like the 1541-II in this video. A friend told me to clean "the head", but it would have greatly helped if he told me that it was not the fuzzy contact on the top of the drive head mechanism! I even went as far as replacing the fuzzy contact thinking I was putting a new head in the drive. :|
Is the II faster than the I using stock loading or did they just optimise component count?
You can’t be too safe when it comes to serious viruses! On another note, Adrian, I’m particularly amazed on all the c64 gadgets and utility software etc that you have! I had no idea there was so much out there for the c64! In fact I might be a tiny bit jealous on what you have! 😉 As always, I always look forward to your coming videos! Take care and stay safe!
how do you get your screen on the monitor to look so clear!
Ah, memories. I had the TFC3, disk drive and a mouse. Krakout was what taught me how to use the mouse. ;)
in regards to the magnetic mat, I have a little magnetic bowl (looks like an ashtray) that I picked up at ACE Hardware for a couple of bucks.. works great and spends most of its day just stuck to my fridge.
Yeah I have a few of those too. My gripe with those is they often pickup stray screws on the underside due to how strong the magnet is. The mat seems to keep screws exactly where you put them down so you can organise the screws into groups.
I use retro replay (the default option on my 1541 U2+). I was kind of hoping you'd test that too. I noticed it's insanely fast though. I noticed it was way faster than epyx and epyx didn't work with sam's journey. Retro replay works with sam's. Probably because it's made with REU in mind. I think it's the same company as action replay. I wonder if it is basically just the same thing. I love the F1 to load * option, but you still have to hit enter.
It would be great sometime if you could dive into all the options on the 1541 Diag cart. It is unclear to me what are good numbers for alignment checks.
@Adrian Did you think to clean the black plastic top part of the headassembly, that pushes down when the head is engaged? I was just watching it, thinking there might be the same kind of crud on there, if it came from a floppy that had gummed up. Wouldn't want you to get that on your discs that you use in there :)
I don't. It's a foam pad and doesn't seem to pick up the same contamination. If it's a double sided drive then you do need to clean it as it can get the same build up.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Ah ok, i was thinking it would be some plastic thingy, which could crap that gunk the same way, i don't really know those old Commodore drives, but was really just concerned about your precious discs you would put in it.
Thanks for putting out so many videos right now, by the way, it's really nice to get all this new content... and stay safe :)
Hey Adrian, this is OT. But do you ever find vintage parts at Surplus Gizmos in Hillsboro? I live in Seattle now and there are no actual stores up here to find vintage electronics. Love your vjdeos.
I had krackout on the msx, fun game!
Have you ever heard of SpeedDOS? It required three things to work: 1) a special ROM in the C64, 2) a special ROM in the 1541(-II) and 3) a parallel cable to connect the drive to the C64's USER port. It was _insanely fast!_ I used it all of the time back in the day; and it achieved a near 100% compatibility. If you absolutely _had_ to, you could switch both the drive as well as the C64 back to stock with a special switch on the back of both. The parallel cable wouldn't have to be disconnected from the C64 in this case, because, as you know, the standard C64 BASIC ROM and 1541(-II) DOS didn't even know of its existence... If you happen to be able to do a video on this, I would love to hear your verdict! Mind you, you _will_ have to read a manual to achieve the best results, as there was an absolute tonne of ways to get programs to load. As a bonus feature, it also came with a machine language assembler and monitor.
Hi Adrian! Have you ever gotten your hands on a PC-8801? There isn’t a lot of info about them online, and they seem like very interesting machines. I’d love to see you do a vid on one some day.
Afaik the PC-8801 was only sold for a very short time and rapidly flopped in the USA, but nonetheless I'd like to see a video about it as well.
@@Alexis_du_60 This PC-8801? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-8800_series
Sadly no I haven't. All these Japanese machines sound super interesting though!
@@Merescat oops thanks, I've corrected that
I just noticed "Planet X2" in your video. The 8-Bit Guy may have a word with you concerning the "...it almost looks like brand new!"-statement :)
People watching old 2020 youtube videos in 2300: "wtf was wrong with all the glove wearing people back in 2020"
And in 2300, the C64 will still be going strong!
Nice! Did you catch Peri's C64C rebuild/restoration he did? Vid dropped last night.
I did. Reminded me of my video although a lot more had to be changed on his.
Super Snapshot had its own version of the "warp" format. In fact, I think it used the same indicator for the special files. I don't know if they ever built the creator into the cartridge though, my version had it on disk. However, once the files are saved in that format, the cartridge will load them just fine. I'm not saying it will load the Action Replay warp files, but it couldn't hurt to try. I'd be interested to see if it works.
Epyx also had their own version of this in the Vorpal Utility Kit. I rarely used the special format because I didn't like the way you couldn't copy it with normal programs and because if I gave copies to others, they might not be able to load it. I forget if Super Snapshot had a program to load such files without the cartridge or not.
I usually drink IPA form a glass bottle but I suppose I could set some aside for cleaning. Have you found certain brands to be more effective than others?
I used to love playing Krakout. Great game. That's some impressive load times with Action Replay and Final Cart. Too bad you have to jump through menus to get to the fast loader in each.
With the Final Cartridge III inserted, just hold down the button while you turn on your computer. That should take you directly to BASIC with the fast loader enabled.
Instead of an XE1541 cable that requires a PC with a parallel port, I made a XUM1541 that uses a $3 Arduino Pro Micro and hooks up to any PC that has a USB port.
Do you have a good link to a page on building these? I bought my cable years ago and it has served me well but something I can use with a modern PC would be nice.
@@adriansdigitalbasement
github.com/zyonee/opencbm/tree/master/xum1541
myoldcomputer.nl/commodore-64/xum1541-promicro/
@@adriansdigitalbasement Agreed. Sounds like a good weekend project!
@@adriansdigitalbasement here is!! myoldcomputer.nl/commodore-64/xum1541-promicro/ , don't get confused, you have to use Arduino micro (Arduino nano isn't compatible), NOTE: parallel connection it´s optional
Well I am not so sure about the relability of the 1541IIs PSUs. I have got 4 drives on ebay and only 2 PSUs were OK in the beginning. After a while only 1 stayed alive, so I have 1 out of 4 working. I was checking the voltage and sometimes it's the 12V which is too low and sometimes the 5V. They seem not to kill the drives but you can throw them just away since it's almost impossible to fix them since all the parts inside of those PSUs are inside of a weird gel... So my only solution is to get a new after market PSU and hope it's working fine. Or does anyone have any better ideas what to do with those faulty 1541II PSUs?
Here's a tip that I am hopefully remembering correctly: You don't really need extra hardware to diagnose a flashing activity light on a Commodore diskdrive. Using a simple (albeit probably clumsy) set of commands, you can get a print-out directly on the screen using a BASIC command:
OPEN 15,8,15:INPUT#15,A,B$,C,D:PRINT A,B$,C,D:CLOSE 15
This will give you the same error report. Strangely I can't get it to work as a single line in WinVice (kept getting an ILLEGAL DIRECT ERROR) but writing a short BASIC programme like the one below works too:
10 OPEN 15,8,15
20 INPUT#15,A,B$,C,D
30 CLOSE 15
40 PRINT A,B$,C,D
EDIT: OMG, Krakout. I spent so many hours on that game. Also funny that the screen before plays the theme to Yie Ar Kung-Fu II. Also a very nice track.
I think you need a very clean and lubricated drive for the fast loaders to work? Ever had a fast loader not working on one drive but working on another?
How did you connect the C64 to the LCD?
IDK if this is true for the AR5, but for the AR6 and RR the only keys you really need to know for daily use are:
F1 then RETURN for LOAD & RUN first program.
F3 for instant disk directory.
Cursor up to the beginning of a line in the directory and hit F1 to load that file.
It's nice to see that the NTSC AR can keep up with the PAL version.
I can understand the appeal of JiffyDOS (and other ROM based loaders), but that 10 or so second saving the AR's standard fastload to me is worth the cost of slight incompatibility issues.
But, after seeing this video I honestly can't see why anybody would want to waste time and money on the EPYX fastload cart when nearly everything else is faster and offers more.
Yeah! The Epyx cart is certainly better than nothing but I guess its early release meant a lot of people had it and never upgraded. Their loss! AR is just so crazy fast. I did find a few things that didn't seem to work with it though during my limited testing.
Have you ever tried a kcs power cartridge?
It is what I use normally, it's from the same people who created the final cartridge 3, but earlier.
It is a red cartridge with one button.
Nope. I wonder if my Easy Flash III can't handle it. I have one more slot for these types of carts.