Phonemark "Quick Data Drive" - info?, also WTD Commodore 15xx drive, info.

From: Jim Strickland <jim_at_calico.litterbox.com>
Date: Tue Jan 7 18:21:00 2003

As I recall, most fast loading schemes reprogrammed the Commodore
serial interface chip (through which all the peripherals were
interfaced) to run faster, as well as usually providing some sort of
error correction. Commodore's serial interface design on the 64 was
among the worst features of the machine.

Before I got rid of my commodore 64 in 1990, I had an upgrade called a
burst rom chip for it. This let me use the faster commodore 128
accessories at their full rated speed rather than in 64 emulation mode.
  This plus a 1581 3.5 inch floppy drive was like having a hard disk. :)
  I do recall that this upgrade broke compatibility with the tape drive,
and I wonder if that wasn't the big reason all the interfacing was so
slow, to preserve compatibility with the tape system?

The speedup cartridges also probably downloaded software to the disk
drive's brain. Remember that Commodore put 6502s in their drives as
microcontrollers, with ram to hold their software, which was copied
from the ROMs at boot time. This allowed you to send software that
would replace that image in RAM to the drive and configure it to do
pretty much what you wanted. Since the cartridge could now configure
both sides of the serial link, setting up faster communication was
easier.

The irony, of course, is that in this age of FireWire and USB, we're
starting to see the same kinds of peripherals - intelligent,
programmable, and the computer need not understand how to operate the
hardware directly. It would be amusing (though almost certainly not
profitable) to come up with specs of how the C64 might work today.

On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 04:31 PM, Bradley, Joel E -Syntegra US
wrote:

>
> Ahhh....I have one of those c64's, original monitor, drive, tape, etc.
> I
> also have the "Mach 5" fastloader cartridge..I often wondered if it
> was just
> full of RAM? I did like the shortcuts that were built in which saves
> on
> typing.
>
> I wonder..does anyone out there have a copy of the game "Airborne
> Ranger"?
> It was a superbly done game, and I remember how to play, but I have
> lost the
> manual. One problem is that the copy protection feature built-in was
> that
> you had to look up a medal ribbon that was located in the manual.
> Without
> that, it wouldn't let you play!
>
> Joel
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk [mailto:ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 4:33 PM
> To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Phonemark "Quick Data Drive" - info?, also WTD Commodore
> 15xx drive, info.
>
>>
>> Hi all,
>> A while ago I bought a rather unusual C64/VIC20 add-on - a "Quick
>> Data
>
> A lot of them turned up in the UK about 10 years ago -- the usual
> surplus
> places (Grenweld, and whatever J Bull called themselves at the time)
> had
> them. Nobody had the wafers (tapes) though...
>
>> Drive", presumably made by a company called Phonemark. After thumbing
>> through the manual I found a few photos of the cartridges. From what
>> I can
>> gather, it's an early "stringy floppy" device that uses a cartridge
>> filled
>
> I think it's much later than the Stringy Floppy.
>
> IIRC, it connects between the cassette drive and the C64. I think QOS
> was loaded at the same speed as a normal cassette load, and that QOS
> was
> similar in concept to the cassette 'turbo loaders' that were popular
> with the C64.
>
> -tony
>
Received on Tue Jan 07 2003 - 18:21:00 GMT