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Armchair Arcade -> Forums -> General Discussion

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Commodore Vic 1540 Drive: What next?

Moderators: Bill Loguidice, David Torre, crcasey, Mark1970, deshrill

Author

Post

Matt Barton

Mon Apr 12 2004, 02:58PM

Location: Tampa, Florida
posts 2680

Okay...I thought I had ordered a Commodore 1541, but I ended up with a "Vic 1540 Drive." Apparently, this model isn't compatible with a C-64, though I have neither a Vic or a C-64 to try this out on.

Anyway, I have a Commodore Vic 1540 here. What the heck can I do with it??

Anybody want it?

Matt Barton

Mark1970

Mon Apr 12 2004, 04:05PM

Armchair Arcade Editor

Location: The Netherlands
posts 1860

You still can use it with the c64, but you have to poke the screen blank whilst you load. It's one of the screen's bit scroll registers.
Poke 53274,14 or something like that is was, and poke back the original value.

With blanking the screen you speed up the c64 just a whee bit so that it is able to communicatie with the 1540 correctly.

The old 1540 is a bit too fast for the c64. The vic20 is able to use the 1541 drive though.

But eh.... you thought you ordered a complete machine named cbm 1541?

[ Edited Mon Apr 12 2004, 05:07PM ]

Mark Vergeer - Editor / I(c)onizer

Matt Barton

Mon Apr 12 2004, 08:15PM

Location: Tampa, Florida
posts 2680

Actually, I had bid on this drive and a C-64 on ebay...I won the drive, but lost the C-64. So, I've got this damn drive now with no computer. Yayy...Maybe I can track down a Vic-20, but I really just wanted to put together a working C-64 system.

Matt Barton

Bill Loguidice

Mon Apr 12 2004, 11:15PM

Armchair Arcade Co-Founder and Editor

Location: Central New Jersey, USA
posts 4817

Matt Barton wrote: ...
Actually, I had bid on this drive and a C-64 on ebay...I won the drive, but lost the C-64. So, I've got this damn drive now with no computer. Yayy...Maybe I can track down a Vic-20, but I really just wanted to put together a working C-64 system.

It shouldn't be too hard to find a C-64 Matt. I'll keep an eye out. I have three myself, though only two work 100% (and the two that work, one is a "c" and the other the old style - each has its use considering certainly overlays only fit the original model)...

Interestingly, a similar thing happened with me and an Atari ST with ebay. I was concurrently trying to buy an ST system, monitor, software, books and peripherals. Despite very agressive efforts, I lost out on all but one peripheral and some books, but was too late to cancel those. So I have some ST stuff waiting for a system to use it on (and I don't care what anyone says, it's HARD to put together a decent ST system these days)... Actually, I DID win an amazingly low bid on a rare ST Monitor and Disk Drive combo (something like 10,000 of the things were ever made), but shipping supposedly from Canada was three times my winning bid, so both the seller and I agreed to make it a no-go (I think it went for MUCH less than he wanted to sell it for to be honest, but at least I didn't lose any money on it)...

Bill Loguidice - Armchair Arcade Editor
www.billandchristina.com (includes videogame & computer collection)
www.mythcore.com (creative development company)
www.armchairarcade.com (soliciting articles NOW!)

Bill Loguidice

Mon Apr 12 2004, 11:16PM

Armchair Arcade Co-Founder and Editor

Location: Central New Jersey, USA
posts 4817

By the way, while I don't have any extra C-64's or disk drives I can part with, I have a spare MPS-803 printer and tape drive if there's ever an interest, and of course would be willing to trade software...

Mark1970

Tue Apr 13 2004, 04:37AM

Armchair Arcade Editor

Location: The Netherlands
posts 1860

I had my whole c64 system stored in my attick: c64 (brown casing, bad vic chip), c64 new style 100%, c2n tapedeck, 2 suzo arcade joysticks, 1541 disk drive, mps 803 printer, lots of 5.25" floppies. A pal system btw.

Matt´s post made be bring it down into my study annex gameroom & hook it up to my telly again. Switching it on immediatly made the screen glow blue like this:

**** COMMODORE BASIC V2 ****

64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE.

READY.
_

LOAD"*",8,1 and a little waiting time got me playing Uridium, Giana´s sister, MsPacman, Defender, DigDig (last 3 excellent arcade ports), Way of the exploding fist. Also another nice game by Hewson: you are a little tank and have to shoot blocks in a maze, but you can only shoot a block when you´re not position directly next to the blocks. Objective: shoot all blocks, avoid touching baddies and enter next level. nice little puzzler/action game. Not to forget Boulderdash!!! The sound of the Vic chip made the hairs in the back of my neck stand up.

Gawd, I am afraid I am turning into a geek.

A couple of years ago I made a parallel port cable to connect the 1541 via the lpt port to my pc. And with a special program I transferred quite a number of disks that I tried using with the C64s emulator by Miha Peternel(?). A lot of disks I couldn´t play with the emulator because I transferred the original disks which had copy protection/1541 routines that weren´t supported. I found out Frodo (now also running on my gp32 system) & ccs64 now DO support all these 1541 quircks and I can even run marble madness now through these emulators!

I plan on bringing my gp32 with me on nightshifts (intern psychiatry), allows me to play old c64 classics during the quiet moments.

But still there´s nothing more pleasing than running the games on the genuine article.

Cheers, and Matt good luck with finding a working c64! They aren´t so rare! At least over here in Europe.

Mark Vergeer - Editor / I(c)onizer

Mark1970

Tue Apr 13 2004, 04:38AM

Armchair Arcade Editor

Location: The Netherlands
posts 1860

Trading software is hard lot´s of PAL games don´t really work well on NTSC c64´s and vice versa?

Mark Vergeer - Editor / I(c)onizer

Rowdy Rob

Tue Apr 13 2004, 10:57AM

Registered Member #62
Joined: Sun Jan 18 2004, 12:02PM
Location: South Carolina, USA
posts 231

Matt Barton wrote: ...
Anyway, I have a Commodore Vic 1540 here. What the heck can I do with it??

Anybody want it?

This might be a dumb question, but... can you return it and get your money back? After all, it's not the merchandise you paid for.

----{ qoj hpmoj o+ 6uolaq aje aseq jnoh llV }----

Bill Loguidice

Tue Apr 13 2004, 01:52PM

Armchair Arcade Co-Founder and Editor

Location: Central New Jersey, USA
posts 4817

Check this out Matt: http://www.packratvg.com/commodore64.htm

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