Remeber how slow the C64 5 inch floppy was?

[Fred the Fop]

We remember using this clunker. Blame a Tramiel, any Tramiel.

Philip C. Tsao writes:

"The Commodore 64's 5.25" floppy drive was (in)famous for being possibly the slowest floppy drive ever sold to the public. This was partly because Jack Tramiel (then President of Commodore) opted for a kludged software-timed serial I/O bus instead of the proven reliable IEEE-488. As a result, while the cost of the CPU and keyboard was kept down, the cost of the disk drive itself skyrocketted because it needed its OWN CPU and I/O hardware to interface with the kludged I/O bus!

Programmers quickly figured out how exploit the disk-drive's CPU. It turned out that this CPU could control the speed of the stepper motor which positioned the read/write head. When the head moved slowly, the stepper motor emitted a low frequency noise. When the head moved quickly, a high frequency noise was heard. It wasn't long before programmers took advantage of the stepper motor to generate "drive music"! Since the drive and computer CPUs could operate independently and simultaneously, stereo effects could be achieved in combination with the built-in SID (audio) chip."

[jmmijo]

Yeah they were slow, but the storage at the time was great, 170K per side and quickly everybody knew how to notch the other side

I also had one of the CBM IEEE floppy drives too, had to get the Quicksilver interface for it. Sure it was much faster and much more expensive too

[tin]

What I never understood about the c64 disk drive was it was so painfully slow, but bang an action replay in the cart port and suddenly it was turbo fast. This means the hardware is at least capable of doing stuff fast, so why did they not implemenet whatever the AR does to the system directly into the c64?

[TjLaZer]

You forgot to mention that programmers found a way to speed up the loading times thus make it bearable loading from disk! Hense the Fast Loaders! My favorite was the Epyx Fast Loader, works great to this day

[manicx]

Fast loader rockz! Still tho, the 5 1/4 FDD that commodore made was making me to love those C2N datasettes!

[EmuChicken]

I thought they were well fast for the time... especially in comparison to the tape deck!

[IFW]

They were exactly as fast as any other drives at the time.
The IEC bus is slow, but you can speed it up easily with either software and/or hardware as well.
Whoever wrote this is clueless about c64 games, almost all of them used its own protocol to communicate (very fast) with the drive, the IEC protocol in the kernel was only used to upload the fast loader to the drive and start it.
And with a parallel interface (SpeedDos etc) you could read and transfer the disk the same speed with how it rotated, that is transfer a complete disk side in a few seconds time.

[DopPie]

almost all of them used its own protocol to communicate (very fast) with the drive,

ehm, very fast being relative to the disks-side capacity. I beleive it was something like 5kB per second. But I could be wrong on that.

[tin]

HAHA who's got an atari 8-bit 5 1/4 drive? I love the way it makes loading noises, just like a tape!!!!

[amigaade]

remember 'drive music' daisy daisy and others played on a mates 1541 drive which totally nackered the head alignement and subsequent trip to the local shop for repairs.

"You've been playing Daisy,Daisy on this aven't you?"
"oh no, it went like that on its own....honest"

I wonder how many 1541s were unknowingly shagged by this proggy...unintentional or otherwise...."try this on your DD, its really good...HEHEHEHEHE" )

[mr_0rga5m]

Aah i remember the day still when my excellerator drive (slimline 1541 replacement) started playing 'Daisy Daisy' when i pulled the disk out .. Scared the cack outta me.

I also remember the sound of a guys drive (and look on his face) when he put a disk in and it started going 'scrrrrchhh scrrrrrrrchhh' .. turns out my mate had replaced the inside disk with a circle of fine sandpaper (coloured black) to teach him a lesson for being a leech. Funnily enough the drive didnt work after that.

[tin]

fook! bit harsh!

[dirkies]

I never used the standard speed on my 1541s, first I had the CFG turboloader software,but soon I went to SPEEDDOS hardware acceleration (4-6x faster I think) and then DOLPHINDOS, another hardware acceleration (12-15x faster I believe)

ahhh, nostalgia ! Remember the blinking led when a fileload encountered an error (on screen it was not always reported that there was an error) and the disappointment when trying to run the file would result in a cleared screen with READY on top!

[LocalH]

The 1541 was slower with the C64 than the VIC-20 because of the C64's badlines. According to Jim Butterfield, the VIC-20's VIA was broken, and thus instead of the software working on a byte level, it had to work on a bit level and do the handshaking with the 1540 itself. However, when the C64 was designed, the badlines interfered with the serial code, and thus it had to be slowed down even further (and hence the release of the 1541, and the ROM replacement for the 1540 to make it C64-compatible). That's why the 1541 has a U command that will essentially put it in 1540 mode, which is faster with a VIC-20 (with it's lack of badlines), but incompatible with the C64.

[Miggy2TheMax]

slow?!?! man the 1541-II were blindingly fast compared to those tape drives 64's used to come with nice thread! anybody here mucked around with those 8" (?) floppy disks they were huge mofo's compared to the 5 1/4" things. Only saw them once in a car boot sale. amazing stuff.

[TjLaZer]

Well if you compared the Commodore 64 w/1541 to any other computer with a floppy drive you would see how slow it really was.

[IFW]

Well if you compared a real c64 game to other systems, you'd see how fast it really was, unless it is some very early game or badly programmed.
Fast disk access routines had become pretty much an art form on the c64.
When you can transfer data as fast as you can read it from the disk there is no way on Earth you can go faster than that, since the disk won't rotate faster.
That means the absolute maximum transfer rate on any 300rpm drive is whatever data is available on 5 tracks together.
See the Heureka Sprint protection system for a software only example of that.

[mr_0rga5m]

Originally Posted by Miggy2TheMax

slow?!?! man the 1541-II were blindingly fast compared to those tape drives 64's used to come with nice thread! anybody here mucked around with those 8" (?) floppy disks they were huge mofo's compared to the 5 1/4" things. Only saw them once in a car boot sale. amazing stuff.

Heh .. one of my 1st jobs i had was in a import/export office working on an accounts system which had 3 (!) massive 8" winchester disk drives coupled for the data storage .. They were angled like (front->) /_| and side on (they ran vertical, not horizontal like my c64 drive). I hated loading the disks into the drives, they were heavy and i was sooo scared of damaging one (seeing as they had so much valuable data on).

[TjLaZer]

Originally Posted by IFW

Well if you compared a real c64 game to other systems, you'd see how fast it really was, unless it is some very early game or badly programmed..

What the hell are you smoking over there? We are talking about how slow the 1541 was. The C64 drive loading was SLOW, unless the games had a built in fast loader, which made them as fast as the others. I had a Atari 130XE and the drive was pretty fast compared to the old C64/1541. Not all games had build in fast loaders. And most people had copies of games which normally did not have built in fast loaders. I ended up getting the EPYX Fast Load and that worked great...

[Amiga1992]

MOST of the games except very early ones HAD fstloaders. That's where IFW is going at. And havinng that in mind, any fastloaded games were MUCH FASTEr than those in other computers.

And most people had copies of games which normally did not have built in fast loaders

WTF? Where do you get this from????