![]() Since after physically reaching track zero, further movement attempts caused the head drive mechanism to slam (producing the infamous, loud, telltale knocking sound) into a mechanical stop, the repetitive strain often drove the head mechanism out of precise alignment, resulting in read errors and necessitating repairs. Due to lack of hardware support for detecting track zero position, Commodore DOS formatting routines and many complex software copy-protection schemes (which used data stored on nonstandard tracks on floppies) had to rely on moving the head specified number of steps in order to make sure that the desired head position for formatting or reading the data was reached. Perhaps the most common failure involved the drive's read-write head mechanism losing its alignment. The 1541 disk drive was notorious for not only its slow performance and large physical size compared to the C64 (the drive is almost as deep as the computer is wide), but also for the drive mechanisms installed during early production runs, which quickly gained a bad reputation for their mechanical unreliability. The 1541 was very slow in loading programs because of a poorly implemented serial bus, a legacy of the VIC-20. The 1541 was the standard floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64, with nearly all disk-based software programs released for the computer being distributed in the 1541 compatible floppy disk format. Floppy disk drives Īlthough usually not supplied with the machine, floppy disk drives of the 5 1⁄ 4 inch ( 1541, 15) and, later, 3 1⁄ 2 inch ( 1581) variety were available from Commodore. Which could handle 5.8 kB/s and included "freezer" capabilities. īackup to VHS tapes were offered by DC Electronics with their cartridge WHIZZARD in 1988. The Rotronics Wafadrive used same drive mechanism, manufactured by BSR. It could also be daisy chained and worked with the VIC-20 computer as well. The cost for the drive would have been equivalent to 100 EUR in 2010. It needed a small program code to be loaded in the memory at 0xC000-0xCFFF which collided with many other programs. The Quick Data Drive (QDD) connected to the datassette port of the Commodore 64 and could load data at 1.3 kB/s which is 3 times faster than the C1541 floppy drive. The concept eventually succumbed to floppy drives. They were expensive and few were ever sold.Ī similar concept to the ZX Microdrive (85 kB) was the extremely fast " Phonemark 8500 Quick Data Drive" which has 16 - 128 kB capacity using a micro-cassette storage unit and used the C2N Datasette. Tape counter speeds varied over different datasette units making recorded counter numbers unreliable on different hardware.Īn optional streaming tape drive, based upon the QIC-02 format, was available for the Xetec Lt. LOADING." or else rely on a tape counter number to find the starting location of programs on cassette. A small screwdriver could be used to align the tape heads, and a few companies capitalized by selling various commercial kits for Datasette head-alignment tuning.Īs the Datasette lacked any random read-write access, users had to either wait while the tape ran its length, while the computer printed messages like "SEARCHING FOR ALIEN BOXING. Also, not too dissimilar to floppy drive users, the Datasette's read head could become dirty or slip out of alignment. Users also had to contend with interference from magnetic fields. One such minigame fastloader is Invade-a-Load. More advanced fast-loaders included minigames for the user to play while the program loaded from cassette. Other fast-loaders included load screens, displaying computer artwork while the program loaded. Early versions of Novaload had the ability to play music while a program loaded into memory, and was easily recognizable by its black border and digital bleeping sounds on loading. Novaload was perhaps the most popular tape-loader used by British and American software developers. Many European software developers wrote their own fast tape-loaders which replaced the internal KERNAL code in the C64 and offered loading times more comparable to disk drive speeds. Loading a large program at normal speed could take up to 30 minutes in extreme cases. The Datasette's speed was very slow (about 300 baud). An adapter for the proprietary connector was available from CARDCO Data tapes could be write-protected in the same way as audio cassettes, by punching out a tab on the cassette's top edge. ![]() Standard blank audio cassettes could be used in this drive. The Datasette plugged into a proprietary edge connector on the Commodore 64's motherboard. By contrast, in Europe, the C64 was often used with cassette tape drives (Datasette), which were much cheaper, but also much slower than floppy drives. In the United States, the 1541 floppy disk drive was widespread.
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