converter to convert 1-side games for Miha's C64 EMULATOR! 1541 FILE HANDLER & FULL DISC COPIER FROM CONTROLL R.T & DADA/TSI Introduction: Commodore Business Machines, Inc. used -as we can imagine about Commodore :-(- a rather rare disc sector format in its drives. The PC's can't read/write these disks inside a normal PC drive due to lack of resilient I/O chips. O.K. I know there are KAWL I/O cards (for very-very great prices) to access a disk in bit-bit format, and cancelling the normal IBM (MFM) format. So we have to connect an 1541 drive to the PC... The connection is rather easy. Just follow the next picture: Pc-parallel port VC 1541 floppy's connector Serial (floppy) plug 1 --------------------------------------- 3 /~~~~~~~~~\ Ú------------------------------- 4 | 3 | | c e | 2 4 | 14 ~~~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~~~~~| | 6 | b | bc182 ÄÁÄ | 1 5 | Û 1k gnd(25-19) \_________/ | 3 ------------Ù PC parallel plug ______________________________ 2 --------------------------------------- 6 \ 13 . . . . . . . . . . . 1 / \ 25. . . . . . . . . . .14 / 16 --------------------------------------- 1 \________________________ / Ú------------------------------- 5 (Both of the plugs watched FROM | c e the side of soldering!!!) 17 ~~~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~~~~~| b | bc182 ÄÁÄ Û 1k gnd(25-19) | 5 ------------Ù (25,24,23,22,21,20,19) -----------------Â-- 2 | ÄÁÄ gnd BC182 is a very common transistor (we can replace it with BC184). The outlet of the transistor: ------------------- I I I E B C I I I \ / \ __ / Ofcourse the PC's plug is a 25-pole plug ('father'), and C64's is a 6-pole DIN (a normal Video-DIN plug!) 2, Using the programs When we have built the connector, connect it to the PC and the 1541. Now let's try 'fine tune' the computer's speed (the program announces 'No connect' if the processor's _virtual_ speed is above 11-12 MHz!!), using GOSLOW.COM. On a 368/33/64k cache, w/o Turbo mode (equialent to 13 Mhz mode) it will the best with GOSLOW 30000 parameter. Use SPEED or whatever else with the program to check the speed and finetune to approximately 8 MHz virtual speed! Now you can start either MAP.COM or 1541.COM. MAP.COM is rather useless. It's only point of advantege that it CAN map a 1541 disc (I've kept it's original, Hungarian format, I was lazy :-)) with the C/U1:XX YY format). I also din't correct its errors (displaying 17's 20th,21st; 24's 19th and 30's 18th sector). 1541.COM is what everybody need. I converted it into English and corrected its errors. It can read/write from/to the 1541 drive FILES and CAN BUILD A FULL IMAGE OF A NORMAL DISK. I have to say something about NORMAL disks. If there will be enough inqiuries, I'll build in NONSTANDARD disk handling, too (36-40 tracks etc...). At loading, press 1,2,3 or 4 depending on which printer port you have the 1541 plugged in. Then you must wait a lot :-(, sorry... In the main menu - press $ and ENTER to get a directory; - using T you can change Type of the transfer, UB required (Text: to use CR/LF in transferring and somewhere to use CAPS conversions if needed) - use R to get a file from 1541 etc... - press C for advanced operations! Advnced operations menu: here you can build a full/partial disk image of a disk, FORMAT a disk etc... To get a disk image: type U1:XX YY where XX is the BEGINNING TRACK number (1 to 35) and YY is SECTOR number (from 1 to 21/19/18/17, depending of the actual track number). When you want to get a WHOLE image of a disk, you must type: U1:01 00 The ZIP file consists a file called TESTDISK.D64. It has lot of progs (especially my old C64 program to show TO THESE LAMERS who were doubting in my 6510 assembly knowledge... Look for "SZOTAR" and look: I wrote it w/ a simple DATASETTE unit, WITH A SIMPLE, BUT MEGAC0000000L MONITOR (3 MONITOR 24576), and I doubt that anybody can reach so nice memory managament that I achieved in this program. Sorry, I hadn't enough money to buy a 1541 in 1986-87 and I quitted the scene, what a pity... :-() The image of the full disk will be placed in SAVE.00* files where all files are 174k long and readable with C64S.EXE. The 1541-read is painfully slow, BUT MUCH BETTER RELIABLE THAN SIMPLE FILECOPY (I encountered lot of errors with the simple R command, but I can assume that there aren't these errors NOW because I corrected (I hope) all the errors of Controll's program (e.g there was an error what totally destructed the full image: when the program automatically incremented the sector number and checked if the number is greater than 21/19/18/17, it made a USUAL error: it counted SECTOR NUMERS from 0, and the OTHER parts of the program counted form 1. So the 17th track came down with only 19 tracks and so on... :-()).