Transferring C64 images to a 5 1/4" disk, cheaply

[marcfrick2112]

Hello, Please don't flame me for what is certainly an often-asked question. Trying to get some C-64 music programs I used to have, no retailer has them, but I found some on the Net. What is the easiest, cheapest way to get them on a 5 1/4 inch floppy to run on my real c-64's and 128's ? Would the X1541 cable let me write disk images, or is it just to read them?

 

Any Help would be great....

[Mayhem]

Depending on the PC you have, a XE1541 cable might be more appropriate. But with the Star Commander software you write to and read floppies in a 1541 drive connected to the PC.

[+remowilliams]

Yes, exactly - get yourself an XE1541 cable and a copy of Star Commander.

[Ze_ro]

Details on the X1541 cables (including schematics) are available here, and StarCommander is available here.

 

If it's just a one-time thing and you don't plan to do more than a handful of disks, you might be better off asking around to see if you can find someone who could just make the disks for you.

 

--Zero

[marcfrick2112]

Wow, many thanks everyone, especially for the links Ok, I'm an idiot, what is the difference between the X1541 cable and the XE1541?

(Duh....I just checked out both links provided, sorry...)

@ze_ro: Well, it would be nice to have this ability whenever I needed it, but as far as I can remember, it is certainly less than 10 disks I would need....I have about 250 working floppies, just missing a couple of favorite games, and many music programs....

 

Anyone reading this thread, PM me if selling any C-64 music software......Pleeze.

 

Again, thanks everyone.

Edited January 20, 2007 by marcfrick2112

[+remowilliams]

Wow, many thanks everyone, especially for the links Ok, I'm an idiot, what is the difference between the X1541 cable and the XE1541?

The XE1541 has a little extra hardware to allow it to work with modern parallel ports (EPP,ECP) that's why this is the cable you want unless you have a very old PC that only supports SPP

[VTAtari]

I built the XE1541 cable and used it on a 1571 disk drive with star commander. It works really well and is actually really simple to build. If you use crimp pins on the 25 pin connector, you do not need to solder it.

[Atariman]

I recently acquired an XE1541 cable and attempted to use it on two computers with no avail - When the computer is powered on, the 1541 drive busy light comes on and stays on (and the Star Commander software doesn't recognize it). I used the drivers that were mentioned in the Star Commander documentation, but still had no luck. I'm using WindowsXP and when the computer is shut off, the busy light goes out as well... Any ideas?

[Lord Thag]

Hey, I tried to buy one of those cables awhile back, but every link I tried was dead and the couple of sites that had an online order form never responded. Anyone have a current link to the StarCommander/cable setup? Thanks!

[rockman_x_2002]

I recently acquired an XE1541 cable and attempted to use it on two computers with no avail - When the computer is powered on, the 1541 drive busy light comes on and stays on (and the Star Commander software doesn't recognize it). I used the drivers that were mentioned in the Star Commander documentation, but still had no luck. I'm using WindowsXP and when the computer is shut off, the busy light goes out as well... Any ideas?

 

I couldn't get Star Commander to work on my WinXP machine either, but I downloaded a Windows program called cbm4win, and this program works great.

 

You can download cbm4win and view the setup guide here.

You can download the GUI for the program, gui4cbm4win, here.

 

In order to use the drive, you have to first install the driver for the 1541 drive. This installation program is included with cbm4win, and it tells in the guide how to do this. Also, to actually use the drive, you'll need to "reset" it first (which can be done from the cbm4win GUI) so it can communicate using your XE1541 cable.

 

As for getting hold of an XE1541 cable, or any of the other X1541 variants, I bought mine off eBay. They're more expensive than simply building it yourself, but they shouldn't be too terribly expensive, and if you order from the guy I ordered from he'll give you a free CD with all the necessary software.

Edited January 21, 2007 by rockman_x_2002

[Osbo]

Star commander is a PITA with windows XP... I use either a Win95 boot disk or a computer with Win 98.

[+remowilliams]

I'm using WindowsXP and when the computer is shut off, the busy light goes out as well... Any ideas?

Your best bet with Star Commander is to have a DOS/Win95/98 cmd shell boot disk or CD. Stuff like SC (and 64HDD) doesn't behave well in windows.

[icbrkr]

You can always grab a MMC64 card for your C64. It allows you to put the D64 images onto an MMC memory card and write them onto a real disk on your C64. The only downside is that it's a bit slow (~6 mins) but it's always compatible.

[+remowilliams]

You can always grab a MMC64 card for your C64. It allows you to put the D64 images onto an MMC memory card and write them onto a real disk on your C64. The only downside is that it's a bit slow (~6 mins) but it's always compatible.

I've got one of the MMC64 cards and it's really cool. But I went back to using Star Commander right after I sat through that incredibly long floppy write just once.

[nintendo]

I have an old computer with a 5 1/4 floppy drive. With that, could I just copy a C64 game from my PC hard-drive to a disk in the 5 1/4 floppy drive and then play it in an original 1541 drive?

[Mayhem]

Sadly not, different file formats. Unless you bought a Catweasle.

[Ze_ro]

I have an old computer with a 5 1/4 floppy drive. With that, could I just copy a C64 game from my PC hard-drive to a disk in the 5 1/4 floppy drive and then play it in an original 1541 drive?

No. C64 disks used a format called GCR, whereas PC's use a format called MFM. The floppy drive controllers in modern PC's are mostly hardcoded to read MFM disks, and are incapable of handling GCR at all. That said, Individual Computers sells a device called the Catweasel... it's a programmable drive controller that lets you read and write (theoretically) any disk format on a PC. It's rather pricey though, so you're best off building one of the X1541 cables instead.

 

However, Commodore's 1581 drive (3.5") uses MFM formatting, so you CAN read and write 1581 formatted disks on a PC using a program called 1581copy (available here). This should also work with FD-2000 and FD-4000 disks.

 

If you have a C-128 and a 1571 drive, there is another option. The 1571 is capable of reading MFM disks. This was meant primarily for CP/M disks, but there's a program called Little Red Reader which will let you read MS-DOS formatted disks on a C-128. There's another version of the program on that page that will let you read 3.5" MS-DOS disks in a 1581 drive as well (Note that the 1571 and 1581 are only capable of handling double-density disks!). So, in theory, you could format a 360K floppy in your PC, stick a .d64 file on it, load it up through Little Red Reader, and then use a program on the C64 to write it to a disk (GunZip.c64 seems to be able to do this). This might be a little tricky though, and I think you might actually need TWO 1571's in order to pull it off properly... There's also the paradox of how you actually get Little Red Reader and GunZip.c64 onto the C64 in the first place!

 

--Zero