c64 w/ external cd-rom drive?

[d8thstar]

hi all, so i was thinking about getting back into c64 gaming (emulation is cool but the real deal can't be beat. i could swear i read YEARS ago of someone who had hacked an ide cd-rom drive to work with a c64. have disc images on a cd and you literally have thousands of games on one disc.

 

anyone know of anything or was i hitting the pipe a little to much back then?

 

tony

[Susuwatari]

It's possible, there are IDE hard drive for C64.

[+davidcalgary29]

hi all, so i was thinking about getting back into c64 gaming (emulation is cool but the real deal can't be beat.  i could swear i read YEARS ago of someone who had hacked an ide cd-rom drive to work with a c64.  have disc images on a cd and you literally have thousands of games on one disc.  

 

anyone know of anything or was i hitting the pipe a little to much back then?    

 

tony

 

You're probably thinking of the 64HDD system. It's essentially a WinTel machine that can be used as a "kludge" with the C64 to enable HDD use; the machine is linked to a C64 with a simple cable. I have one, and it's great: I have virtually the entire C64 game library on one machine. Our local Commodore club sells them for $50, but you do have to be a regular attending member of CCUG to get in on the deal.

[Paul Slocum]

Yes, it does look like a CD-ROM drive, but what you saw is what they used to call a "Floppy Disk Drive". This is apparently what people used before CD-ROMs.

 

-paul

[Rockin' Kat]

There is a company called CMD that made lots of products for the C64 and was still making them to order up untill 2002 when they sold them to a person named Maurice Randal who has set up a store and a shop to make them... unfortunantly he has been unable to meet demand.

 

One of these products is a hard drive that hooks up to the serial interface. It's a SCSI interface and a drive.. so you can hook other SCSI devices like CD-ROMs to it.

[Artlover]

Maurice Randal ... unfortunantly he has been unable to meet demand.

 

 

Anyone thinking about doing any business with him needs to jump on comp.sys.cbm and read all the various threads about people being ripped off by him, not giving refunds until threatened with legal action, him refusing help that's been offered to him, etc..

 

Personaly, I'd never do business with him.

[Laner]

That sucks... are there any other sources for standalone C64 hard drives? The C64HDD deal sounds OK, but having to set up a PC just to act as a hard drive sounds a little too kludgy for my tastes.

[Flack]

Check out the following website for IDE64 -- a device which allows you to hook up old, PC IDE hard drives to your '64. You can also use compact flash ram instead of a hard drive. Also remember that the entire C64 library fits on a couple of CD's, so an ungodly sized hard drive is not required.

 

http://www.volny.cz/dundera/

 

If you want to hook your 64 to your PC and use it as a HD, just pick up an XE1541 cable (that's what I use). They are always on eBay (there's one right now for $25 BIN, just looked). Not only does this cable allow you to hook your 64 up to your PC to use it as a HD, it also allows the connecting of a 1541 disk drive to your PC, so you can xfer real Commodore 64 disks to d64 format (for use with emulators), and back (virtual d64 images to real, working 1541 floppy disks).

 

That's what I got.

[Laner]

Yeah, I saw IDE64, but it doesn't look like something you can purchase. I've never even touched a soldering iron, so building one is kind of out of my reach for now

[CSIXTY4]

Yeah, I saw IDE64, but it doesn't look like something you can purchase. I've never even touched a soldering iron, so building one is kind of out of my reach for now

 

Actually, you can buy them from Protovision in Europe and from the Modernity Group (Greg Nacu) in North America. I picked mine up from Greg at a Commodore expo and it's a sweet piece of hardware. The only thing to look out for is the fact that it's not compatible with Wheels (GEOS upgrade) or most games that haven't been cracked specifically to work on it.

 

The thing the OP remembers is probably a doohickey that came out in Europe in the early 90s. It basically hooked up between the headphone jack of a portable CD player and the 64's cassette port, and came with a CD of the beeps & boops found on several software cassettes.

[Laner]

Yeah, I saw IDE64, but it doesn't look like something you can purchase. I've never even touched a soldering iron, so building one is kind of out of my reach for now

 

Actually, you can buy them from Protovision in Europe and from the Modernity Group (Greg Nacu) in North America. I picked mine up from Greg at a Commodore expo and it's a sweet piece of hardware. The only thing to look out for is the fact that it's not compatible with Wheels (GEOS upgrade) or most games that haven't been cracked specifically to work on it.

 

OK - thanks... when you say most games won't work that haven't been cracked specifically for it, does that include single-file programs?

[CSIXTY4]

OK - thanks... when you say most games won't work that haven't been cracked specifically for it, does that include single-file programs?

 

Single-file programs should work just fine.