Exploring the Commodore 1581: Partitioning, Easter Eggs, And More

[@ThomasCouey]

I guess it’s nitpicking, but you keep saying backslash, when those are actually forward slashes.

[@8_Bit]

Bizarre I didn't notice that during editing! I did say "slash" at 10:36 but "backslash" the other times :( Shame on me!

[@8_Bit]

@Dr. M. H. Thanks, much appreciated :)

[@TEDodd]

At least he didn't use that stupid "forward slash" garbage.

[@silkwesir1444]

especially as there are no backslashes on the C64

[@RavenWolfRetroTech]

Wow, a lot of backlash on the backslash! 😂

[@anthonynicholson8062]

My story of the 1581 disk drive. I was a 14 year old kid living in New Zealand who got a Commodore 64c for my birthday 2 years before and was using my friend's Dataset to play games on it. In October of 1988, we took a trip to the USA. During a trip to Toys 'R' Us, I first saw the 1581 and was amazed because it used the 3.5" floppies. I was able to convince my parents to buy one for me. My only hurdle would be that of course it was 110v and NZ is 240v. Fortunately, on our stopover in Hawaii on the way back, the parents found this touch lamp they really wanted (The separation of technology available between NZ and the USA at the time was huge) but of course, it was 110v as well. However the shop said no problem, they sold 110v to 240v converters. So 2 were purchased. The first for the lamp, and the second one for my disk drive. Upon getting home I hooked it all up and everything worked perfectly. From there is back around to my friends place to "backup" his software library of all his 5 1/4" disks full of games. However, when he started up his "backup" software, they all spat the dummy trying to recognize what the hell this weird disk drive attached was. Fortunately, the drive came with a program called Unicopy which allowed us to perform the backups. What did totally amaze both of us was the capacity of the 3.5" disks. My friend was loading, flipping, and reloading disk after disk while the 1581 just soaked it all up. The next year I sold the computer and drive to a friend for $1000 which was some serious cash back then. My father was bringing IBM PC XTs and AT's home from work for me to play with, so I sort of moved on. Of course, looking back, completely regret that now, but I was 15 at the time, and who thinks of the future back then...

[@8_Bit]

Thanks for sharing the story; maybe you had the first 1581 in all of New Zealand!

[@jack002tuber]

Wow, a great story. Thanks for that!

[@anthonynicholson8062]

@@8_Bit I often wondered that myself. While it was released in 1987, a year before I got it I am thinking that it at least it must be one of the few that existed in NZ, since it was discontinued only a couple of years after. And with limited commercial software available for it, I doubt a country of 3 million people would not have much of a market for such a device at the time. I never saw one in a computer store anywhere. I wonder where my one is now. I know how it changed hands twice, but lost track of its location about 1997. Another stupid thing I do remember is also buying from Toys 'R' Us is a pack of Camouflage GI Joe Band Aids. I thought they were so cool, but I didn't have any cuts or anything to put one onto, so I ended up sticking one to the side of the 1581 box where it stayed even when I sold it on :-)

[@anthonynicholson8062]

@@jack002tuber Your most welcome :-) Have added to the experience a bit more in the reply to Robin above.

[@statinskill]

I never even owned a 1541 as a kid and nothing I could have possibly said and done would have made my parents buy me a 1581. If I had had at least a 1541 as kid, I think I wouldn't have developed my technological fetish fascination with magnetic storage. But then again, it might have grown so strong it wrecked my life. Just think you're diddling that io pin on that sets the polarity of the write head as it flies over that smooth and sensitive dark velvety surface of the disk. No other disk drive gives you that kind of control, makes you feel like you're the man! But that wasn't meant to be. Instead I did later on get very close with the 765-ish floppy controller in my IBM PS/2. But that is like sex with a condom compared to sex without. All you get to do is setup irq and dma and then push a few command bytes info a command register and then pop out the result after the irq has occurred.

[@HeyBirt]

Pressing Play/REW/FF on the tape deck will lower the 'Cassette Sense' line which goes to P4 (pin 25) of the 6510. The Kernal then must be doing something in response to that that the 1581 has an issue with. Since JiffyDOS removes the cassette stuff form the Kernal the offending code is not called. Sounds like a new episode Robin, look at the cassette handing code in the Kernal and find out what is causing the problem.

[@8_Bit]

Thanks for the info!

[@jack002tuber]

I'll make the popcorn =)

[@ownpj]

The cassette read line connects to the srq line on the serial bus. The srq line was repurposed for burst mode on the 71/81 drives. The drive might be listening for burst mode data triggered by errant casette read signals. Testing this on a 128 shouldn't fail in the same way.

[@HeyBirt]

@@ownpj Ah, I did not see that. I looked at the cassette subsection in the manual which did not show that connection. Presuming that JiffyDOS does not have this issue with a 1581 it would seem that the problem lies in the cassette code in the Kernal doing something odd or the IEC section of the Kernal doing something odd as both are sections that JIffyDOS overwrites.

[@csbruce]

2:20 A few other features worth noting: The 6502 in the drive ran at 2 MHz. It has 8K of RAM, which is enough for a full-track cache, the first Commodore drive to have that. You don't have to worry about sector interleaving for optimal performance, and the "cylinder" approach doesn't waste seek time like in earlier drives, including the double-sided 1571. The MFM Disk Controller freed the processor from spending time doing GCR encoding/decoding. 2:52 It might be more suitable to demonstrate the drive with a C128 since the 1581 supports the Fast serial protocol. 4:01 JiffyDOS would probably make it run pretty fast even on a C64.

[@borismatesin]

That must be one insane routine, if it's able to to load stuff off the serial bus that fast.

[@lsorense]

But on a 128 you wouldn't see the datasette problem.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

@Mr Guru I want to say Jan Beta did a test of fast loaders to see which was actually the fastest. Found it! It was Adrian's Digital Basement. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6DQfGdsf7uSa8U (It's towards the end of the video)

[@8BitNaptime]

Indeed the 1581 is one of Commodore's better-engineered products. That's why I have two of them.

[@AmigaLove]

Holy smokes, Robin! Thanks so much for the shout-out. I feel like I need to kiss the ring!! =) Very kind, cheers. And, as always, I LOVE your work here. I always walk away feeling smarter, at least for a little while until I forget and have to come back to re-watch again. Rinse, repeat.

[@8_Bit]

Haha, we're all equals in Commodore KZbin land, no Commodore Pope or whatever :) You did an excellent job with the 1581 video, great quality on the production!

[@AmigaLove]

@@8_Bit Thanks a ton, Robin. That means a lot to me. Made my day!

[@jm131719]

Brings back great memories. And oh how I miss Loadstar. Even got to play with an FD-4000, and still have a box of quad density floppies. 3.2 MB on a quad density was an "unbelievable> amount of room in those days. Thanks for posting.

[@xzb6np]

I used to use Big Blue Reader 128 on my C=128 to write GeoPublish Postscript files to IBM formatted disk and take them to work and Laser Print them. It worked quite well.

[@strayblackcatsmeow]

Just set up my 128Drc and found two of my drives are broken. The 1581 initialized as usual but then locks up all comunications on the serial line and creates keyboard malfunctions. A 1541 just continues to spin with red light on. The other 1541 works fine.

[@jim_64s8-bitprojects5]

Nice! The last program I worked on, before the 22 year sleep for my c64, was a disk menu program for the 1581 that supported partitions, written in BASIC. I think I opened the "$" file like a seq file and read the bytes out one at a time, and then parsed it. I forgot how clumsy they were to create!

[@borismatesin]

Very informative, as always! That bug's awfully funny, like you said, that the oldest and newest storage mediums for the C64 would clash like that.

[@fnjesusfreak]

The second PC I owned came from a church and had a program called GodSpeed on it which had a searchable full-text version of the NIV. Honestly, I think the NIV is a joke, but it remains popular as a Bible translation. The International Bible Society renamed themselves "Biblica" some years ago, using their old name as a slogan.

[@commodorecave5581]

Good video, interesting channel, and thanks for the plug. cheers Graham @ Commodore Cave.

[@BeckoningEagle]

It's amazing how resilient old 3.5 inch disks were. They were also a bit expensive. When that technology started dying a new box of 10 would probably ship with a couple DOA.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

They got really poor manufacturing quality for sure. I remember working in a computing center lab and the more tech savvy students would toss seemingly new but bad disks in the trash after testing them out first for integrity. Some thrifty naive intro to computing student would take them out of the trash to use for saving data to turn in projects for a grade. Those bad disks were unreadable so they got no grade but could at least turn something in later albeit late. But some would also use to save for midterms and finals, to which the disk would be unreadable and they would summarily get an F.

[@unf0ld]

This channel is great. Watching your videos, I’ve found, is a great way to unwind. Who’d a thunk learning about commodore could be so relaxing 😄 keep up the good work 👍

[@CityXen]

Love them 1581 drives. Had one for the c128, it was super effective!

[@UltimatePerfection]

Didn't know there was a 3.5" drive for the Commodore, thought all we had to work with 1541.

[@CommodoreComputerMuseum]

Very nice video as always! The 1581 is a good looking machine, crazy prizes on ebay though...one day.

[@davidinark]

Fargoal!! One of my all time faves! Love the vids!

[@rayf2145]

When changing directories, you are using a DOS wedge. Am I right that in standard format, this always needed the full "open 15,8,15,BLABLA" ?! How can it get any more complicated... Also, the directories seem to me like a disk image on a disk.

[@8_Bit]

Yeah, the DOS wedge (sometimes called command wedge) replaces all the tedious OPEN 15,8,15, stuff with the @ symbol and makes using these devices much more friendly. And yes, these sub-directories are really just partitions, like a disk image. The CMD FD-2000 introduced true sub-directories, which are being used in SD2IEC drives nowadays.

[@CoolDudeClem]

I didn't even know they even made a 3.5 inch drive for the C64.

[@MoosesValley]

Types one of the most awkward and non-intuitive commands I have ever seen (IBM Mainframe JCL would be proud). Result: "Grunt, GRUNT" from the drive. "There' that's how quick it is to create a partition". 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Johan-ez5wo]

It did looks a bit like JCL commands, setting up tracks for a VSAM file.. not the commands, but the tech behind it.

[@10MARC]

It is really a wonderful drive. I use it on my VIC-20 sometimes for the "Realms of Quest" game that came on 4 disks, but usually I use it for GEOS

[@DaaaveO1971]

I loved my 1581! It was great for running a whole BBS with message boards and a decent U/D section :) all off a single drive!

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

I agree with him: it wouldn't be worth that hassle at all, until hard drive material. I liked all 3160 blocks in one group anyway. I literally never used partitioning on this. I'll have to try it sometime. They should've used HD. I thought HD 3.5s were already out by then. I mean even the 1001 could format for more, and it's 5.25! I like Commodore computers in some ways, but the company had this problem of backsliding too much. Even the PET made stuff like this easier than this. But what does Commodore do? "Let's take it OUT and backslide our BASIC!" Even the 264 series had some backslide to go along with the improvements. Interesting that their first version of BASIC was already 4 (I'm not sure how that worked).

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Oops, @Mr Guru, I forgot that the earlier PETs had lower BASIC.

[@SpearM3064]

@@HelloKittyFanMan. The reason they "backslid" to 2.0 on the Commodore 64 was Jack Tramiel's doing. The short version is that adding extra commands would've required more ROM, which means it would've cost more money to manufacture. But I would argue that the "backslide" resulted in better programmers... or at least, programmers that knew more about the hardware they were working with. You were put face to face with the hardware. None of those inefficient ROM-based crutches or abstraction layers. If you wanted the SID chip to make a noise, you had to know what you wanted and how to tell the hardware to do it. Hacking the platform became a joy like nothing else. 80-column display? No problem. Fast floppy drive reads? Which option do you like? Dedicated enthusiasts learned how to get every last clock cycle and bit of performance out of the hardware. And 64kB was a lot of memory for its time, even if you couldn’t use all of it. Now, keep in mind that I'm not arguing in _favor_ of 2.0. I'm just explaining where the decision to use 2.0 came from. I would have _happily_ given up the 4k "hole" at $C000-$CFFF for additional graphics, sound, and disk drive commands. Just to provide a few examples: VOLUME 15 would be _so_ much easier to remember than POKE 54296,15. ENVELOPE 1,2,9,5,9 (to set the ADSR envelope) would be _so_ much more intuitive than POKE 54277,41:POKE 54278,89. Just leave the POKEs as an option, for people who want to use it. I think perhaps part of the decision dates back to the VIC-20, which also came with BASIC 2.0. There are claims that Jack liked the idea that shipping BASIC 2.0 would leave a nice upgrade path for consumers to buy an add-on cartridge to provide more commands (and, in fact, the VIC-20 Super Expander did exactly that. On the Commodore 64, there was the Simon's BASIC cartridge.) I sort of think that same logic was still at play when the C64 was being designed. Commodore was NOT a software company. Jack couldn't give a rat's ass if people were programming for the C64, the VIC-20, or any of their other computers, as long as people continued to buy their products. Imagine, if you will, Jack Tramiel sitting in a meditative pose. The caption reads: "Designing a computer for programmers? This is a picture of me failing to summon a fuck to give." He wanted a computer for families who wanted an _affordable_ home computer, and Commodore delivered. At a time when an Apple II was going for $1400 (without disk drive), an Atari 800 was going for $1000 (without disk drive), and a TI-99/4a was going for $1200 (without disk drive), a Commodore 64 *with* disk drive could be had for $900.

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

Are those Loadstar discs archived?

[@vwestlife]

This is where the Apple II's ProDOS, or even Atari's DOS, seem like a dream to use instead of these arcane commands.

[@8_Bit]

Yes, this is where JiffyDOS or even a common Epyx Fastload really becomes a necessity.

[@_zzpza]

I recently picked up one of these drives and this video is very useful, thanks for making it! I would love to see a video on the CMD FD-2000 if you ever do one.

[@mroakley1234]

Thanks for the video Robin, brilliant stuff. Coming from the UK i kinda missed out on disk drives for the 8bit Commodores. Made me think when you were showing the Loadstar disks, by the late 90s the Amiga had come and gone, Commodore was no more, yet people were still doing stuff with the 8bits into the 2000s. Awesome

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Funny that there was ever that rumor that "no software was ever released for the 1581," because anyone who got a new 81 would get that disk on the top of the stack in your hand!

[@carl156]

Do a Video on Sid Chip revisions ?

[@interlace84]

Imagine the struggles people had with that drive to get their tape games on floppies & vice versa before finding out about the compatilibity issues... yikes! those things were expensive!

[@ProjectGeek1]

Very nice. I'd love to find a 1581, but I'll settle for a 1571 :) Have you talked about your expansion port expander? I'm interested.

[@8_Bit]

I'll be making a quick video about the expander shortly, it'll probably show up on my 2nd channel: kzbin.info/door/AgWzEh5c8391eJnELDy9OA

[@ProjectGeek1]

@@8_Bit awesome, thanks.

[@Sultaneous]

I couldn't get this to work on VICE. I could create the partitions, but not change directory to them nor format them (VICE C64 v3.2, 1581 TrueDrive v4.2, Super Snapshot 5 cartridge). Anyone get this to work via the emulator?

[@cnoyes72]

I only knew of one person who used 1581 drives (two of them, plus two 1541 drives). She ran a CNET BBS with them. The 1581 was pretty much the poor man's hard drive for the C64

[@The_Wandering_Nerd]

Wow, and people thought the disk formatting and partitioning commands in MS-DOS were unnecessarily obtuse.

[@fnjesusfreak]

It sounds like you could format a disk in a 1581, then reformat the first 40 tracks using a deliberately misconfigured MS-DOS, yielding a dual-format disk.

[@hotplatelabs]

Catching up on your videos at the moment and they’re truly excellent. Perfect presentation and every video has great info I’ve never heard before. Thanks!

[@andypyne]

I wonder if the command to access the 'Dedicated to my Wife' comment at @14:48 is supposed to represent his wife? Turn it sideways and @B-* looks like a lady's head with a pair of boobs, then an unshaven lady garden ....

[@brucemcfarling7810]

The partition would be good for the versions of fig-Forth that wrote BLOCK files directly to sectors, because if you forgot and put the disk in and saved to disk, it would trash the blocks. I got lucky and the one I got used REL files, so their sectors were respected by the CBM filesystem.

[@NJRoadfan]

Those commands..... yikes. What were they thinking when they wrote that firmware? Than again these are the folks who gave us the speed demon known as the 1541. In today's terms, those partitions are basically disk images, a clever albeit cumbersome way around the fact that the file system doesn't truly support sub-directories. On a side note, The Apple II also had a weird relationship between printers and disk drives. You "printed" to a slot in order to boot off a disk!

[@daviddyer3543]

I wonder what it'll be like programming a game on the C64 for a 1581 disk? Will the games be bigger?

[@8BitNaptime]

Great drive, an example of Commodore getting it right! They are also quite the expensive bauble these days.

[@neophytealpha]

Would not mind having a good copy of the schematics, block diagram, and ROMs of that CMD FD2000

[@nil2k]

Somehow I never once created a partition on my 1581 on my c128

[@Johan-ez5wo]

Looks a bit like how IBM does it. Perhaps Commodore studied the S/360's back in the days.

[@bartek44]

Hello, robin. I have a C64 C with kernal v3, may you show me easter eggs? many thanks.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Could someone create 1541 to SPDIF interface for a COMMODORE C64/C128 to connect a COMMODORE C64/C128 to a PHILIPS DCC900 via the SPDIF I/O connection so programs could be saved on DCC tapes.

[@napomania]

press play on DCC tape. stoppin jokin I don't thinks is a so easy thing. in particular read from such a cassette type

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

@@napomania The PHILIPS Supports SPDIF and TOSLINK so there must be a way to convert data coming from the 1541 interface into a SPDIF signal so that it can be compressed using the PASC compression and encoded onto the cassette and read from the cassette decompressed and sent back to the interface to be converted back into the signals the 1541 port expects also it would be a good idea to have the interface control operation of the PHILIPS DCC900 via the remote control input jack.

[@Okurka.]

@@DAVIDGREGORYKERR Apparently you never heard of a file system. What you describe there is simply a data stream.

[@dougjohnson4266]

I think the file system limitations of the disk dirves and lack of standard 80 columns kept these computers out of the business area.

[@Mr_ToR]

Here is the information about David Siracusa's involvement at Commodore from his own site. www.perfware.com/site/bio/Commodore.html

[@weedmanwestvancouverbc9266]

Robin: 21:03 looks like the same printouts I got with my SuperPET

[@EngineeringVignettes]

C64 activity in the 2000's must have been a resurgence... Back then I was not even using my A2000 anymore...

[@polluks2]

The tape lockup is surprising. It's not on the IEC bus but the CPU port...

[@eliasgeorge8534]

You are such a wealth of knowledge. You should write some books, if you have not already.

[@Gooberslot]

I wish you had shown more about how to do things manually instead of switching to using your cartridge's functions so soon.

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

Dude I ran in to that data set bug and I though my 1581 I put together with a kit was broken it freaked me out. I unplugged my data set and it worked fine 😳

[@GiammarcoZacheo]

Ok, the right hand is called Robin, but what's the name of the left one?

[@maddogmcrae]

Never bothered with partitions, found them to be totally useless.

[@markjohnson3737]

This video hurts, just lost an auction for a 1581.

[@8_Bit]

Sorry to hear that. I hadn't looked at prices for a while and didn't realize they're regularly going for $300 now!

[@markjohnson3737]

@@8_Bit Yeah, prices for anything Commodore have been skyrocketing. All was not lost though, I did win a Plus/4. Will be my first time programming in BASIC 3.5.

[@8_Bit]

@@markjohnson3737 Enjoy, BASIC 3.5 is really nice! You probably know, but the TED chip in the Plus/4 is very delicate, so be as careful with that computer as you can.

[@Lexitivium]

And people use to say that FDISK was clunky ;-)

[@fnizzelwhoop]

Wow! I never noticed that 1581 + cassette bug. It blows my mind how I could have used the two for so many years without hitting that.

[@8_Bit]

Maybe you just didn't use them together? Or I wonder if the bug doesn't happen in certain combinations of equipment.

[@fnizzelwhoop]

@@8_Bit No, I think you're right -- I probably never used them together. Once I got the 1581 I essentially only used the cassette player to load games, and all my programming would be done against the disk drive -- I had no reason to really switch between the two without powercyckling. When I get the chance I'll reproduce the test and check if it hangs.

[@interlace84]

23:09 "San Andreas Font" -- Rockstar started early!

[@stevethepocket]

It finally dawned on me how "Loadstar" got its name and now I'm embarrassed it took so long.

[@fbuezas]

do you know the unix 128 or lunix for commodore 128?

[@jack002tuber]

I wonder if that 1581 bug exists in Vice, I bet it does

[@jakubkrcma]

This is just amazing. Shame I didn't have this in 1988.

[@TheKetsa]

Are there adapters for a standard 3.5'' floppy drives ?

[@Mountainmonths]

man I grew up on DOS and this is a world of difference

[@JeffTiberend]

I was so excited as a kid when I saw this drive at a local store. But, seeing how directories are managed has been a little disappointing. Is the CMD Dirve easier to do subdirectories on?

[@8_Bit]

Yes, the CMD drives (not only the FD-2000 3.5" drive, but also their hard drive series, and the RAMLink) have much better subdirectory handling. And the various SD2IEC devices you can buy now follow the CMD system of subdirectories. It's really nice, with a MD: command to make directories, and CD: to change into them. The SD2IEC uses a FAT32 system so you can pop the same SD card into a modern computer and see the same directories and files.

[@pierrenagonio]

The price... insane. Good work.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

So the @ is for changing directories via that wedge. But what about the '81's own way of doing it? And then what happens when you remove the disk and reinsert it? Would it somehow save a bookmark to which partition you're on, or go back to root every time?

[@8_Bit]

To change directories without the wedge, it's just PRINT#15,"/DIRECTORYNAME" assuming you have already done a OPEN 15,8,15.

[@fu1r4]

When i was trying to copy games from tape to my 1581 drive it was not possible because there was some kind of collision between these units. I was forced to hot swap between the tape and the 1581 and it took forever to copy (it was already slow to copy from tape). If i instead used my friends 1541 drive it worked. Maybe you know why that wasn't possible? I can't remember any detail about the issue because it was more than 30 years ago ... 15:15 It seems that you knew about the issue and it was an incompatibility issue, but it did bother me. 😢

[@8_Bit]

Yes, it's a strange bug. I'd think it was very uncommon for someone to go from a tape drive direct to a 1581 but obviously it did happen sometimes! But Commodore must not have tested that combination; they probably didn't use cassette drives anymore when they were developing the 1581.

[@Zontar82]

Great video as usual. I have a question though: there was basically no software for the 1581, but Just for the kicks of It, was It possible to copy a game made for 1541 disks into a 1581?

[@8_Bit]

If the game had copy protection or a fast loader then you wouldn't be able to get it to work on a 1581 unless you had pretty amazing hacking skills. But games that just used the regular file system, or some that had been deprotected by pirates, could often be run from 1581 disks. So you could get a lot of games to work, but lots wouldn't too.

[@danaeckel5523]

Wheels 128 was on 3.5"

[@KingNothing22]

how do do this in vice w/o fastload?

[@tribemaster101]

Could you do more videos on magazines?

[@simonscott1121]

Can you create a partition with 664 blocks free that might better emulate a 1541 disk side?

[@8_Bit]

Not on the 1581, unfortunately. The (formatted) partition must contain complete tracks, which have 40 blocks each, so the partition will have a multiple of 40 blocks. Also, since each track has 40 sectors, it can't match the variable number of sectors of a 1541 side. CMD devices offers 1541 (and 1571 and 1581) partitions which allow for much better compatibility.

[@Okurka.]

Graham from Commodore Cave is weird; he deliberately puts errors/false information in his tech videos.

[@8_Bit]

I haven't noticed that in the videos I've watched. I'm not sure I want to ask for examples :)

[@DevilsHandyman]

I used to want a 1581 but this partition thing is extremely hacky

[@SpearM3064]

Then you don't have to use it. I preferred to have the whole 3,160 blocks available, so I never used partitions.

[@tetsujin_144]

I used to have a 1581. I wish it could have been "the" drive for the C-128 - but I know how important the 1541 compatibility of the 1571 was. But 800K on one of those disks felt vast back then - it was pretty sweet having it as a second drive.

[@robwebnoid5763]

I still have all my Loadstar disks, but I do miss the days of waiting for the next issue. My 1581 has a broken power switch which is still in process of me repairing it. What happened was that after many years of not getting used, the switch became frozen. Dried up internal switch grease I presume. So I opened the switch & accidentally broke part of the plastic switch housing part, so I will have to figure that out eventually, probably will use a specialized adhesive bond just for plastics. I hear it is very difficult to source an exact-sized alternate replacement switch. My last resort would just be to retrofit a different switch altogether if I fail in repairing the original switch. Once it gets fixed, I can resume using the 1581 with Geos64, which I haven't used Geos since the early 1990's.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

By comparison, the XF551 for Atari 8-bit computers could be fitted with a 3.5" mech with other additional modifications and is completely supported by SpartaDOS in all its flavors. Sadly, I don't have one. Yet.

[@richardkelsch3640]

"... then you press the @ symbol, plug your left nostril, and cluck like a chicken to ...." You Commodore guys had it bad when it came to mass storage. I mean, damn that's nuts.

[@bob19611000]

Used one of these with my C128D. For me it was the capacity to read its text files on my office MSDOS machine. Added a few years of useful "business" life to my Commodore. Frankly, the real end to my C128 was as modem speeds got so much greater than it could deal with in terms of available hardware.

[@00Skyfox]

Two main questions. First, is there any way to format 1.44MB HD floppies to be compatible in the 1581? I have a ton of those but very few DD floppies. Second, if I remember right, after the Loadstar offices got trashed by a tornado, Fender Tucker or maybe Dave Moorman said they were going to release a giant compilation of all the Loadstar issues for sale. Do you know if they ever did that? I only found it and started subscribing about midway through the life of Loadstar.

[@8_Bit]

I've never tried using HD disks on the 1581; I'd assume it wouldn't be very reliable if it worked at all. Here's an interesting discussion about it (but not the 1581 in particular): www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/guzis.html Fender Tucker did release the "Compleat Loadstar" which is the first 199 issues on a CD, and also as a download. I'll be doing an episode soon where I talk about that a bit. I don't think Dave's issues, from 200 to 248, have been officially compiled together.

[@00Skyfox]

@@8_Bit Thanks for the info on Loadstar. And you're right that HD disks aren't reliable on the 1581. One may occasionally take a format and seem alright, but it really isn't, kinda like HD 5.25" floppies in the 1541. I was just wondering if anyone did find a way to make them compatible and reliable.

[@sypialnia_studio]

Thank you for another brilliant video Robin. After watching every new episode on your channel i am getting more and more curious about your history. Is there a video about your journey to become Commodore Sensei that you are today? Would love to watch that!

[@NeilRoy]

I LOVED the Loadstar disk magazine. They looked really nice, well designed etc. Also, i would have absolutely loved those Bible disks as I have since read read the KJV and NIV cover to cover and studied them in depth. My main use for my 1581 on my C64 was for a BBS I used to run off of it. It was nice for the various doors etc.

[@bozimmerman]

The first version of Geo-BEAP was on the LoadStar disk he showed us! Yay! Love that program!

[@FeedBackMain]

Was very rare to find the 1581.... I used to work with the 1541 and 1541-II and i still have both...

[@macjax69]

Love the videos !! Well spoken and you explain everything well !! Thank you !!

[@lsorense]

You can fix the datasette problem on the C64 by making a serial cable with the SRQ pin removed. See personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/1581/datassette.txt

[@8_Bit]

Nice. Do you know if a software fix is impossible? Obviously it would involve a modified ROM.

[@lsorense]

@@8_Bit Not sure, but I would guess if you could modify the rom to not support the fast mode that the C128 supports, then it should no longer attempt to use that line. Just a guess though. Seems making a custom cable is easier and leaves the drive working properly at full speed with the C128 given that line in the serial cable has no purpose on the C64, other than apparently causing lockups with the datasette. Some people apparently just disconnect the line inside their C64 from the serial port to avoid any problems with it given the fault is with the C64, not the 1581 as far as I understand it.

[@jjeeeekk]

8:30 I think the life could be easier to handle 16-bit value and split them into byte if you take the value range into consideration. If values are below 32768 (for most disk-oriented stuff this is the case, e.g. record number for relative files if they are never succeed the limit of 32767, and for partition block counts this will be surely the case) you could write for the partition creation command CHR$(1000AND255)+CHR$(1000/256) to translate into low and high byte. It's horrible to see the side calculation, which could discouraging people further to even touch partitions. ;) AND 255 masks the low 8 bits and /256 focuses on the high 8 bits. Nice side-effect of BASIC parameters is that if an integer is expected the INT() happens implicitly (in the second CHR$ call). I think, it couldn't harm to present some nice tricks to relieve the pain with partitions for 1581 users. :)

[@8_Bit]

Those are good points; I've gotten away from using the AND 255 trick because it's useless for unsigned 16-bit operations which we frequently do for POKEs on the C64, but it's true that disk operations would rarely have that problem. I don't think it's "horrible" to show the side-calculation though; it's still educational and that's the correct way to generally to convert a decimal 16-bit value into 8-bit components. The AND 255 is a special-case optimization in C64 BASIC which isn't general purpose.

[@jjeeeekk]

@@8_Bit My point was that the general way of calculation is not wrong but it additionally burdens the handling with partitions. The AND255 "optimization" is a very legal construction nearly every Microsoft BASIC is capable of it. I think it would be a very rare case if the 1581 is connected with a system not based on MS or CBM BASIC. By chance even my Dragon 32 connected with my IEC interface talks in MS BASIC with the drive. ;)

[@ShaunBebbington]

Did Commodore make one 8in Disk Drive?

[@8_Bit]

I've heard of this 8280 8" drive but have never seen it in real life: www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/dlieee2.html

[@marcelfrehse]

one of my most beloved C64 channels is back with a new post

[@scality4309]

Fun fact: The 1581 also works on a commodore PC1 (sporting a 8080) processor.

[@8_Bit]

That's really weird and cool when there's that kind of cross-compatibility. I think I heard about either CBM or Amiga mice working on the PC1 as well?

[@scality4309]

@@8_Bit Correct. Tried i myself. Mouse works.

[@00Skyfox]

BTW, I really love the outro music!

[@Mr_ToR]

Dear Robin, would you please make a video about using a lightpen? Thnx

[@8_Bit]

Hi Tonguç, did you already watch The 8-Bit Guy's video about lightpens? I helped him make it, my son and I even appear on camera in it! kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKaQeaKgaap8oLc

[@Mr_ToR]

​@@8_Bit Wow, I didn't know about that easter egg. I have to try that on my C64DTV now :-) It would be really awesome if you could find some time to show a couple of routines about using a light pen.

[@TrollingAround]

interesting: B-? is a smiley

[@QWDreaming]

I noticed that - a quizzical one for the information easter egg and a kissy one for the dedication to his wife. Very sweet! B-*

[@wolvenar]

Seems someone was burning the midnight oil.

[@oleimann]

That is the one disk drive I always wanted until the SD2IEC came along :) It would have fitted well with my current C64c (which still needs a 1541-II with the @-save replacement fix). Weren't there also 3rd Party intelligent Harddisks on Serial busses ?

[@8_Bit]

Yes, CMD (maker of the FD-2000 3.5" drive I showed briefly) made a series of hard disks that ran on the serial bus too. I've got one, but I think the SCSI drive in it has failed. Eventually I'll find a replacement and make a video about that.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Oh nice, you have a Sword of Fargoal box! I played that game a lot, but had so many pirated games (Yeah, FBI, come and get me!), but don't ever remember seeing the Sword box until now! Maybe you showed it before, though. And wasn't that the first official game released for the 64?

[@8_Bit]

I only recently got that copy of Sword of Fargoal so this is the first time I've shown it. That would be very interesting if it was the first commercial C64 game, though I'd expect that honour belongs to some of the Commodore-released cartridge games that were available at the C64's launch. I'm not sure how we'd find out for sure.