SpeedDOS for the Commodore 1541C Disk Drive

[@svenpetersen1965]

Sven was here ;-)

[@jacktheripper6716]

Legend has it Sven is really bill gates

[@slashtiger1]

Please do an in-depth review of SpeedDos! I have it on my C64C and 1541-II, and used to LOVE it. Both of my devices use the SpeedDOS Plus ROM, it was installed way back in the 1980s. SpeedDos also includes things such as a machine language monitor, BAM editor and the like. It was really powerful. You already made my day, week and month just by uploading this video, so thanks! Can't wait to see more of it...!

[@10MARC]

What a great solution for the 1541C! Going Parallel was always a dream of so many of us C64 users back in the day. Sven makes some awesome hardware for sure!

[@larryaugsburger8452]

Every time I think I miss Commodore, a video like this reminds me how they sold us US$250 disk drives with the speed of a 300 baud modem.

[@elmariachi5133]

I like my slow 1541, it's part of the retro experience xD

[@1337Shockwav3]

You mean Commodore experience? It's amazing how they constantly messed up their media connectivity when the rest of the machines were actually quite powerful.

[@elmariachi5133]

@@1337Shockwav3 Well, I was lucky to have an kind of rare Amiga2000HD with actual 40MBytes of HDD space inside from about 1988 xD So it's only the C64 experience for me. But yes, of course the Amiga only having DD floppies was one of it's two main (maybe only) problems. The other was having not enough sprites.

[@00Skyfox]

It's very easy to fix a broken leg on an IC. Just go into your dead parts bin (or salvage a chip you don't want off a board you don't want) and snap one of the legs off it. Then put a tiny bit of solder onto the broken leg of the chip you're fixing. And last, put a bit of flux on the replacement leg, hold it to the solder on the chip's broken leg, and apply the soldering iron to melt it and squeeze them flatly together. Since the solder covers the entire junction it's very strong. For a chip where the leg is broken off right at the ceramic/plastic, you need to dremel away some of the case until you expose some of the chip leg inside it, and then do the same procedure but with a replacement leg that still has the bend at the top.

[@MrCrrispy]

I had this back in the time, with 2 1541, was great to clone floppies in less than 1 minute!

[@cbmeeks]

Great video. FYI, I use a grounding strap as well and the other day I thought I would check continuity from the strap button to the other end (where it attaches to the desk) and found there was none! I've been using it for a long time and never knew it broke. Then, I thought I would check the grounding strap that connects from the desk to the wall and the exact same thing! Both lost their connection. I know they both worked when I got them. So lesson learned for me. Those cheap straps from China break pretty easily. I took them apart and discovered there is just a tiny wire "crimped" under a little plate that makes contact. The wire can come out. So might be worth checking your straps from time to time. :-)

[@leon111333]

Great work as always! Btw. it's also very easy to fix a broken leg on the chip if you don't have spare parts!

[@michaelcarey]

I remember reading on a website somewhere that you need to cut a pin on the 1541C 6522 when you do a parallel cable modification. The cut pin may be related to that.

[@CandyGramForMongo_]

Pro tip: Don’t use solder wick from the roll. Cut off a bit and use pliers to hold it. The roll of wick sinks heat and makes it harder to use. :)

[@abpccpba]

And always cut off wick that has been used after each step also slows down the heating; liquid rosin flux on wick accelerates also. : = ))

[@csabasanta5696]

Won't the plier sink the heat as well?

[@CandyGramForMongo_]

@@csabasanta5696 Sure but less. Ceramic pliers would be best, of course.

[@tommyovesen]

Sven is excellent, and very kind :)

[@eddiehimself]

I see you've got a pair of ADAM audio monitors. Great choice!

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Bellissimo drive,perfette condizioni,funzionamento impeccabile,bravo

[@ChristopherLionRoars]

The pin on the chip was cut intentionally for the track 0 connector.

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I only realized that when I had finished the video. Makes sense, obviously. :D

[@senilyDeluxe]

I have one of these, it has the "Head banger" ROM, it also has the track 0 sensor, but the function was still disabled! I enabled it and now it goes to track 0 without banging.

[@Tom_der_Bastler]

​@@danceographicocean Yes, but because the track 0 detection was written into the DOS (instead of a hardware only solution) , it led to even more incompatibilities and so it was disabled again.

[@Tom_der_Bastler]

​@@danceographicocean No. The Signal on pin PA0 is an incomming signal from UC6. This signal is triggert by the light sensor. The DOS with the light sensor integrated reads out the status of PA0 from the VIA while moving the head and stops if PA0 raises to high. There were at least three versions of 1541C on the market: One with funktional light sensor, one with disabled light sensor and DOS with integrated Sensor: These are the one that rattele when tuned on. And then a version where the light sensor was disabled and the DOS has no more light sensor routines.

[@Somelucky]

I recently did something similar for a 1541 II drive. Of course I did it the non-elegant way by soldering a db15 port directly to the VIA chip legs. It works great for making .G64 “backups” from their copy protected originals.

[@yakattack1069]

I very much like and appreciate your channel, not to mention your glorious personality.

[@Geomanb]

I'm so happy that you put this drive to a good use :-) BTW: is there something wrong with the encoding? there are some artifacts on the black areas in the video - first I thought my graphics card was damaged

[@MacMelmac]

I had one of those together with my C64c, the only model to buy at the time in Sweden.

[@KillDaRoy]

Ich hatte damals meinen C64 + 1541 ebenfalls mit SpeedDOS aufgerüstet. Es gab aber noch ein Upgrade => QuickDOS. Mit dem QuickDOS musste ich die 1541 über einen Lüfter kühlen 😀

[@JohnnyWednesday]

This is awesome Jan :) thank you very much for sharing

[@EmilOppelnBronikowski]

Damn deja vu. You put your scissors on your bench, I look next to my laptop, there are an identical scissors on my desk.

[@dolittle7368]

Gott sei Dank ist das Laufwerk funkentstört nach der Verfügung 1046/84 der deutschen Bundespost. Ich hatte mir schon Sorgen gemacht!

[@JanBeta]

Muss sein! Deshalb auch das ganze Blech an der Platine vermutlich. ;)

[@32mlucas]

I still have Speeddos on my original C64 that I owned since 1983

[@Tom_der_Bastler]

The light sensor is connecting to pa0 of the 6522 wich is needed for the parallel transmission. Disconnecting the light sensor from the mainboard is not working. If you don't have a light-sensor-diconnect-jumper, you have to disconnect pin 2 of the 6522 from the mainboard (guess why this pin was cut ;-)) or you just cut pin 10 of UC6 where it is leading to. If you do so, you also can solder the parallel cable adapter on top of the 6522 without desoldering the 6522 first. May be easier for one or another. Speeddos, Speeddos+ and Speeddos++ are working with the same ROM in the 1541. Speeddos Expert also does, but needs an additional rom in the 1541.

[@keithbeesting]

Great video Jan. Do you have any plans to do a video on the Amiga Pistorm?

[@fabiangalet]

Thanks for this SpeedDos Chapter :-)

[@RavenWolfRetroTech]

Sweet, I love a clean Mod!!!

[@TheOpinionatedYouTuber]

May I ask what temperature C your soldering iron is set to when soldering the DIP pins? Thank you in advance.

[@enginecrzy]

You fight like a Dairy Farmer!!!!

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Hi Jan! If I may, could I advise a vise for clamping flatcable in a connector. Very precise and even force load.

[@naderhumood]

Thank Jan great video............

[@gertsy2000]

SpeedDOS = faster. Great video Jan Beta.

[@MrLandphill]

thanks for sharing

[@properjob2311]

wow that was cool and speedy

[@jeffm2787]

Looks like you would have been better off with the ribbon cable having a 180 deg rotation when you made them so as not to have to loop back over the connector. What I often did was loosely insert the connector into the device and then figure out the cable orientation and then make up the cables. Of course when I was making lots of cables they were all for PC's, PATA, Floppy and SCSI cables. 50 pin cables I always used the vise.

[@JanBeta]

Yes! Not very clever thinking on my part. I oriented the cable with the strain relief in mind (which I didn’t use). Should have given it a minute of thought, I guess. :D

[@jeffm2787]

@@JanBeta Well done regardless.

[@neophytealpha]

Thought about putting a 1581 clone or FD 2000 clone in an old 1541 shell.

[@keanuciupka2074]

In Germany, nobody is tall! It's because we're all high 😂

[@interlace84]

Love how people are still squeezing every last drop of performance from that classic decades later :) when using speeddos do speedloader games load even faster now?

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

games with onboard fastloaders (and various forms of copy protection) tend to be incompatible with other fastload solutions, since they both tend to operate by reprogramming the 1541 to behave differently.

[@Shibu11229]

If I remember correctly, parallel cables were being used by commodore owners in 1541 drives before the 1541C or 1541 II or 1581 drives came out. Why do you think Commodore never implemented them OEM in any of their drives? Also, why did they not use an upgraded faster DOS? Are there any compatibility problems with faster DOS?

[@youcully2639]

@Jan Beta your camera has some Problems with noise. Take a Look at some white dots on your t-shirt at the Beginning of the Video.

[@youcully2639]

The noise is on the Leftside of the 1541 too

[@transilvanischervampir666]

Hab letztes Jahr all meine Commodore Computer verkauft 2 C64 Floppy 1541 II Joysticks und hunderte Disketten...und Kassetten .... Jetzt zocke ich alles nur noch per Emulator...hab nen riesiges Archive an Games und Tools und Demos auf Blu-ray 😎

[@KolliRail]

Nice!

[@1337Shockwav3]

Nice ... now that you've got yourself started install a proper speeder like DolphinDOS or ProfessionalDOS :)

[@neophytealpha]

Wonder if there is a parallel interface for the 1581.

[@michielboland628]

I think I have the same 1541C model. It does not appear to have a track 0 sensor, or if it has one the ROM does not use it. It just does a head bang to get to track 0.

[@JanBeta]

As far as I know some of the earlier C models are just regular 1541s in the brighter case. There also seem to be some with the track 0 sensor fitted but disconnected. Commodore probably thought it would hinder compatibility with the older drives or something.

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

i saw some speedDos installations back in the days and i had it on my 4x eprom but i did not use it. most of the time i used exos.

[@johnscarfone]

I guess you can’t “imagine” a day without a lost time accident.

[@neophytealpha]

Wouldn't mind building an FD2000 clone with the IEC and parallel interface.

[@martinschaaf8887]

Can not find the PCB on there website "1541-II parallel-adapter-SpeedDOS" to order it

[@JanBeta]

Oh, maybe Sven took down some of his designs from the GitHub. Sorry for the inconvenience. Maybe try to contact him directly and ask for the files, he is a really friendly guy!

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Also replace all the small ceramic caps with tiny modern ones.

[@jeffreyphipps1507]

You NEVER say it's going to be easy until you are finished. What were you thinking??? :-)

[@awilliams1701]

you tease us with giana sisters and then play buggy boy instead. lol

[@gaborszabo6406]

I agree :)

[@oysteivi]

Nice shirt! 🤺

[@pvc988]

Is it just for me or are there some tiny little compression glitches in the video?

[@pvc988]

I found that it's due to problems with AV1 decoding. Can be easily disabled (at least in FF; using about:config page).

[@Roman_Comrad]

what model of oscilloscope?

[@rootbeer666]

This is one of my dilemmas when building c64 replicas, whether to replicate CIA bugs that made Commodore drives slow. I hate breaking the compatibility, but at the same time I meant the machine to perform the way it was meant to. I'd wanna see JiffyDOS vs SpeedDOS.

[@danielmantione]

The CIA doesn't have a bug that made Commodore drives slow. The VIA does have such a bug.

[@davidgeltz7604]

I thing they had the ribbon cable laying over the PC board and not under the medal chassis so it Was not branched up.

[@atarimex2643]

Question: do you still need to connect the serial and the parallel cable to the C64 or only the parallel cable? Thanks.

[@JanBeta]

You need to connect both for the drive to work correctly.

[@atarimex2643]

@@JanBeta thank you Jan. I enjoy your videos very much!!!

[@jalbarracin]

Maybe some modern solution can be built using an ESP8266 and wifi instead of the cable to transport the data.

[@bitoxic]

Hi Jan! I have the SpeedDOS kernal switchable ROM for the C64 with the flick switch. I can not use it as I do not have the 1541 drive with the mod. How much is it worth?

[@JanBeta]

Probably not very much, because it’s so easy to make if you have access to an EPROM programmer.

[@marquisor]

somehow my JiffyDOS comment got lost?! :O

[@JyskMaker]

Do you have DolphinDos for the C64

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I have Dolphin DOS installed in the original 1541 I used back in the day. It’s amazing!

[@brentbiel5425]

I am i seeing things or is there pixilation on this video?

[@JanBeta]

Oh, there should be no pixelation, at least I didn’t see any from here. Possibly another KZbin hiccup.

[@brentbiel5425]

@@JanBeta All good, must have been on my end.

[@TiamatsScale]

I do have it too. Not in other YT vids though. I actually don't mind ... this is kind of retro as well :D

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

Jan, you need a larger studio or flat my friend :D

[@tomf3150]

So he needs more youtube money.

[@EngineeringVignettes]

@@tomf3150 - He would starve to death on KZbin money (unfortunately). I think Patreon is much more reliable, for CC's that use it.

[@megatech1966]

Which is the fastest fast loader?

[@JanBeta]

Difficult to tell. Dolphin DOS is very fast in my experience but there may be some others that are faster even. I have plans for a comparison video at some point but it’s not easy to research all the fastloaders from back in the day, let alone find all the ROMs etc and make them work. I‘m on it though! :)

[@herdware]

SpeedDOS is nice but DolphinDOS is way faster.

[@svenpetersen1965]

I would make an adapter, but… I don’t know the required hardware. I only know, that somewhere is a RAM to hold the content of a whole track. Other than that, it would not be a big problem. Do you have a picture of the dolphin dos hardware?

[@JanBeta]

There is a slightly updated Dolphin DOS project around already, maybe worth a visit: e4aws.silverdr.com/projects/dolphindos3/

[@JanBeta]

Yes! DolphinDOS is a lot faster indeed. I have that in my original 1541 from back in the day. :)

[@Ed64]

There’s also a ‘skew’ factor that may be at play here. When writing on a 1541 some sectors are skipped, i.e. 1,11,21,10,20, etc (this is a skew of 10). Some fastloaders work fastest with a skew of 6 sectors; 1,7,13,19,4,10, etc. I’d recommended saving the same file with different skew values until the fastest times are achieved. If I remember correctly, SuperKit 2.0 lets you change that value when copying files. Also, try just saving the file again while in SpeedDos mode maybe it will automatically use the correct skew value. Cheers! Keep those videos coming!

[@Tom_der_Bastler]

​@@svenpetersen1965 I can give you the memory mapping of all relevant floppy Speeders. Contact me.

[@MegaManNeo]

Ehh... It's fast enough. I sadly don't own a proper breadbin myself but it still loads MUCH faster than stock 1541 drives.

[@painkillergko]

Cześć Janek, ciekaw jestem czy odpowiesz:)...

[@ch2o2]

hhuh, I'm impressed by your desoldering-skills, I've never done it with a heat-gun. Regarding your bunch of 6522s I'm getting a bit nervous and sad because since a couple of weeks I'm trying to get 2 of them but so far without any success. A package from China disappeared, a german dealer became upset and got pretty unfriendly and harsh, after I've asked him to ensure me, that the chips he wanted to sell, are not faked ones .o. (vielleicht hatte ich da einen wunden Punkt getroffen, auf alle Fälle ist er seit unserem kleinen Briefwechsel ziemlich eingeschnappt und will mir nun gar nichts verkaufen. Vielleicht sollte ich wirklich mal ernsthaft an mir arbeiten). Jan, could you maybe please sell me 2 of your 6522? As for you I'm pretty sure, that they would be fine and working ...just tell me, how much you'd like to get for them ...I'd really appreciate it as I'm still suffering because of my broken 1541er ...thanks and best regards from A

[@JanBeta]

I‘m afraid my current "stash" of 6522 is down to about 3 known working ones so I can’t really sell any at this point. I am aware it’s difficult to find good sources for these chips. You might want to have a look at retro8bitshop.com/retrostore/c64restore/ (Martijn who runs the store says he tests all parts before they go on sale.)

[@chloedevereaux1801]

any one else seeing artifacting on the left side of the video at around 2:00 in??????? its very distracting

[@danielmantione]

IMO SpeedDOS is obsolete: JiffyDOS is faster than SpeedDOS and doesn't need parallel cables to be connected. Because no parallel cable is need, JiffyDOS also is more effective in an environment with multiple devices connected to the serial bus, i.e. a combination of an SD2IEC and 1541 is common in the 21th century. With SpeedDOS, the SD2IEC will work at slow standard performance. If you go the parallel route, DolphinDOS still provides speed advantages over JiffyDOS, hammering the final nail in the coffin for SpeedDOS. Nowadays, if I encounter a SpeedDOS, I remove it and install JiffyDOS. However, SpeedDOS was a very cool and useful mod in the 80s.

[@slashtiger1]

JiffyDOS (without parallel cable) sure was fast, but no, it wasn’t faster than SpeedDOS. At least most of the time, they were on par at best. And what’s more, JiffyDOS had to apply a lot of trickery to make the C64's IEC interface and drive routines perform the way they did. That inevitably came at a cost, and a great one at that. Either programs wouldn’t load, because they were incompatible with the way JiffyDOS worked, or they'd load at normal, i.e. stock speeds, because they used some alternative loading routines that simply ignored JiffyDOS altogether. SpeedDOS achieved a nearly 100% compatibility, by using the parallel interface whenever it could (i.e. nearly always) and switching to the IEC bus when all else failed (this usually happened in the case of programs using their own loading routines, particularly when information had to be loaded from or saved to disk during a program's use). The parallel interface is a hassle to install on the 1541 and the C64, but, in all honesty it should not have been omitted in the first place. The 1541 hardware had always been designed with parallel in mind, but it was omitted on the basis of savings. JiffyDOS surely was loads faster than stock speeds, and it indeed sometimes overtook SpeedDOS or other parallel-based solutions, but, as I’ve said, if you used it all day long, generally, SpeedDOS would win… I myself have used SpeedDOS and JiffyDOS (both with and without a parallel cable). If you'd use JiffyDOS with a parallel cable, then most of SpeedDOS's speed advantages would be gone, as both of them had equal performance in this case. But when you'd use JiffyDOS without a parallel cable, all of what I’ve said applies. I don’t see how having to use a parallel interface is a disadvantage anyway, especially when compared to the days before the well-optimised serial ones we enjoy today, such as USB/Thunderbolt and SATA. If you purely look at the _present,_ then, yes, you could argue that JiffyDOS is the better option to go for, not least because there’s an active community for it.

[@1337Shockwav3]

@@slashtiger1 SpeedDOS is trash compared to JiffyDOS from today's point of view, I totally agree with Daniël there. But it's a good starter for Dolphin DOS and Professional DOS modifications, to see how pleasant floppy loading on the C64 could have been in theory. I've had more issues with SpeedDOS when loading stuff compared to JiffyDOS in the past.

[@slashtiger1]

@@1337Shockwav3 They all have their merits. SpeedDos, Dolphin DOS and Professional DOS are all similar in that they (can) enable the parallel interface that Commodore omitted out of cost savings, but apart from that, the feature set is quite distinct for each of them. JiffyDOS has quite a few very unique features, not least of which is that one _can_ use it without having a special cable dangling from the disk drive. And apart from this, like I said, SpeedDOS doesn't get _nearly_ the amount of attention, let alone love, that JiffyDOS gets, what with the vibrant community for it. So yes, _Nowadays_ you'd most definitely be better off with JiffyDOS than with SpeedDOS, but in the past, things would have been a lot closer. I've used SpeedDOS, JiffyDOS (with parallel cable), and Dolphin DOS in the past, on different systems. My own C64 was modded with SpeedDOS, so that's what I know most about (or should I say _knew_ most about; it's been more than 20 years since I powered my system on for the last time).

[@rudodejong]

Quite a lot of digital noise i.e. encoding artifacts in this video.

[@X-OR_]

Not another Commodore video...... Unsubscribed

[@JanBeta]

I guess if you don’t like Commodore videos, you are on the wrong channel here. ;)

[@enginecrzy]

Thanks for sharing? kzbin.info/www/bejne/g4m6ZH6JjtWUg6c

[@vectorjoe]

If you want jan to repair apple ][s (a rarity in germany) or 8/16 bit ataris, or any other retro system, you need to donate them to jan, just like us.

[@keancv]

@@vectorjoe try Adrian black

[@vectorjoe]

@@keancv no thanks, i am quite happy to be a patreon of jan

[@9thbitvideos730]

nice to see someone speedDos rather than jiffydos. jiffydos is just cheating without the cable ;)