jjp@mtuni.UUCP (John Pittas) (09/24/86)
Skyles Electric Works of Mountain View, CA manufactures an installable chip called "1541 Flash" which supposedly speeds up operation of the drive by about five times. When I heard this I said GREAT!, until I called them and they told me the price was $69.95 + $4.50 shipping. I am still interested in this product, but would like to hear some feedback from anyone who has used it or knows anything about it (or any other similar product) first before I rush out and buy one. I have seen a cartridge which accomplishes this, but I have a MIDI controller plugged in to that slot. Thanks in advance. Also, sorry if this has been covered but I am new to this newsgroup. John Pittas ...!ihnp4!mtuni!jjp AT&T IS Middletown, NJ (201)957-2305
rayz@csustan.UUCP (R. L. Zarling) (09/25/86)
In article <269@mtuni.UUCP> jjp@mtuni.UUCP (John Pittas) writes: >Skyles Electric Works of Mountain View, CA manufactures an >installable chip called "1541 Flash" which supposedly >speeds up operation of the drive by about five times. >When I heard this I said GREAT!, until I called them and >they told me the price was $69.95 + $4.50 shipping. > >I am still interested in this product, but would like to >hear some feedback from anyone who has used it or knows >anything about it (or any other similar product) first Flash does, indeed, speed up the 1541, but not by a factor of five. I would say more like a factor of three or four. A very noticable and worthwhile improvement! Unlike most other disk speed-ups, Flash speeds up all disk accesses: reads, writes, loads, sequential files, relative files, formatting,... Flash adds a number of "wedge" commands (badly needed, in place of open 1,8,15...). Only disadvantage is that some copy protected programs will not run with Flash enabled. Two switches are provided, so that Flash may be completely disabled and the machine returns to its original slow self. With Flash thusly disabled, I have never had any problems running any commercial software.
veach@ihuxl.UUCP (Michael T. Veach) (09/25/86)
I've used Skyles' 1541 Flash for over two years now. I have it on a pair of 1541s on a C-64 and on a SX-64. It not only speeds up LOADs of programs but also program SAVEs as well as reads and writes of SEQ files. It also has a builtin DOS wedge than can be enabled by entering: SYS 65626 The version I have has switches to disable FLASH in case you run across a DOS protected disk that will not work with FLASH. I've never had that problem, even the 3 minute copy programs that I've tried all work with FLASH enabled. (But I'm sure there MUST be some disk it will not work with or they wouldn't have put the switches in.) 1541 FLASH is VERY transparent, so even cartridges, such as COMAL 2.0 work with it. Of course, COMAL 1.4 and PROMAL also work fine with it. The only time I ever had 1541 FLASH not work was when I tried to run it on a 1541 drive on the serial port with an IEEE drive in use on the expansion port. (I don't really think they put the switches in for just this strange case). Installing 1541 FLASH requires opening the cases of your C-64 and 1541, removing a chip or two, inserting an assembly into the socket(s), inserting the chip into the assembly and putting the cases back together. It should take no more than two hours. Michael T. Veach ihuxl!veach -- Michael T. Veach ihuxl!veach
elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) (09/26/86)
In article <269@mtuni.UUCP> jjp@mtuni.UUCP (John Pittas) writes: >Skyles Electric Works of Mountain View, CA manufactures an >installable chip called "1541 Flash" which supposedly >speeds up operation of the drive by about five times. >When I heard this I said GREAT!, until I called them and >they told me the price was $69.95 + $4.50 shipping. > >I am still interested in this product, but would like to >hear some feedback from anyone who has used it or knows >anything about it (or any other similar product) first >before I rush out and buy one. >John Pittas ...!ihnp4!mtuni!jjp I haven't used it, but a friend has. He reports that he had to do extensive mangling to his C-64, including installing new ROMs etc., plus extensive mangling to his 1541. The modification basically consists of running more data lines from the C64 to the 1541 (if Skyles had REALLY wanted to do it right, they would have figured out how to add a 6526 to the 1541, and used the hardware shift registers like the 1571 does!). After all the butchery was finished, yes, the 1541 ran quite a bit faster, but most copy protected software would NOT run. All in all, I like my solution better (buy an IEEE-488 interface, a SFD-1001 disk drive, and enjoy the same speed with 1 megabyte of storage). -- Eric Green {akgua,ut-sally}!usl!elg (Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509) " In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."