scottm@cavell.UUCP (Scott McPhee) (05/02/85)
First the good news:
Skyles Eclectic Worms has announced some new products in
support (response) to the 1541 Flash! disk speed up.
1) A switch for the ROMs in the 1541 like the one supplied
in the 64. ie: the Kernal ROMs and now the DOS ROMs are
both switchable back to the normal factory ROMs, so at
any time you cannot load with the Flash, you can simply
shut it right off and load as per normal.
2) Dual 1541's can now each have a Flash! ROM (and switch
to the old ROM) so both drives are fast.
3) The 64 SX (portable C64) can now take advantage of the
speed of the Flash!
-- upgrading requires that you send in parts of your
current Flash!
And now the bad:
Someone asked for posting things that the Flash will not work
with, so I am obliged to let people know that when using
Flash with the Commodore Macro Assembler and you wish to
assemble a semi-large source, it just don't do it. What happens
is stray junk starts to be inserted into the source as it is
compiling and then the assembler cannot recognize it and you
get errors. Shutting the Flash off avoids this, but this is
an inconvenience and is slow. I think that the Flash file
system overloads and starts to thrash and panic, since I do
know that the assembler uses all available channels to talk to
the disk, and so any changes here in the ROMs could be tender.
Scott McPhee U of eh? (only in Canada, pity)