alford@ecsvax.UUCP (11/04/84)
[{()}]
Thanks to everyone who responded to my question about 1541 disk drive
speedups. I am reproducing several of the mail replies I received below.
In addition to these, several people suggested the trick of blanking the
display to eliminate the VIC chip's cycle-stealing and sending the 1541
the command that makes it operate at VIC speed. This does produce a
speedup, but on the order of 10-15% in my experience, not enough to
be very exciting, though conceivably worthwhile for some applications.
There seem to be at least a couple of people out there who are working
on disassemblies of the four minute copier, but no-one who has managed
to decipher it. I've now got my own disassembly, thanks to one respondent,
but doubt that I will succeed where others have failed.
Has anyone actually used either the Skyles or the Richvale physical speedup
mod? These do sound very hopeful. Skyles had a large ad in the November
RUN.
-----------------------------
Read your net.cbm query on a 1541 speedup...
There are a couple of products on the market that will
make the 1541 faster. 1541 Flash, by Skyles Electric Works,
claims to speed things up by a factor of three. It also
claims to be transparent to other software, but I've heard
reports of some protected software not loading in fast mode.
Richvale Telecommunications offers a similar product, but the
name escapes me. 1541 Flash is about $80.00, I don't have a
price on the Richvale product. Skyles includes documentation
with the Flash that they claim will show you how to make the
serial bus up to 10 times faster!
Both involve hardware (some soldering) and software (new ROMs)
modifications to the drive and C64. A computer store in my area
is planning to get samples of both units to test them out.
P.S. I also have the Compuserve program, but have not had time to
disassemble it or otherwise attempt to figure it out.
-----------------------------
I saw an ad last night, either from Abacus or Mt. Tussey Software
in Penn., for an interface that claimed to speedup
disc transfers. I'll dig it out tonight and post
to the network.
-----------------------------
There are 2 new items on the market to speed up reading and writing to
your 1541. One item is called Kwik-Load by Datasoft and it claims to
increase the speed of disk access three-fold (this comes in diskette
version only ). The other item is 1541Flash which is a new set of
ROMS for your 1541 along with an informative manual on DOS and the 1541
($89 for this one).
-----------------------------
There is a program called qwikload that speeds up the drive by about 10-15%.
The only problem with this program is it seems to work with only text files.
There is a hardware device called flash that has just hit the market. This
will permanently speed up your drive. The really nice feature of flash is
it has a toggle that lets you load at the new speed or you can load at the old
speed. This is nice because some programs just won't load at any other speed
other than the slow prescribed speed of the 1541.
I hope I have given you some insight to your problem.
-----------------------------
Ross Alford
...{decvax, akgua, ihnp4}!mcnc!ecavax!alford