Commodore History Part 7 - Disk Drives

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[MechMK]

Other Guys: "Hey, you want to check out my Porsche?"
Dave: "You know, I own a genuine 1551 and 1581!"

[MrStarchild]

Old C64, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 user here (1989 onwards). After your videos, I kinda realized I was conned by the popular media that Apple I, II. Lisa, Mac etc were unique, revolutionary machines in 1977, 1982 etc. Your Commodore history clearly demonstrates Apple had many strong competitors. I understand that Woz and Jobs were visionaries. But there were many others with the same vision. In particular, Amiga developers were amazingly ahead of their time! (That's why I'm looking forward to hearing your story of it). Even Commodores up to and including C64 were amazing machines for their time. Cheers.

[Porygonal]

Techmoan:
Audio Electronics c. 1940s to 2000s
Technology Connections:
Video Electronics c. 1950s to 2000s
LGR:
Computer Electronics c. 1980s to 2000s
The 8-Bit Guy:
Computer Electronics c. 1970s to 1980s

[bghoody]

I remember my high school computer lab being set up very similarly to that at 0:45 - one disk drive servicing multiple computers (PETs iirc). We'd have to shout "accessing" whenever we'd access the disk drives because if more than one computer were to access it at the same time, it would crash the system.

[_Bit]

Thanks for the chance to give you a hand with this video!

[AndersEngerJensen]

This makes me realise how happy and easy my life was as a MS-DOS user, instead of having to deal with the regime of floppy disks on the Commodore platform. :O
Great video and a good in-depth look at this part of the Commodore saga. :D

[patrickcorrelliiii]

there should be an official name for this series, like “Commodore Chronicles”

[JuiceThe]

Thank you much for this series. As an avid C64 user back in its heyday, this trip down memory lane is a wonderful bit of nostalgia and an effective way to learn more about the architecture.

[CanKenMakeIt]

I played this episode at 25% speed in honor of the Commodore disk drives.

[mattandsarahaschan]

1 year later, I'm staying tuned for the next one

[nobytes]

I find this series just amazing. A time when PCs took off, programmers really had tons of limitations like ram / graphics / cpu speeds. Things we just take for granted nowadays. I actually didn't have access to a computer until I joined the US Navy as I grew up in Mexico, public schools weren't setup with computers. Ha I had barely seen any computers at all. In the Navy 2004-2008 Arleigh Burke class destroyer still had tons of old equipment like magnetic tape recorders, floppy disks drivers, even dot matrix printers. Really is where my love for software started. I hate that I didn't have this growing up but I guess things happen for a reason.

[mxims]

I've been watching his videos for 5 or 6 years now and I just realized that The 8-Bit Guy painted his room with the same 2 shades of blue as what are on the C64 display!

[emanuelebonura]

9:28 "Usually causing the head banging sound"
~ Pantera plays in the background

[brennorris]

This series is fantastic. My inner nerd is simply having a tantrum over having to wait for the amiga episode.

[reelmccoyfx]

My 1st experience with a 1541 was entering the disc testing program out of the manual and running it. 1.5 hours later, the 1541 stopped working due to overheating and warping the flywheel. Ooops! Next day, an MSD single was put in it's place and that sucker was a rugged.

[MicroFourThirdsCorner]

Great video. Brought back a lot of memories. I have to admit I was one of the programmers that wrote the turbo loaders, custom disk formats and copy protection systems using the internals of the 1541. I left that (full time) job to move on to programming and then designing high speed floppy disk duplicators and ultimately CD/DVD/BD duplicators. That's now ancient history too, so this was a nice walk down memory lane. Oh, and yes, I got grief from customers who bought the "compatible" disk drives that ultimately didn't work with my disks, especially those that didn't provide the Block Execute command available on the 1541, which was how I started the loading sequence happening from the 1 (and only 1) tiny file ever to be seen in the directory. Everything else was direct block access. Oh well, nostalgia at it's best! Thanks again!

[FinalBaton]

Euro viewers : YES! it's finally time for the Amiga At last!!!
8-Bit Guy : This is the story of some Commodore disk drives.
Euro viewers : :^(

[davidinark]

“Were popular at copy parties.” (Heh-heh) “Moving along....” Hahahaha!! Ah, copy parties... man I miss those days.

[MatroxMillennium]

I got a VIC-20 fairly recently, after I had already owned a Commodore 64 for a number of years. I remember being surprised when I found out I could send a command to my 1541 drives to make them run faster on the VIC-20.

[ClayMann]

The work that goes into these videos is amazing. Even something as dry as a video about early disk drives was thoroughly enjoyable thanks to excellent writing and editing. Great stuff.