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Can you upload code to be executed on a stock 1541/1571? Would be fun to see the drive doing things like "read this file, but sorted on columns 3-10" or "add th
by rbanffy 10mo ago
Can you upload code to be executed on a stock 1541/1571? Would be fun to see the drive doing things like "read this file, but sorted on columns 3-10" or "add these two files line by line into a third file".
- mkesper 10mo agoAbsolutely. The eprom of TFA was only needed for standalone usage. But 2K of RAM are not much.
- is_taken 10mo agoAs usually the schematics were available in the manual it was not too hard to add some additional static ram. There were unused address lines available which could be used for chip select.
- rbanffy 10mo agoIf the OS could load specific code into the drive memory. It’s a bit how “channel programming” worked on mainframes. Not sure modern ones still get advantages from that.
- quux 10mo agoYes you can, back in the day this is how fast loaders worked, they uploaded an optimized serial protocol to the ram on the drive and called into it.
- reaperducer 10mo agoCan you upload code to be executed on a stock 1541/1571? Yes. There were disk duplicators that ran entirely on the drives. You'd upload the program to a pair of daisy-chained drives, put the source disk in one, and the destination disk in the other and they'd go about their business. You could then disconnect the computer and do other things with it while making all the disk copies you wanted. I've always wanted a modern equivalent. I thought FireWire might make it happen, but it didn't. And it's my understanding is that USB doesn't allow this kind of independent device linking. The closest thing I've seen in modern times was a small box I got from B&H that would burn the contents of a CF card onto a DVD-RW.