4 ms·
That part about fast loaders bypassing the serial bus and using the user port is incomplete at best, incorrect in practice. Some early fast loaders did this but
by hagbard_c 8mo ago
That part about fast loaders bypassing the serial bus and using the user port is incomplete at best, incorrect in practice. Some early fast loaders did this but most others just used the existing serial bus connection with their own routines, bypassing the buggy kernal drivers on the drive and host side.
There are more errors in the text, e.g "the 1541 used a single-density (narrow) read/write head". No, that describes an 80-track head while the 1541 used a wider 40-track head. I stopped reading here because of these errors.
- Sesse__ 8mo ago> There are more errors in the text It seems most of it is AI-generated, without any real attempt at cleaning up errors.
- kenjackson 8mo agoOK, someone needs to write up an accurate version. This is a fascinating topic, especially for those of us where C64 was one of our first computers. The Vic20 was my first-- I sold my computer games door-to-door on cassette... "sold" is maybe a strong word here. I sold one total.
- zippothrowaway 8mo agoThe tape copy protection article is also terrible with nonsense like this "A copy of a Novaload tape made on a HiFi deck produced a normal-speed recording with the correct audio signal but which, when loaded on a C64, produced garbage — because the Kernal's standard tape decoder couldn't interpret the turbo encoding" Thousands of kids in the playground with access to a tape-to-tape deck (which made Alan Sugar his fortune for Amstrad) would disagree. And the reason given is just plain wrong. If this is the AI slop future, we're doomed.
- time4tea 8mo agoCan confirm tape-to-tape worked 100%... it got a bit less reliable after copy-of-copy-of-copy though.