Video of my 1541-64HDD

[yoyodyne]

I've put together a video of my 64HDD in a
1541 case. My camera is a cheap Fuji, so quality is
not the best. Plus I suck at this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LCBlbRQxag

I've hooked a monitor up the the 64HDD so you can
see the operation. Normally I run it 'headless', sealed in
the 1541 case. Without a keyboard, you change directories
via load"$dirname",8. This makes 'change disk to side b'
impossible. I plan to route the vga and keyboard plugs
to the rear, then I can run it either way.



I take the zip disk to my main pc to load new files.

Specs:
CPU: AMD 386 40mhz
MB: unknown, pc-on-a-card mini form factor
Memory: 4MB
Hard drive: 5GB laptop drive (mapped at device 11)
Removable Media: 100 MB Iomega zip drive (mapped at device
Power supply: unknown, came with MB.

Internal xe1541 cable, so I just use a standard serial cord
to hook to the Commodore.


I need to make a video of my 64HDD / SX64 combo also.


-Brian

[Boray]

Cool!

[gklinger]

That's very nicely done. I had no idea there were 386 motherboard small enough to fit a 1541 case. I thought the micro/mini etc. motherboard craze was a new thing.

[Schema]

I had no idea there were 386 motherboard small enough to fit a 1541 case. I thought the micro/mini etc. motherboard craze was a new thing.

Not at all. Tiny motherboards and all-in-one computers have been around for ages, especially for industrial use. We've been using PC104 form-factor computers at work for a long time now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC104

Somewhere I still have a 486 PC104 board that I intended to put in a 1581 case (!) with 64HDD.

[gklinger]

Thanks for the link. It led me to Wikipedia's entry about comparison of computer form factors which was illuminating. These little motherboards certainly open up some interesting possibilities.

[amramsey]

I've put together a video of my 64HDD in a
1541 case. My camera is a cheap Fuji, so quality is
not the best.

Looked good enough to me that I decided to build one for myself last weekend. I had some old embedded 386-40 boards kicking around that I picked up years ago for $25... probably pretty similar to yours. I used a 512MB compact flash card as the hard drive and installed DOS 6.22 on it. Everything is working pretty slick... 64HDD is a marvel. The only issue that I've had is trying to make the long file names work...

I've added -lfn to the GO64HDD.BAT file but haven't had any luck with it actually working. For the time being I've been just renaming all my cart images to 8 characters but its a bit cryptic trying to figure them all out when I do a directory listing. It was bugging me tonite so I gave it another shot. Still no luck.

Are you using LFN support on yours? On page 95 of the manual, a command is given for switching to LFN mode. I thought maybe that using the command line switch wasn't enough and a command is also needed:

Code: Select all

OPEN 1,8,15,"LFN:"
INPUT#1, EN,EM$,ET,ES
CLOSE 1

I get a nasty error on the second line (INPUT#....). It looks like the VIC doesn't like multiple variables on an INPUT# line perhaps? Anyhow, ignoring the error, it still doesn't work.


Maybe I'm just stuck with 8 character file names until I build my 1541-III?

[ral-clan]

Looked good enough to me that I decided to build one for myself last weekend. I had some old embedded 386-40 boards kicking around that I picked up years ago for $25... probably pretty similar to yours. I used a 512MB compact flash card as the hard drive

Did the little 386 board come with an IDE connector already on it? That would be really special. As remember, the 386 era you still needed to attach an ISA hard-drive controller card to most motherboards to get a hard-drive to work (that combination might be tough to fit in a 1541 case).

[amramsey]

Did the little 386 board come with an IDE connector already on it? That would be really special. As remember, the 386 era you still needed to attach an ISA hard-drive controller card to most motherboards to get a hard-drive to work (that combination might be tough to fit in a 1541 case).

Yup, everything aside from the video card is built into the board. I'll take some photos of it this evening.

[carlsson]

I believe brand new 386 systems could be bought as late as 1992-93, at a time when IDE hard disks were becoming quite common. A single board computer like Amramsey's one probably was manufactured towards the end of the era, perhaps even in 1994 for use in embedded systems?

[amramsey]

A single board computer like Amramsey's one probably was manufactured towards the end of the era, perhaps even in 1994 for use in embedded systems?

Nice guess! The manual for that board has a copywrite of 1994!



The board, case and flash card (plugs right into the IDE connector on the board):




Finished board with hole in case so I can get the compact flash back out without tearing it all apart:



Ready to rock and roll with a game:



Still haven't gotten the long file names to work. I've basically given up at this point and have renamed alot of the stuff that I will use. The -lfn option seemed to be screwing up my programs when I was saving back to the disk so I disabled it. If I need longer files names, I'll just stuff programs into .d64 images and do it all there.

And... that CYCLONS.PRG game listed there in that directory kicked my butt all over the place. It started off easy and then ramped up until I didn't have a chance.