IDE64 News

Wednesday, March 01, 2023

IDE64 currently unavailable

While the IDE64 Project is maintained, the new IDE64 V4.2 cards are currently out of stock. We will announce as soon as the IDE64 is available again, but please do not expect the change during this year. The reason is continuous integrated circuit shortage. Thank you for the understanding.

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Access your IDE64 CFS filesystem directly from PC

To access your IDE64 CFS filesystem directly from PC may come in handy. Especially if you plan to archive your data or transfer a lot of large files for which PCLink is not suitable.

For a long time this possibility was available only to Linux users. Luckily thanks to WinFsp Windows File System Proxy FUSE implementation, there is no barrier to use this functionality in Windows too.

To install the fusecfs you need two components WinFsp and fusecfs-2.0.2 itself .

After running the command cfs011mount.exe with the options or cfs011mount.bat there is a possibility to map IDE64 disk drive to windows drive letter. Physical drive or the file with the disk image. 

You need CompactFlash Reader. Another option is to use CompactFlash SDHC adapter inside IDE64 and internal SD card Reader in your notebook. It is also possible to use VICE IDE64 disk drive images.

More info you will find in README-WINFSP.txt inside the fusecfs-2.0.2-win.

32-bit and 64-bit binary versions are provided for Vista and above.

Monday, October 21, 2019

PCLink - ideserv 0.30c

End of last month I've released IDEserv 0.30c. This creates dot separated file types by default as it was a popular request. There are various special quirks of windows systems which was impossible to encounter with comma separation earlier. I'm confident everyone is old enough by now to solve their own problems on this platform once getting in trouble. As a hint anything should be fixable from the C64 side. There's an option to use comma separated file types of course. Have fun ;)

 -soci-

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

IDEDOS 0.90 patch 53

If you're using 0.90 then there's a patch 53 version available now with these changes:

  • Fix SHA addressing mode ($93)
  • Improved aborted USB/Ethernet PCLink transfer recovery
  • Fast timeout if USB or Ethernet is unplugged
  • Increased PCLink timeout, speed independent on SuperCPU
  • No junk transfers if Ethernet card not present
  • Long paths don't create invalid Ethernet telegrams
  • Put back DolphinDOS wedge hack
  • Backport of 16 char virtual fs exit fixes>

These are backports from IDEDOS 0.91 of course.

  http://idedos.ide64.org

  -soci-

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Floppy drive TIB PLC DD-001 / Drive 2001

DD-001 is a rare 3.5 floppy disk drive for C64, manufactured by UK company TIB PLC in 1991. It is connected via cartridge to the expansion port. The cartridge includes several common components, eprom and a floppy driver, the drive is built in an external case.
I’m a happy owner of this floppy drive, which is highly incompatible with all traditional (or less traditional, like IDE64) C64 drives. I’ve made a clone of DD-001, but I didn’t do a deep analysis, I just redrew the device and here are my notes, drawings and other files. 

The cartridge and floppy drive

I have redrawn the PCB in Eagle. It is very similar to the original board. Originally, it included eprom 2764 which was replaced by flashrom (up to 29040) and a jumper JP1 for ROM files switching was added on (see below). The capacitor C4 isn’t even assembled on the original board and needn’t be installed.
Originally, DD-001 used a 3.5 DD drive with PC pinout and address DS0 but can be replaced by an ordinary internal PC HD floppy drive. They are usually addressed as DS1 (and there might be a problem changing this setting), therefore the DS0 and DS1 pins between the floppy driver and connector were swapped on my board. The cable between the cartridge and floppy drive is a usual uncrossed floppy cable with IDC connectors.
Power supply for the floppy drive in my original DD-001 is connected to the expansion port via unused wires in the data cable. It can cause overload of the original C64 power supply or blinking of the C64 screen (because of the voltage drop). I removed this supply from the cartridge and an external power supply for my cloned drive is required.


The original DD-001 and both of my clones, with several floppy drives, make a strange sound -knocking when they are idle. It's a feature of this device...

Software and documentation

The ROM file in my original drive is probably version 1.0. This ROM doesn’t support the SAVE command (returns the “file not found” error) and the tools from the bootdisk (my version is 1.1) aren’t working, either (because commands JSR $8xxx jump to different addresses). Fortunately, the ROM file version 1.1 is available, which includes the correct SAVE command and works with the bootdisk. The JP1 jumper enables the switching between ROMs 1.0 and 1.1 (but I don’t recommend to use version 1.0).


There is not a lot of documentation or software available for DD-001. I’ve made an image of the bootdisk and coded two small tools:

dd001bootwr.prg

This tool restores the bootdisk from the image to a real floppy disk. Just copy the bootdisk image “dd001boot.img” and tool “dd001bootwr.prg“ in the same directory on SD2IEC (or disk in 1581), run the tool and insert an empty disk into DD-001.


dd001dump.prg

This tool creates a disk-image from DD-001. Just copy the tool “dd001dump.prg“ to SD2IEC and run. The floppy disk in DD-001 will be read track-by-track and saved with fixed filename “dd001dump.img“.

These tools take some time to work, but Jiffydos can speed up the process. Caution – commands LOAD and SAVE “FILENAME”,9 from DD-001 ROM file are in collision with Jiffy. You can use Jiffy for copying disk-image, but you have to switch off before using DD-001 in Basic. Original tools (and therefore neither my tools) don't catch the "disk not present" error (I couldn't find this "exception handling").

The floppy disk contains 80 double-sided tracks, one track contains 9 sectors, one sector contains 512 Bytes.

2 (sides) * 80 (tracks) * 9 (sectors) * 512 (Bytes) = 737280 (Bytes) / 1024 = 720kB (whole image).

The DD-001 uses FAT and should be compatible with DOS floppy disks, but implementation of this file system includes some bugs.


I have scanned the warranty card and instructions for bootdisk games + I have downloaded DD-001 operation guide and a few articles from old C64 mags.
I would like to thank Steve Gray for the ROM file v1.1 and Jan Pedersen for the Operation guide.
Download files here.
LHS


Friday, June 08, 2018

Running GEOS 2.0 with IDE64 V4.x

Two skilled GEOS programmers have created IDE64 device drivers for the GEOS 2.0 operating system. Two different concepts and solutions.

Petter Lindquist has made very promising experimental driver, which boots from IDE64 filesystem, but it is limited to one d64 file.
http://singularcrew.hu/ide64warez/site/Tools/Communication/geolink-ide64-20100603.zip
It was meant as a testing step towards using a 16 meg "hard file".

Maciej Witkowiak 'YTM/Elysium' the man who has done a lot of work with disassembling of the GEOS KERNAL, created own IDE interface called CIA-IDE.  He also ported the GEOS driver originally intended for that interface to IDE64 (V3.x).

The driver consists of one main GEOS program called Hddtool 64.
This program serves the filesystem formatting tool and the IDE64 disk driver.

The main complication is that the used filesystem is incompatible with native IDE64 one, so you need to use dedicated CompactFlash (or disk drive). You need the GEOS boot floppy disk, to boot the GEOS from drive #8.

I recommend the Wiki for more information.
https://github.com/mrjoso/c64-ciaide/wiki

The driver can get from here:
https://github.com/mrjoso/c64-ciaide/releases

The GEOS 2.0 boot disk with the IDE64 V4.x driver installed.
(Does not work without IDE64 attached. Commodore-I to switch between mouse and joystick in port 1.)

http://ide64.org/geos-ide64v4-ytm-01.d64

The GEOS 2.0 boot .d81 disk with the IDE64 V4.x driver installed. Works with 1581 drive and SD2IEC drive.

http://ide64.org/geos-uiec-ide64v4-ytm-01.zip

The plain GEOS boot disk was taken from the Cenbe's Commodore 64 Pages.
https://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/geos/index.html

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

IDE64 V4.2 color popularity

Are you curious which IDE64 case color is the most popular according to your first requests?
Most of you ordered silver and copper, and far behind is our nice and lovely gold metallic. Anyway we are happy that you like the choice of colors, it is a fun for all of us.