Posted By
Crown
on 2003-09-08
|  Re: Strange 1551
Ok, so then I'll wait posting about this to the cbm-hackers list until the auction is over.
I've looked around to find some information about the 1542 but there was not much. Only that it is a 1541 in the color of the 1551, and that is supposed to better then the 1541 somewhat, but no more detail.
I don't think you can make a 1541 by putting the ROM of the 1551 into a 1541 board, the 1551 communicates through a parallel port, while the 1541 through a serial port, the transfer routines wouldn't work. It is also possible that the 1542 had a 2Mhz CPU like the 1551.
Here is the other auction where I've seen this drive
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3042338928&category=3544
This also says that it handles about a 1551 drive, but I don't see the cartridge of the 1551 anywhere on the picture.
I've also read that there was plans to make the 1551 available for the C64, but all the sites were speculating on how would that happen, whether Commodore would add a cartridge based parallel module with it. It is completely possible that they've actually released the 1551 with the serial port and that was the C64 compatible version, and didn't gave it a different number. In that case inside it would be the same as the 1551 probably with the 2Mhz CPU, but with a different ROM....
If you get this, the ROM should be dumped and sent to Marko Makela to put it up on the ftp.funet.fi site.
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