Vintage C64 CMD Hard Drive - Lost documentation found!

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Today we need to see about getting one of the CMD HD-20 Hard Disks working for use on my Commodore 128. I want to use it for anything that needs done natively on the development of my game including testing and floppy production. We also take a look at the copy I found of the long lost schematics for the CMD hard drive board.
Geek With Social Skills CMD HD-20 video
• Commodore 64 CMD HD-20...
GET THE SCHEMATICS HERE:
archive.org/details/cmd-hdd-s...
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24 июн 2023

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Комментарии : 46

@SuperMoleRetro Год назад

I never even knew such a thing existed back during the C64 days.

@mk500 4 месяца назад

I had no idea there was ever a hard drive for the C64. Amazing!

@carlwells9504 9 месяцев назад

CMD were such a huge company for the Commodore.

@jsmythib 4 месяца назад

I remember seeing this as the largest, most affordable hard drive for the C64.

@curiousottman 8 месяцев назад

The cmd hard disk was the holy grail of never seen only heard of unobtainium back in the day. It is hard to convey just how rare it was to see out in the wild.

@RavenWolfRetroTech 8 месяцев назад

BY the time they came out I was on to the Amiga and so they were never on my radar. Looking at them now I am blown away by the capabilities the Commodore 64 was given in its later years!

@axemanracing6222 6 месяцев назад

I've seen them in advertisements back in the day. I can't remember the price but it was something like 3-4 1541's

@maverickblah 6 месяцев назад

It's people like you, who share their finds and even scan everything for conservation, that make this community awesome!

@dougjohnson4266 Год назад

I had no idea there are/were HD's for C64/C128 computers, and the look of the device is cool.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

Hey Doug! I was unaware of them back in the day just because I was on to the Amiga by the time they came out. I was certainly surprised to find them in the Stone collection.

@stefanegger Год назад

6:40 - cute rabbit hole, it' always the same. Small task but huge hole to dig out of

@sandmanxo Год назад

Amazing to see a hard drive for rhe c64. I used mine up until 1993 when i got a 386dx40. A very niche market they were going after that late in the game.

@MichaelWerker-ei1hx Месяц назад

A very interesting option for the CMD HD are magneto-optical drives. It is possible to use media with 128, 230 and 540 MB because these have 512-byte-sectors. Each MO-disk is treated like an seperate hard drive. You can partition it and give it an own IEC bus device number. After changing the media just press RESET on the HD and after a few seconds it is ready. I made two holes in the back of my CMD HD: One for a 4x switch and a DC output. The switch changes between 5/12V on the internal hard disk or 5V for an external SCSI MO drive on the 25-pin connector. It's possible to switch between HD and MO without powering off the CMD HD, just press RESET. The external MO drive has to be jumpered to SCSI ID 0. MO media are not too fast, but this doesn't matter on a C64. But they are way more silent in comparison to old SCSI hard drives. I'm using an IBM DCAS 32160 in my CMD HD, this one is rather quiet. But I prefer the magneto-optical drive.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Месяц назад

That's an option I had not considered! I have actually already installed a ZuluSCSI which you can see in the video that was released a few hour after this comment - talk about coincidental timing! The ZuluSCSI is giving me 254 max sized partitions

@MichaelWerker-ei1hx Месяц назад

A hard drive doesn't make sense because you can never fill a 4 GB drive if you are using emulation partitions. Removeable media are the best option. External JAZ don't work on the CMD HD, external SCSI ZIP can only be jumpered to ID 5 or 6. MO media are working great. 540 MB are the fastest, 128 MB the slowest. They are good suitable for backing up 1541 disks. Another advantage of removeable media are, that you can clone them with a software which supports raw media. So you can create one media, f.e. with 254 empty 1541 partitions, and clone this on multiple 128 MB media. If you want to do the rework, it's a good idea to swap the lower activity LED with a blue one. But it's neccessary to increase the resistor.

@MichaelWerker-ei1hx Месяц назад

Note: External MO drives are requiring at least 5V/2A.

@axemanracing6222 5 месяцев назад

If someone would have told me what this "hard drive" could do for me, I'd think about it. But I actually didn't know what a hard drive could be.

@stupossibleify Год назад

Great topic and video. Thanks for uploading the schematic. Always surprised what people managed to interface to the C64, but then whether the latest Intel microprocessor, or the venerable 6510, they are all still Turing Machines and electrons.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

Glad you enjoyed it!

@timmooney7528 Год назад

1990 was too late to arrive on the scene for me. I invested my computer money into a 486/33 with a 408mb hard drive. The C-64 lost it's appeal to me by then.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

I understand completely, I had to sell my Amiga to get a 486 after I started my business. Commodore had gone bankrupt and I needed to be familiar with the machines my customers were using.

@MarxKosmos1024 Год назад

Hey, Mike, I actually had an article about your DDM show up in a newsfeed. I think it was from PC Gamer. Congrats.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

Yeah it was crazy, Hackaday picked it up then the next day ArsTechnica. All of a sudden it was all over the place and my brain exploded. I have to say that PC Gamers article was the most accurate.

@LordHasenpfeffer 24 дня назад

I still have my HD-100 from around 1998(?). I would love to upgrade it with an SCSI2SD drive.

@pauldeane8369 10 месяцев назад

Nice! Look at CBM Command for archiving the drives. Works with an SD2IEC. Recommend using the C128 version in 80col mode for the best possible speed.

@RavenWolfRetroTech 10 месяцев назад

Thanks for the tip Paul. I'll check it out again.

@FranksRetroLab Год назад

Another great video! Love to see these types of things. Keep up the great work!

@CapnKetchup Год назад

Wow! I had a Super Fractions (SP) Gold. Was AMAZING for printing, which was essential in the 80s.

@retrobitstv Год назад

Very cool find! Back in the day when I was running a BBS on my 64, I was lent a CMD HD200 by a local community member for a short while. I remember that it seemed painfully slow for being such an expensive device - weren't hard drives supposed to be fast? I wasn't even aware of the existence of JiffyDOS back then. Whoops! That experience steered me towards a used Xetec Lt. Kernal 20 MB drive which was blazing fast but less compatible. It did have a DOS of its own though which I thought was pretty neat at the time. I'd love to find an LtK again but they are as rare as hen's teeth these days.

@pauldeane8369 10 месяцев назад

I just sold a couple of those LTK drives. Had them for quite a while trying to find the necessary host bus adapter. That's as rare as hen's dentures!

@RudysRetroIntel Год назад

Wow!! Didn't know this existed. Thanks for sharing

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

No problem Rudy!

@RacerX- Год назад

Great video, as always. Looking forward to seeing your progress. As a youngling just out of High School I could never afford an HD for my BBS. Would have been cool, though. Keep up the good work.

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

Thanks RacerX!

@f15sim Год назад

With the schematic found, all you need now are the PAL equations in order to make clones of the device...

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

I suppose I should keep an eye out for them. I do have his old "Sun Moon Star" branded PC with a GAL/EPROM Programming label on it.

@f15sim Год назад

@@RavenWolfRetroTech If the security bits on the PALs haven't been blown, you might be able to read out the PALs to find out what they're programmed with.

@5mf1nc Год назад

as these PALs are only logic types (no register), even brute-forcing the equations shouldn't be too hard

@ArttuTheCat Год назад

Hey, this is awesome 😺 👍. I wish, i could have that CMD hard drive for my Commodore 64. I still play the games on the tapes, disks and cartridges 😺👍🕹️. I also have the original hardwares of the Amiga 500 😺👍🕹️. By the way, i'm your new retrospective channel subscriber from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮. 😺👍🕹️

@RavenWolfRetroTech Год назад

Hey, welcome Arttu! 😺😸😺.

@ArttuTheCat Год назад

@@geekwithsocialskills Thanx 😺👍. I still drop by at the local retro game stores in Vantaa, Helsinki and Espoo, and look for the old games to my Commodore 64 (tapes / disks / cartridges) and Amiga 500 😺👍🕹️. The loading screens and the loading tunes 🎶🎵 on the Commodore 64 give me the great retrospective vibes 😺👍🕹️. And the loading sounds of the disks on the Amiga... OH YEAH 😺👍🕹️!

@8BitNaptime 11 месяцев назад

Jealous over here. I have the Thunderdrive which doesn't have the charm of a bent metal case.

@PhrontDoor 29 дней назад

Not sure why people are doing SD for everything instead of M2..

@RavenWolfRetroTech 28 дней назад

My opinion based on the way these things usually go: SD came out around 2000 and I think M.2 was at least 10 years later so by the time M.2 was an option SD was already a solution. Now that M.2 has come down in cost maybe it will catch on in retro circles but that had to happen first.

@carlwells9504 9 месяцев назад

You could buy these in 2001????

@RavenWolfRetroTech 8 месяцев назад

I know, right? There was a whole afterlife for the C64 and C128 with the Super-CPU, RAM-Link and CMD Drives that I was never aware of back in the day since I was on to the Amiga, then my business and PC by 2001