Why is Commodore 1541 so slow?
The GCR encoding is the biggest reason for the slow down on the “disk side” of things. As mentioned, the serial transfer issues were the reason behind the slow down on the “hardware side” of things. Towards the end of the C64 scene, many commercial programs started using their own custom GCR to improve the speed.
Why was the Commodore disk drive so slow?
Marketing insisted on compatibility with the 1540, the floppy drive sold with the Vic-20, which was slow because the shift register in the 6522 VIA chip didn’t work, so it had to transfer a bit at a time instead of a byte at a time.
How much storage did the Commodore 64 have?
It offered a capacity of 144/100 kilobytes non-formatted/formatted, and data transfer rates of up to 100 kilobytes per second. Up to 20 files could be kept on each side of the double-sided floppy disks. Later in the 1990s, Creative Micro Designs produced several powerful floppy disk drives for the Commodore 64.
How big is the floppy drive on a Commodore 64?
The Commodore 1541 disk drive was the most common Commodore 64 floppy drive. If you’re looking for one today, look for one that looks like the drive on the left. The one on the right is more prone to have problems reading disks. The Commodore 1541 was a single sided, single density floppy disk drive that stored 170K of data on 5.25-inch disks.
When was the Commodore 1541 disk drive replaced?
A 1541 with an oxidized head won’t read the disk, and no amount of cleaning or aligning the drive helps. In 1986, Commodore replaced the 1541 with the 1541C, which matched the lighter beige color of the Commodore 64C and 128.
How big was a floppy drive in the 1980s?
Pretty much all 5.25-inch floppy drives from the early 1980s were loud, especially by modern standards. The drive would growl as the drive head performed its seek operation to move to the track it needed, and then it would click audibly from time to time as it read the files.
What kind of disk drive did Commodore use?
Commodore eventually changed to a drive mechanism made by Neutronics or Mitsumi. This drive did a much better job of staying in alignment, but the drive heads on these drives had a tendency to oxidize over time if someone used or stored the drive in a humid environment like a basement or garage.