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2022-08-26
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u
DISKOVERY
by Dave Moorman
This has certainly been a month of
discovery for me as I worked on the
Home LOADSTAR Tower idea. The Tower
will be a dedicated - if somewhat
older - MS-DOS computer serving as a
mass storage device for your C-64/12 .
And thanks to Nick Copland's 64HDD
software, this vaporware product is
not far away.
The Tower, as I envision it, will
be a mini-tower PC box with no monitor
or keyboard. It will connect like an
serial device to your serial port -
chained along with any or all other
devices. You will then have access to
eight drives - 8 through 15, with a
Hard Drive, a CD-ROM Drive, and a
virtual 1581 drive. And only the Tower
will come loaded with 199 back issues
of LOADSTAR!
64HDD v.7.0 just hit the Web, so I
downloaded the upgrade. What an
UPGRADE!! My major concern was that
since the Tower will not have a
monitor or keyboard (other than the
C-64/128 system), the program will
need to be robust and malleable:
Robust - in that it won't decide to
hang up or crash for no good reason;
and Malleable in that You need ways to
modify the system to fit your needs.
Version 6.0 was good, but limited.
Nick has outdone himself with V.7.0!
You have full LOAD, SAVE, OPEN, and
Command Channel access to everything
inside the Tower. The 3.5 inch drive
can accept a 1581 (C= formatted) disk,
and with a single command, turn it
into a D81 image on the Hard Disk
Drive in 90 seconds. Or you can go the
other way, and make a 1581 from a D81
image.
Getting around all the drives and
directories will take some practice.
But just as soon as this issue goes
out the door, I will be working on a
program called "Hdriver", which will
help anyone navigate the innards of a
mass storage unit like the Tower.
The Tower, as now envisioned, is
not for everyone. If you are already a
GEOS/WHEELS power user, you probably
already have a CMD HDD, and can add a
CD-ROM to the SCSI interface. The
Tower is for folks who have thought of
upgrading, but never quite had a good
enough reason. With the LOADSTAR
Tower, you will receive 199 back
issues of LOADSTAR, worth over $650!
Fender and I want to get the
"opus maximus" of LOADSTAR out to as
many people as possible. Many of our
longest and loyalest LOADSTARites need
a way to have all issues in one, safe
place. Magnetic disks have a rather
short lifetime. The CD-ROM will hold
data for decades (if handled with
care). Thus, the Tower.
We already have one order. By
next month, I believe we will be ready
to kick this thing into high gear!
DMM