Commodore 64 disk and tape emulation: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:53, 23 June 2021

Revision as of 09:09, 7 December 2021

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== History ==

Some of the oldest adapters are the ''C64 user port'' to [[RS232]] converters. Those were standardized and originally designed to connect printers and other 3rd party hardware, including modems. Later, those adapters have also been adopted for disk drive emulation and even Internet connections. However, the most widespread adapters were probably the different disk drive and printer plug ''C64 serial bus'' to [[Parallelparallel port]] adapter that evolved for transferring data between disk drives and parallel port supplied computers. Because of hard timing requirements on the C64 side, those are unfortunately not applicable to laptops or multitasking operation systems. There also exist a more limited number of adapters for the ''C64 tape interface''. While the data transfer over the ''user port'' is usually limited to 2.4 kbit/s, the ''C64 expansion port'' cartridge interface supports transfer rates of one to two magnitudes higher through proprietary protocols. There exist ''C64 expansion port'' adapters that support both ''[[hard disk drive|hard disks]]'', ''[[memory card]]s'', ''USB-disks'' and ''[[Ethernet]]'' connections.

The software is typically open source, and so is most of the hardware designs. You can therefore build most of the hardware yourself, though they are usually also available from online shops.