Commodore 64 IEEE-488 Cartridges and the SD2PET #Commodore #Commodore64

Am I one of the few people that was and is fascinated by the 1980’s IEEE-488 / HP-IB / GP-IB interface? It was on test equipment from many manufacturers. It was the interface for the HP7935 404MB disc drives, big as a mini fridge.

Here, Tynemouth Software digs into the IEEE-488 cartridge for the Commodore 64 computer. Some conclusions:

I did notice it was a lot faster loading things from IEEE-488 compared to IEC, approximately 30 seconds to load Rodman from IEC and 5 seconds from IEEE-488, so that is an advantage. This sort of thing would have been used back in 1983 to attach big old PET drives or the newer faster SFD-1001 type drives to a C64 for BBS work. Fast access to lots of plain files. For that it should work well.

So, in conclusion:

  • Can you do it? – Yes
  • Does it work? – Sort of
  • Should you do it? – No

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