You are correct about the slowness of the 1541, and I was not saying the 64 was 100% perfect, but for the money, the 64 still gives more bang in the video and sound department. and recently, CMD (Creative Micro Designs) wrote a new OS called JiffyDOS. it was comaptible with the original ROM, but used better timing loops that increased the serial bus performance! you just replace the ROM in the motherboard, and the rom in the 1541 with jiffydos, and the results were fantastic, just by rewriting the firmware, the 1541 was now FASTER than a 486 running MS-Hoss with a 5.25 drive. but no matter what 8 bit cpu you use, it is amazing what you can do with 1 MHZ by proper software design. I also timed the performace with a stopwatch, and I loaded a large music editor from the same disk, 1541 drive, with and without jiffyDOS stock 1541 1541 with Jdos 1 minute 20 sec 10 SECONDS!!! pretty spiffy eh?