Using a Commodore 1541 drive with a PC via USB

[Cameron Kaiser]

> A fellow has made up a nice adapter to read and write Commodore disks on 
> a PC via USB using a 1541 drive.
> 
> The thing that jumped out at me is that this is a 5 1/4" drive that 
> reads and writes via USB.  Anyone want to comment on whether the 
> floppies it accesses would be useful other than on the C64?
> Could one do say 360K floppies via this hardware for other than the 
> Commodore?  At least part of the work is done to do more than just 
> archival like Catweasel, et. al. do, in that it can also write.

The X*1541 cables (this would be an xum1541) still talk to the drives at a
relatively high level, since the 1541/71/81 family are all intelligent
peripherals. So:

For the 1541, which is strictly Commodore GCR, no.

For the 1571, which can do a variety of MFM formats, maybe, but I'm not
aware that OpenCBM supports that. On the other hand, since it's MFM, you
could easily just use something else.

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  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
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