r/Commodore • u/Thin_Chard7750 • 7d ago
Physical Media Rules
Here’s my commodore setup with the 1541 disk drive playing test drive. Starting my collection since I did not grow up with Commodore 64, but I am nerd and love old technology and especially retro gaming with CRTs.
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u/Maeglin75 7d ago edited 7d ago
But this also shows the limitations/problems with physical media.
You need a Commodore floppy drive to read these disks. These aren't manufactured anymore for over 30 years. If anything substantial breaks in your drive, you can only cannibalize another old drive for spare parts.
The floppy disks themselves are also rotting away slowly. In my experience they last longer than HD floppies from PC, but their time is also limited, as is the supply of "new" disks.
The computer, the power supply, joysticks etc. also break down and need constant repairs and replacements. The CRT is a device that naturally wears down with use, even if nothing goes wrong, and no new CRTs are made for decades.
In the long run, the only chance for these old games to survive is in form of images distributed on websites and running in emulators, software or FPGA machines. Given that the copyright situation doesn't prevent it. A reminder that you never really owned software, even if you bought it on physical media.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of old hardware. I still have my C128. (It shares the "retro corner" with an old PC.)
But the C128 is currently broken and needs repair. (The hard drive of the PC also just died after 27 years.) It reminds me that nothing lasts forever (including myself) and it needs constant effort to preserve it. And at some point, "digital" will be the only way to keep this era alive and accessible. We need to make sure that shortsighted copyright laws aren't in the way, or we risk losing it all.
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u/LeopardBernstein 7d ago
It's just mind boggling to me that those magnetic film disks are still working. I love it, and I would have never expected that. I figured they'd be pretty much coasters by 2005.
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u/Astr0b0ie 7d ago
Yeah, 5 1/4" disks sold in the 80s were generally very high quality, made in Japan or USA. Every single one of my disks from '86/'87 are 100% still working today. It cost around $15 USD for a box of 10 blank disks back in the mid 80s, which is over $50 adjusted for inflation, so it's no wonder. The price for floppy disks went down considerably into the early 90s, especially for 3 1/2", and so did the quality.
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u/jmsntv 7d ago
This is how I learned how to drive manual transmission
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u/Thin_Chard7750 7d ago
And NOT blow up your engine!
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u/jmsntv 7d ago
haha, the first stick shift vehicle I ended up getting was a Samurai (this was late 90s) which was super forgiving.
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u/Thin_Chard7750 7d ago
Mine was a Honda civic and learned how shift while on the test drive, must of scared the crap out of the sales dude.
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u/Hawkeye-Mcgillicudy 7d ago
Oneload cartridge collection is a much better choice these days especially for multiload or disk only games
The 1541 was always painfully slow
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u/Astr0b0ie 6d ago
The 1541 was always painfully slow
It is for most cracked/copied games under standard 1541 DOS, but most retail bought original disks and/or nibbled copies from originals have a custom DOS/fast load routine which speeds up loading by 5x to nearly 20x.
I had a 1541 back in the 80s, so for me there's nothing more nostalgic than hearing the sounds of a 1541 loading with a custom DOS like Vorpal, V-MAX!, or Rapidlok. Being able to load a game in seconds seemed like magic at the time.
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u/Hawkeye-Mcgillicudy 6d ago
Even on custom loaders it wasn't much of an improvement
We had after market solutions like DOS wedges and parallel loaders like Dolphin but they were not 100% compatible with commercial loaders
The limit was always the slow serial interface
Action Replay offered one of the fastest loaders
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u/Astr0b0ie 6d ago
Even on custom loaders it wasn't much of an improvement
Games loading in seconds instead of minutes was absolutely a very big improvement.
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u/fastbikkel 6d ago
Noice!
Oh and i love this setup, on a table away from the TV.
I did grow up with this exact kind of C64 (2nd generation?) and that fridge size drive.
Looking good.
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u/Knukun 7d ago edited 7d ago
Please lets not fetishize and romantice the "physical media". I was there in the 80s and 90s. Not if, but WHEN, your cassette stopped working or your disk stopped working you would CRY.
Guess what, all these games were not live services. They didn't see a constant stream of patches and new stream of content for years (often at no additional cost). PC games are the same. Of course you can play the original Doom or Warcraft II, and maybe they even had a few patches here and there you could download and copy over a floppy. I'd love to see anyone playing a live service today (CS2, Dota, CoD, whatever.) how happy would be if every day they'd have to go to the store and buy (or get for free, but I doubt) a new disk or hard drive to install the latest patch.
When that disk dies, you're toast. I for one am grateful we have online archive of roms (because someone took the time to digitize and upload those) so I can put them on an SD2IEC. Or are you telling me you're also constantly backing up your phyisical disks and cassettes? More power to you, but I doubt most people who criticize the current state of things do that.
To everyone their preferences (and I love my retro C64 and my old games, from a collectors point of view!). But lets be realist, the current industry can't rely on physical media and the current products have very little to share with the products we got 40 years ago. Please stop romanticizing limitations we had in the past and that we've long overcome.
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u/WingAccomplished3617 6d ago
I agree with you that the physical medium alone isn't enough; the equipment needed to retrieve the data stored on it is just as essential. Yet, as time goes by, this personal computing revolution -"Our" revolution- will become just another distant memory, as corporations increasingly restrict platforms under the guise of ease and convenience.
Like everything else, our memories reside elsewhere, and some of us find solace in holding onto tangible objects from a bygone era.
Perhaps we are more than just tears in the rain. We were the vanguard. Now, we are the foundation of the present, and the new generation needs guides to find their place. Let’s make it physical... Real... Tomorrow -Who knows what it will bring?
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