We have another Commodore IEEE-488 dual disk drive. It is the predecessor of the 8050 and it is almost compatible with the 1541, the C64’s disk drive. This specimen doesn’t work, its drives look quite mangled. So let’s fix it! But it is never that easy…
Month: December 2025
Let’s Code MS DOS: 0x32 VGA Split Screen
A couple of games back in the 1990s utilised the VGA split screen functionality to enable things that were otherwise only possible on more capable machines, like the Amiga. The VGA split screen allowed games such as Jazz Jackrabbit or Pinball Fantasies to display a static status bar at the bottom of the screen, while the rest of the screen was smoothly scrolling in two or more directions. In this video I will show how this is possible, and which VGA registers to program with the appropriate values.
Commodore SFD 1001 Repair
Another dead floppy drive has landed on my desk. I was told that “the motor isn’t working”. That can have different causes, but let’s find out what the actual problem is. I never worked on one of these drives before, but they are related to the CBM 8050, a drive that I like very much.