Built an XM1541 Cable
Posted by retromaster on October 8, 2009
-
- XM-1541 in action
A friend of mine used to do some programming on the C64 more than two decades ago. It turns out that he saved a couple of floppy disks from that time. When he learned that I collect retro-computers and hardware, he asked me if it would be possible to transfer the contents of the disks to PC so that he could check them out in an emulator. I got the disks from him and checked them out on a real C64 with a real 1541. They were in surprisingly good condition, with only one or two read errors 
.
So, finally, last weekend, I got around to building an XM-1541 cable. It was surprisingly easy, and it worked the first time. The photo shows my workbench (what a mess!), with a 1541 with one of the disks in it, connected via the XM-1541 cable to a PC (under the desk). The PC runs Windows XP, and I was able to display the directories of the disks and create .d64 images out of them, using the opencbm suite. Needless to say, my friend was ecstatic . In fact, I think he still hasn’t managed to go through all the stuff!
