[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Apple disk drive...



Michael Black wrote:
> One reason the Commodore (and at least some Atari) drives are slow
> is that they are connected to the computers via a serial port.
> That tends to be relatively slow, if for no other reason than that
> the bits go one at a time rather than in parallel.  

No -- the CBM drives are slow because the serial port is controlled 
directly by the processor, shifting out the bits in software, rather 
than using a hardware shift register. 

This was introduced as a workaround for a bug in the VIC-20's 6522 VIA, 
kept in the C-64 for compatibility (even though the bug was fixed in the 
6526 CIA), and only remedied in the C-128 in combination with the 
1570/1571 drives. 

Regards, 
Michael