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commodore

1541, 1581, 8050 and variations

Commodore 8-bit computer disks come in two varieties: GCR, which are the overwhelming majority; and MFM, only used on the 1571 and 1581. The latter were (as far as I can tell) standard IBM PC format disks with a slightly odd sector count.

The GCR disks are much more interesting. They could store 170kB on a single-sided disk (although later drives were double-sided), using a proprietary encoding and record scheme; like Apple Macintosh disks they stored varying numbers of sectors per track to make the most of the physical disk area, although unlike them they did it by changing the bitrate rather than adjusting the motor speed.

The drives were also intelligent and ran DOS on a CPU inside them. The computer itself knew nothing about file systems. You could even upload programs onto the drive and run them there, allowing all sorts of custom disk formats, although this was mostly used to compensate for the cripplingly slow connection to the computer of 300 bytes per second (!). (The drive itself could transfer data reasonably quickly.)

  • a 1541 disk has 35 tracks of 17 to 21 sectors, each 256 bytes long (sometimes 40 tracks), and uses GCR encoding.

  • a standard 1581 disk has 80 tracks and two sides, each with 10 sectors, 512 bytes long, and uses normal IBM encoding.

  • an 8050 disk has 77 tracks and two sides, with four speed zones; the number of sectors varies from 23 to 29, using GCR encoding. These will store 1042kB. These drives are peculiar because they are 100tpi and therefore the disks cannot be read in normal 96tpi drives.

  • a CMD FD2000 disk (a popular third-party Commodore disk drive) has 81 tracks and two sides, each with 10 1024-byte sectors, for a massive 1620kB of storage. This also uses IBM encoding.

A CMD FD2000 disk (a popular third-party Commodore disk drive)

Options

  • Format variants:
    • 171: 171kB 1541, 35-track variant
    • 192: 192kB 1541, 40-track variant
    • 800: 800kB 3.5" 1581
    • 1042: 1042kB 5.25" 8051
    • 1620: 1620kB, CMD FD2000

Examples

To read:

  • fluxengine read commodore --171 -s drive:0 -o commodore.d64
  • fluxengine read commodore --192 -s drive:0 -o commodore.d64
  • fluxengine read commodore --800 -s drive:0 -o commodore.d64
  • fluxengine read commodore --1042 -s drive:0 -o commodore.d64
  • fluxengine read commodore --1620 -s drive:0 -o commodore.d64

To write:

  • fluxengine write commodore --171 -d drive:0 -i commodore.d64
  • fluxengine write commodore --192 -d drive:0 -i commodore.d64
  • fluxengine write commodore --800 -d drive:0 -i commodore.d64
  • fluxengine write commodore --1620 -d drive:0 -i commodore.d64

References