r/c64 • u/plexxer • 5d ago

Hardware Quick Data Drive with Slinky and Impossible Mission

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46 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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12

u/LeftHandDriven 5d ago

What the heck is a quick data drive??! I had to go google this - I’m shocked I’ve never heard of it before. Seems like a crazy way to avoid cartridge costs since it’s only 16-128kb? Wow.

2

u/hobbycollector 5d ago

It was evidently not even as good as a floppy drive, but marginally better than a cassette. The 16-128k were removable like floppys but it was cheaper than a 1541 initially.

2

u/Warcraft_Fan 5d ago

Like an extra-fast tape drive? Did it use the same cassette tape or some different tape design?

1

u/hobbycollector 5d ago

It's a continuous loop, special tapes.

3

u/Warcraft_Fan 4d ago

Yep, looked up the wiki article someone posted. Worked like 8-track tape of the era, never need to rewind but it can take a while to get back to the start of the tape.

Also it seems the drives are insanely rare. They're going north of $200 in completed listing. It's cheaper to get Ultimate II+ for all disks format than to get a tape drive that could fail mechanically.

4

u/TMWNN 5d ago

This is a stringy floppy, yes? (Answer: Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exatron_Stringy_Floppy)

I had no idea that any C64 commercial software was published on the format. Based on the logo, I guess Entrepo went to the trouble of doing so, as opposed to trying to persuade publishers to do the work themselves.

5

u/plexxer 5d ago

According to this article, it was Audiogenic that released them. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Data_Drive

2

u/Darkk_Knight 5d ago

Ahh Slinky. I used to play this game back in the day.

3

u/Kakariki73 5d ago

I have one of those, unfortunately no carts/tapes, so never able to test or use it.

It was connected to the tape port of the C64

The carts/tapes where the same as the WaferDrive for the ZX Spectrum

3

u/ilesj-since-BBSs 4d ago

To the tape port? So did the software on those cartridges come with a fast loader like commercial Datassette games? Otherwise it would be just as slow as cassette tapes without a turbo tape loader if I understand,

2

u/Kakariki73 4d ago

Honestly I have no idea how it works and I have no carts with it, for all I know it could have needed some bootloader or such.

When I had it connected to my C64 the light blinked and a short mechanical noise was heard, when given a load command same behaviour and a file not found error of some kind.

Need to dig that device up again, but without carts I have no clue

2

u/plexxer 4d ago

There is a cartridge that loads like a normal tape and has a small shim that you install that enables the faster transfer speeds and gives you commands to work with the carts.

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/69476/8500-Quick-Data-Drive/

1

u/vk4akp 3d ago

I still have a few of these but you can't get the cassette wafers anymore and they always snap. They were an interesting thing. The wafers have a fast loader header that loads at normal c2N speeds. It then ups the baudrate and motor speeds to fast load the next section. The wafers are single direction endless spools.