XE1541/XM1541 Arrived today!

[CommodoreZ]

Hey all,
I purchased an XE1541/XM1541 adapter a few days ago, and it arrived today. I promptly plugged it in and got it writing disks for me in under an hour. This thing is SWEET!

If you are not familiar with this adapter, it attaches to your modern PC's serial port, and gives you a place to plug in a Commodore disk drive of some kind, either 1540, 1541, 1571, 1581, etc. With a specialty program designed for controlling the drive, you may send files back and forth either way and essentially turn your tiny library into the size of the internet's C64 ROM library...

But I have had trouble retrieving data off of the disks, and moving them to my hard drive, as .d64 images

One thing that I have noticed is that when writing specialized disk images to the drive, after writing all the data correctly, CBM4WIN (Im using the GUI shell made by Leif Bloomquist) freaked out, and said that it had an error writing to the drives. This happened on a few disks of the game Wasteland that I was writing to it- atleast 3 of the 9 disks total gave me this error, but ran fine when connected to the machine. Has anyone else had this issue? If so, I would like to hear it.

Also, if there is some resource out on the internet for how to make .d64 disk images, that would be helpful too.

 

[Unknown_K]

You will have issues with any original copy protected disks. Mostly people use that interface to dump cracked games and apps to floppies so you can play them on the real hardware (I have that cable and have used it in the past).

Another issue would be the OS you are using (Windows 9x works best or plain DOS since they don't shield the ports from the end user like Windows NT will).

 

[Bungo Pony]

I built my own XE1541 cable and I love it to death! It helped me rescue most of the software I wrote which survived a house fire. Even more fun is downloading Demo Scene stuff, sticking it on a floppy, and running it on the real deal.

Another issue would be the OS you are using (Windows 9x works best or plain DOS since they don't shield the ports from the end user like Windows NT will).

Yeah, WinNT really doesn't like people using the parallel port. I've had that issue with chip programmers in the past.

On a funny note, Win98 recognizes my 1541 floppy drive as a Canon printer :D

 

[Zorch]

Hi,
afaik opencbm (former cbm4win) has problems with XE-cable. XM should work, though.
I used to transfer disks with a XM and opencbm until I got an XAP adapter, which allowed me to transfer even most copy protected disks using nibtool.
Unfortunately my actual PC has no parallel port anymore, so I'll have to wait for the xum1541 to see the light of day Hopefully soon.............

 

[Rick Ethridge]

Xe/xm1541

Xe/xm1541

I've had mine over two years but I've seldom used it. I still plan on running 64HDD after I've built a new system dedicated to it. I have most of the parts and I'm awaiting a hard drive, better video card and case. My preference is setting up a dual boot Freedos/Win98SE to use as a utility workstation. Tests on a slower computer worked nicely. I just need to motivate.

 

[cybergod]

Cable for sale

Cable for sale

Does anyone know how I can buy the XE1541 other than on eBay? Thanks is advance.

 

[carlsson]

Some web shops have those cables. Where in the world are you located? Oh well, perhaps the XE1541 is hard to obtain as most would have switched over to XM, XA or even looking into USB cables. You might be best suited to get an adapter which takes a regular IEC cable and which is switchable between XE and XM mode, whether those adapters exist ready-made.