Yesterday I was able to get back into town and pick up the MSD Super Disk from my friend. But, that's not all! To my surprise, he also had another C64 bread bin for me. This one he used at his house, back in the day. (Read my Sept 7 blog entry for part 1 of this adventure) While I was in town, I also received my Keelog C128 to C64 PSU Adapter in the mail. So, now I can test my new C64s using my C128's power supply in safety.

Both this “new” bread bin and the C64C seem to work perfectly fine. Although, the bread bin's keyboard takes heavy pressing to get the input to register. Could just need some cleaning. I haven't tested the bread bin with “NFG” written on it yet. Been too busy playing with this stuff so far!

As for the MSD… this thing is heavy and built like a tank, as others have posted online. It seems to work fine… mostly. What I mean by that is, “regular” floppy disks seem to read just fine, but it's having difficulty with “special” floppy disks that either are protected commercial disks, or those that don't have a typical disk directory - like a cracked game or something like that. This isn't too surprising to me, as I've read elsewhere that the MSD Super Disk did suffer from compatibility issues. But, since this thing is so rugged, I could see it's appeal if you were a business owner or running a BBS… no fear of this thing ever overheating on you.

I also tested the 1541C and it seemed to work fine… although it seemed more noisy than my regular 1541. I did some reading about it and it's said that the 1541C had some track zero sensor added to it, which was supposed to reduce the head knocking. But, if it's not working properly, it's noisier during boot up/initializing.

I was able to get the marker off of the 1541C and the C64C with baking soda and water, with some vigorous scrubbing. So they're looking better.

Footnote:

This latest pick-up also included an original 1983 printed C64 User Guide, which is great reference material for programming in Commodore's BASIC 2.0. A nice little plus for my retro technology library!

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