[GTALUG] One of the First Computer TV shows from the 80s.

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 09:43:15AM -0400, Ian Garmaise wrote:
> > I have seen alternate floppy interfaces for the C64 which loaded a LOT
> > faster than the stock serial interface.  The drives were capable of much
> > more than the serial interface they used.
> 
> When I was at Logo Computer Systems in Montreal,
> we modified the firmware (you could upload new code at boot) of the floppy drive
> to permit our application (Logo for C-64) to load much faster than it
> normally would (still using the same serial interface).
> 
> Law of unintended consequences: it turned out that lots of schools
> would actually share a floppy drive (they
> were expensive) between multiple C-64's using some kind of cockamamie
> network. Needless to say
> our hack didn't work with it.  I was the contact person for the
> schools and I heard about it frequently.
> Killed the product.

Yes my highschool had such a setup.  If you knew the right commands
you could load the same program on all the machines in parallel which
saved time.  Also allowed sharing one printer of course.

-- 
Len Sorensen