this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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Shit man, take me back to the ",8,1" days
The absolute insanity of Commodore disk commands (especially without a fast loader cart) just boggles my mind. These were accepted by a whole-ass company. A very successful one, no less.
I absolutely adore the old wild west landscape that was the old 8 bit micros. There were some really wacky things that were tried out, both from a technical aspect and a UX aspect
Same! It was the last time that a single person could really control all aspects of the machine.
I guess one could claim it was protected memory on the 386 that really killed the fun.
I started with ",1,1". I never found a reason why they went from 1 for cassette to 8-15 for disk. Must have been a bit indicator thing.
Devices 2-7 are available as various pieces of hardware if you have the hardware.
It doesn't say this, but I suspect that disks received a higher default number than printers because the 1541 disk drive went to market after several printers were already on the market.
If I understand correctly, the 1541 was initially launched for the VIC20, where the datasette and several Commodore printers that would remain compatible with the VIC20, C64 and later were PET-era. This is what I think I've learned from Youtube, mine was an IBM household since before I was born.
Ah, printers, of course (and other things). I have no idea what my Okidata printer was set up with, I never did printing with anything but an application that did it internally. Yes, disk drives were a luxury item for a while. The big thing was those running the first BBSes who had a pricey, enormous 20 MB hard drive.
+++ath