I posted the following on comp.sys.cbm. USENET doesn't seem as popular anymore, so I thought I'd throw a copy of it here as well.

I've been thinking about a different interface cable to the 1541 (and other serial devices) for some time. Using the X1541 et al has been troublesome for me. And others I think have a love/hate relationship with them as well. Right now I have an old Pentium-100 with FreeDOS I use for all my X1541 needs, but it is a pain to move back and forth between that machine and my main box. Especially when transferring data.

I'm an embedded software engineer by trade, so I'm quite comfortable writing PIC/AVR/8051/etc code, and have been considering some of the newer (and cheap!) USB microcontrollers out there. So I've started working on a project to do the USB<-->CBM cable. As part of my background search, there is reference to the XU1541 cable, but all the links I have found are broken. Does this cable still exist? Are there archives of the work that was done?

I saw some discussion of integrating the XU1541 into OpenCBM. I've downloaded OpenCBM, and it appears to be a toolset plus a low-level driver. I haven't explored it much, but it appears to bit-bang the parallel port via the X1541 (et al) cable.

Not to stir up the USB vs parallel port debate, I wanted to announce my own work on a USB cable. I have created a website and blog (my first ever, so don't expect much) documenting my ideas and the project. I'm open to ideas, and help. Check out my blog at http://mudplace.org/?cat=u1541 for more information.

I think the biggest barrier to the USB version of the cable is cost. X1541 cables are very inexpensive and easy to make. A USB solution requires several more dollars (probably close to $30 in parts in small quantity purchases). However, I think a USB solution could be much cleaner in terms of ease of use, offloading the bit-banging to a microcontroller, and compatibility with newer machines.

Anyways, if anybody is interested, I'd be glad to hear from them.

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"To love for the sake of being loved is human; to love for the sake
of loving is Angelic." -- Alphonse de Lamartine

I think you will find some interested in this project.
Will you make it work with linux ?
You will no doubt get a lot of windows xp-vista users but a
easy to configure device for linux is needed.

have fun shane

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Have Fun!!

Actually, I was going to target Linux first.

Using libusb, a lot more can be done faster, than worrying about a device driver on the Windows side of things. Perhaps I need to blog about that....

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"To love for the sake of being loved is human; to love for the sake
of loving is Angelic." -- Alphonse de Lamartine

i am having so much trouble with opencbm for linux that i would happily buy another interface to get around using it.
i have a xa1541 that works a treat on windows but i have allkinds of problems on linux.

have fun shane

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Have Fun!!

I have opencbm working on Linux fine. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get it working. I think there was a minor update released recently which was aimed at killing a few "bugs".

BTW I also would love to see a USB project for Linux. That would be really nice

The problem i am now getting is no device /dev/cbm

if you can help could you start a topic on getting opencbm working on linux.
Thanks shane sorry bit of topic

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Have Fun!!

I see now that the new XU1541adaptor has been finished and the boys over at commodore16.com are selling them. Has anyone tried it out already? Looks to be par with Warpcopy on transfer speeds. Also I'm curious about the relation between the new XU1541 and XUM1541.

I bought a xu1541 but it must be faulty .
Tested the unit on three windows computers with no joy,
There has been a new release of the software so i download
it and installed it onto another computer as a fresh install, but it
still don't work will email about getting another chip.
Tell you guys how i go with that.

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Have Fun!!

Ouch.. sorry to hear that. Looking forward to see how it develops

XU-1541 has a follower: XUM-1541


This device is a full replacement for XA-1541 cable, including MNIB support!

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Final Expansion 3, the most powerful cartridge for your VIC-20