User`s manual

1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Introduction
Welcome to .the fastest, easiest, and most efficient filing system available
for your Commodore 64 or VIC 20 computer, your 1541 DISK DRIVE. This
manual has been designed to show you how to get the most from your drive,
whether you're a beginner or an advanced professional.
If you are a beginner, the first few chapters will help you through the
basics of disk drive installation and operation. As your skill and programming
knowledge improves. you will find more uses for your disk drive and the more
advanced chapters of this manual will become much more valuable.
If you're a professional, this reference guide will show you how to put the
1541 through its paces to perform just about all the disk drive jobs you can
think of.
No matter what level of expertise you have, your 1541 disk drive will
dramatically improve the overall capabilities of your computer system.
Before you get to the details of 1541 operation, you should be aware of a
few important points. This manual is a REFERENCE GUIDE, which means that
unless the information you seek directly pertains to the disk or disk drive you
will have to use your Commander 64 or VIC 20 User's Guides and Programmer's
Reference Guides to find programming information. In addition, even though we
give you step-by-step instructions for each operation, you should become
familiar with BASIC and the instructions (called commands) that help you
operate your disks and drives. However. if you just want to use your disk drive
unit to load and save prepackaged software, we've included an easy and brief
section on doingjust that.
Now. . . let's get on with the general information.
The commands for the disk drive come in several levels of sophisication.
Starting in chapter three. you can learn how the commands that allow you to
save and load programs with the disk work. Chapter four teaches you how
commands are sent to the disk, and introduces the disk maintenance commands.
Chapter five tells you how to work with sequential data files. These arl
very similar to their counterparts on tape (but much faster). Chapter sif
introduces the commands that allow you to work with random files, accessany
piece of data on the' disk, and how you organize the diskette into tracks and
blocks. Chapter seven describes the special relative files. Relative files are the
best method of storing data bases, especially when they are used along with
sequential files.
Chapter eight describes methods for programming the disk controller
circuits at the machine language level. And the final chapter shows you how to
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