OUR EXPERT
Christian Cawley owns an original Commodore 64, an Amiga 1200, and a BBC Micro, but incredibly he doesn’t have enough time to use them all. Who would have guessed?
Digging through some old boxes, this author found a shoebox full of 5.25-inch floppy disks. D Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, having owned a Commodore 64, with a 1541-II disk drive. A lot of time was spent on this computer, with activities ranging from playing games (the usual) to creating very basic digital art and using software such as Shoot-’Em-Up Construction Kit (SEUCK) and Graphic Adventure Creator. The aim was to create something at least playable, although that wasn’t always the case (if ever).
We were intrigued by the possibilities of these disks. What old gem or embarrassing archive would we find?
Why archive old disks?
It won’t take long for you to find a collection of downloadable C64 disk images in the D64 format online. Various sites offer disk images and tape images for use in emulators. Of course, the legal status of these ROM files is dubious (see boxout, opposite).
But your own data is yours to archive as you see fit. Save game files, spreadsheet data, art, text documents – you can convert it into whatever format you like. Similarly, you can run public domain software on the original media and convert it to a new format.
Our own collection of disks is heavy on the personal backups of games with a fastloader. But among
