ZoomFloppy

I recently purchased the ZF and did not find much support for Linux users however, what there was got the job done. I didn't find a GUI for Linux but command line works just fine. After a few copies I felt comforatable and even if you have misgivings, go ahead and try it. I do have an old XP laptop that I installed it on but have not tried it. My Linux pc is just fine and it has a much larger hard drive.

This is a great product, allowing a resurrection and archiving of my 25-year-old C64 software.It took a while to get the board set up, as the blue light does not come on unless data is being transferred, and I thought the board was dead. The manual was a bit vague in places, but there are good videos and discussions on the web to supplement the manual. The board worked well, although the D64 file it generated for a game I wrote years ago will not run (or even load on Vice) on any emulator (it partially runs on CCS64 but give syntax errors etc. even though it runs fine on the C64 hardware.) I suspect the emulators rather than the board, as I can't list the program to see what the problem is. I think this is a special case as it is a fairly complicated game with machine language calls etc. For general archiving, it is great. Well done!

Overall impression is quite good. :-) Cons (just minor stuff): - Had to replace my old parallel cable for getting nibtools running. Never had any problems with this cable on my C64 (with Professional DOS) but am not sure if higher signal-quality-demands are caused by ZoomFloppy or by nibtools. d64copy works well in parallel mode also with old cable but nibtools is faster and is needed for exotic disks. - Product does not include any casing. Had read somewhere that such could be ordered from some other vendor but would be just a bit nicer to have "everything in a bundle". - Had some minor difficulties with drivers-installation. Do not remember in detail but believe that I had mixed-up 64/32-bit-versions at 1st attempt. Maybe, installer could be made a little more idiot-proof. :-) Pros (what really matters): - Works very well with new parallel cable. - Fair price.

Some google-fu and compiling was needed to get OpenCBM working properly on my "non-standard" Linux distro, but when done I was surprised how fast my unmodified 1541 actually can be. Huge difference to a C64 with fastloader cart copying from/to a sd2iec. Noticed it could be used with a printer as well - have way too many gadgets already, and I'm now at risk buying one of those cheap dot matrix printers on ebay... :)

I have a PET 8032 and 2 8050 drives, 2 4040 drives, and a 2031. All of the drives failed to format a disk and returned "?bad disk" errors. The 8032 was the fault, but some of the drives had problems too. I used the ZoomFloppy to isolate the bad drives and repair them, and the PET is next. What a great device! Get the associated software and have some fun.

`This product (zoom floppy) is the best hardware to use to properly connect a 1541, cmd hard drive, other drives, etc. to a modern computer to retrieve data, transfer software to emulators (for it's extra features,etc.). A wonderful product but I would add if you are expecting to retrieve old \data with this such as most commercial games, etc. then you need to keep in mind your old data might have bit rot by now. It happened to me - only a relatively small amount of my old data on 5.25" and 3.5" and cmd hard drive, etc. turned out to be retrievable, and it's not the fault at all of the zoomfloppy. Some of my disks are over 30 years old and parts of \them are no longer retrievable, so I have partially permanently lost data because it was bit rotted with the earth's magnetic field constantly warping the data on my disks and other stray radiation played the same role too. Zoomfloppy - excellent product, I just wish I had a good way to retrieve data like this a decade or two ago, or even further back. It took me so long to get to this point I permanently lost data to the time it took for me to do it.

The ZoomFloppy is indeed the best device for backing up and restoring 5 1/4 floppies. Quick transfer with JiffyDos. It connects directly to the 1541 drive through the serial buss and to the PC via USB 2.0. No better & up to date solution and compatible with Windows 7. Excellent quality Hardware provided by a reliable man that stands by his products.

I have had a very good experience using the zoomfloppy with an older XP box and the 1571 commodore drive. Most of the software I have tried to backup has worked flawlessly. The only time I have had problems is with older floppy disk that have succumbed to time. This of course is not the fault of the zoomfloppy. I would highly recommend to anyone that this is the best product for backing up old commodore software.

ZoomFloppy started working out of the box with my 1541-II and OS X (just "brew install opencbm"). Copying disks is very, very fast and it seems to handle even damaged floppies pretty well. I definitely recommend it.