Product Overview
Archive your Commodore floppies (and CMD HD partitions) to your contemporary PC, without the hassles of external parallel ports, IRQ settings, special adapters, bulky cables, or the alphabet soup of disk drive cable adapters. ZoomFloppy replaces all X*-1541 cables with a simple USB-based hardware device guaranteed to work with today's machines using today's multitasking operating systems. Simply plug into any free USB port, connect your CBM drive via a serial cable, and transfer data to or from your software collection.
Product Features
- Attach any CBM serial device to your PC, including printers
- Works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
- Open Source solution, no vendor lock-in
- Active development community
- Minimal footprint, no external power supply needed
- Parallel access hardware support
NOTE: ZoomFloppy requires an IEC cable (sold separately), an IEEE cable if using the IEEE version and targeting IEEE drives (sold separately), and a USB to mini-USB cable (available at many computer stores).
More information is available at: http://www.go4retro.com/products/zoomfloppy/.
Stocking Note: The non-IEEE and the IEEE version differ only in the presence or absence of the IEEE connector. That said, they are stocked as two separate items and we are sometimes out of one or the other. If the IEEE version is out of stock, we can often solder connectors to the non-IEEE version, but the reverse is not true. Thus, if the non-IEEE version is showing as out of stock, please consider the IEEE version or check back, as we try to keep both in stock at all times
Reviews
154 Reviews Hide Reviews Show Reviews
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5 The best
Posted by Tony on 18th Aug 2020
Came, even in this difficult time, to me in Germany. It works, no problems with customs, best ever!
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5 Hält was es verspricht!
Posted by Christian Alt on 9th Aug 2020
Das Produkt (ZoomFloppy) kam 10 Tage nach der Bestellung bei mir an! Ausgepackt, angeschlossen, Vice und CBM installiert! Und schon ging es los! Der Datentransfer auf die nostalgischen 5.25" Disketten funktionierte einwandfrei und problemlos! ich kann das Produkt jederzeit weiter empfehlen!
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5 time bomb diffused!
Posted by heyed on 6th Aug 2020
My C64 floppies dating back to '85 have been stashed neatly in a shoebox since '95, and I'd been looking for ways to transfer the data on those disks to my PCs ever since. It took 25 years(!), but I finally found the 1541 and 1571s I'd boxed and dumped in the basement... and this ZoomFloppy worked like a charm connecting my Windows laptop to those old drives, which let me backup all those electromagnetically unstable 1's and 0's from those cheap disks before they became unreadable. Kudos to RETRO for the interface, and to C= for gear built to actually survive decades of abandonment!
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5 Works great, nothing else quite like it
Posted by Taylor on 28th Jul 2020
I hadn't been aware until recently that there was a solution to connect the 1541 drive via USB, but the ZoomFloppy surprised me. It's reasonably priced and works just as advertised. Whether you're using it for VICE or to copy disk images, it takes a little setting up on the PC side but is easy to use once you learn the commands. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far, looking forward to preserving old disks and making some new ones.
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5 Fantastic and EXACTLY what I needed!
Posted by Jason Cantrell on 27th Jul 2020
This is exactly what I needed in order to retrieve several of my older floppy disks data. I had tons of old programs that I wrote when I was 15 and they have sat in storage, in attics and in closets until now. I'm 50!!! This card allowed me to connect my old 1541 drive back up and make images of these disks (about 38 of them)! Amazing piece of equipment and so glad I purchased it from you guys!
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5 Works great!
Posted by Unknown on 19th Jul 2020
I used ZoomFloppy together with a Commodore 1541 disk drive to transfer my C64 diskettes from 1983-1984 to a 32-bit Windows 7 system. After I mastered the required software, I was able to read all the files off all the old diskettes. I would recommend ZoomFloppy to any C64 hobbyist.
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5 amazing
Posted by Unknown on 8th Jul 2020
Hook my drive to my pc. Backup, copy, burn disks.
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5 Excellent Device, Fast Backups
Posted by David Perry (Perry Computer Services) on 26th Jun 2020
I am really pleased with this device. I have archived over 600+ sides of disks for my C64 with my 1541. The only problem I had was the initial installation and could never get it work until after hours of digging and watching youtube videos... the default driver the utility provided selected was v6 something but I had to choose the 32 bit driver manually for Win 10 1809 64bit. Otherwise, the installation was flawless, easy... I wish there was a way to turn off the turbo part of it, and have it try harder on some of the disks it can't read (fast). BUT, that doesn't matter... the disks that tend to not work are protected disks. For those disks I just download them off other sites. But, as for the device itself. Works GREAT!!! I have bought 2 other copy cartridges (BackBit, and the Future is 8 bit SD2IEC or whatever it's called) but THIS is THE best way to backup your disks. It's FAST! On my system, I can copy a disk at fast loader speeds. I think it was 1 min 15 seconds or something. Love it!
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4 Works as intended, but documentation is lacking
Posted by Tuna on 16th Jun 2020
Once you get this product to work, it is fantastic. It came with no documentation. I had to find a USB Mini-B cable first. Then scour the internet for the proper software. One software is needed to install drivers for Windows, another is required to interface it to the computer, then another to have a GUI front end. The software is not related and installation is not intuitive. Ironically, the documentation for the ZoomFloppy board can be found in one of the software programs (OpenCBM), but alas, written in 2010-11 and many of the links are broken. There are videos on youtube, but many are also outdated or simply incomplete. At the end I figured it out but it took me many hours of frustration and trial and error. I can foresee a lot of frustration and anger from future customers. Please make an effort to document at least the most common software to operate this board in Windows, etc.