CMD Product review
JiffyDOS
Yep, JiffyDOS is a chip. Pull your old ROM out of it's socket and put this in
Jiffy DOS was the first CMD product to enter into the Commodore market. It really was a revolutionary ROM set replacement for Commodore back in the late 80's when it was first released and it still sets the standard as the best replacement ROM set for the 64.
When I first got JiffyDOS, I knew from the start that it would take some installing on my part. I was a bit iffy about ripping the chips out of my Commodore and 1541-II drives. Although the installation was well explained in the manual, I admit to having trouble in replacing the chips. I for one didn't have an IC extractor as the manual suggested so I had to settle for the flat bed screw driver when it came to prying the kernal and drive ROM chips out. Although the manual said that you should keep the original ROMs that came with the computer and drives as a backup incase JiffyDOS was faulty, I ended up damaging mine on both the C64 and the drives by bending the fragile chip pins off. So Jiffy DOS just had to work or else. Fortunately, no problem there as they did eventually! The best thing about JiffyDOS is you can flick it out into the 100% stock C64 ROM set-up as if JiffyDOS was never in the computer at all. This is useful as not every program works well with JiffyDOS (usually because these programs are badly programmed to begin with)
The other installation feat was installing the switch. Fortunately I had a hand drill and drill bit to do this - and I found it quite easy to install the switch - once I got over the feeling that I was going to wreck my computer and disk drive's casing - which didn't happen. On my 1541-II drives, however, the cable connecting the chip and the switch got in the way of the drive motor, so I had to superglue it to the casing which was a pain, but I could have easily taped it down but I have to be a perfectionist now don't it?
Say hello to JiffyDOS
Ok, so enough of the installing stuff. I switch on my Commodore to find that the familiar Commodore message is no more, but instead has a Jiffy DOS and copyright message on the screen. Personally I don't mind this at all, and it can be switched out along with JiffyDOS if you like to see the all familiar Commodore message. (OK, ok, this is very trivial)
Now to load something with JiffyDOS. It works, and more important, it loads things fast. The main reason why I got it in the first place. JiffyDOS is one of those things you can do without, but once you have it and have used it, you won't want to go back to the slow 1541 speeds the Commodore has been renowned for. Playing disk based games for one is one of the benefits. I mean, those big multi disk sided RPGs now are faster and you aren't left twiddling your thumbs waiting for the disk to load. Moreover, JiffyDOS saves fast as well, and not all fast loaders fast save!
No longer will you have to load up a fast loader utility (at slow speed) and then have it crash when another program overwrites it in memory. This is very timesaving.
Managing large numbers of disk files (such as I do on a CMD Hard Drive) JiffyDOS is an absolute must-have with no excuses whatsoever. In fact, I would say that if you are going to get a CMD HD, then you MUST also get Jiffy DOS otherwise you will be very very sorry. Remember that the FD and HD series drives don't have any fastloaders written for them yet (The FD has had a burstloader written for it, but I don't know where to find it - but rest assured it doesn't save fast!) so JiffyDOS is the only way to speed them up. Believe me, when Jiffy DOS and a HD are coupled together, your common-or-garden 202 Block file takes about 5 seconds to load. Now tell me is that not a good thing?
Compatibility-wise, JiffyDOS is the most compatible with Commodore software. As I've tested quite a lot of software on this platform, and most of it works fine with Jiffy-DOS. However, not all software works. A copy-protected re-release of Kick-Off 2 that checked head speed threw the towel in when it saw the JiffyDOS ROM, so it had to be switched out. I've also seen a few programs that are badly coded that just crash when it sees JiffyDOS, because the stupid programmers didn't use documented ROM calls. These cases are few and far between. Switching the ROMs off is also nice if you get nostalgic and want to remember the long loading times you had to endure before your favourite game appeared ;) ..... er perhaps not. Fastloader games don't really benefit from JiffyDOS either as they use their own loaders, and don't use the Commodore's own routine for accomplishing loading. In these cases, the speed up is negligible. Let's just hope the fastloader really is fast so that you don't need JiffyDOS.
Certain Freeze cartridge "5 second Superturbo" type loaders tend to crash the loading because they rely on the standard 1541 DOS. Overall, these complaints are fairly minor because in general most stuff works better than normal more often for me to leave JiffyDOS on rather than off. When it is off, you really want to switch it back on as soon as possible.
Fast loading isn't the only thing JiffyDOS can do. The replacement 1541 ROM also gives fast formatting. A big cheer from me because I use it quite often - and the formatting routine originally in the 1541 sucks bad. No more loading up fast formatting programs! It's now built in!
The other great thing about Jiffy DOS is the bulit in wedge. OK, who still has a copy of the 1541 Test/Demo diskette with a copy of the DOS wedge on it lying around? Well, that's all now built in too. No more need to type in LOAD"*",8,1 anymore! Many loading and saving commands are done easily with 2 or 3 keystokes. Commands like scratch become @S: and the fuction keys outside of a BASIC program can be programmed to hold commands - much like on the C128. If you have a CMD HD, FD or 1581, here is another essential reason to get Jiffy-DOS. Partitioning commands on both these devices is a serious pain if you don't have JiffyDOS. Take for example what it would take to jump to a subdirectory of partition 2 on a CMD device without JiffyDOS:
OPEN 1,8,15:PRINT#1,"CP2":CLOSE1
OPEN 1,8,15:PRINT#1,"CD:SUBDIRECTORY":CLOSE1
And then compare it to:
@CP2
@CD:SUBDIRECTORY
These partitioning commands are used quite a lot on these two devices, so anyone who has a HD or FD will appreciate this a great deal.
The keystroke commands are very helpful. The F1 directory lister lists the directory of a device to the screen and not BASIC memory! If you program in BASIC, you can now see how much room is on the disk before you save to it!
Also, JiffyDOS can have it's interleave adjusted. So you can save data along your diskette in a certain way for it to be sped up. The manual goes into great detail about how this is accomplished. Personally I can't say that I used this function much at all. But what the hell, if you need to adjust it to save data in a specific way to speed it up, that's there too. JiffyDOS already is set to the optimal interleave setting for speed so you don't need to stress about this too much.
If that's not all JiffyDOS can do, it also has a program lister, sequential file reader, printer dump command (great for printing out BASIC listings), a BASIC lister that can pause the list (just press a few keys to stop the LIST command scrolling a program off the screen), and a built in OLD command which does the opposite of a NEW command - by bringing back a program that was NEWed or after the computer was reset.
JiffyDOS can also turn off the drive hammer when you load disks that you've put through a magnetic field, rubbed in chocolate cake, spilt your ashtray on, or used as a drink coaster for your beer. Or if you actually do manage to have one of those old badly protected Ocean game disks, you can turn off the hammering here also - which is nice if you don't want to hear the hammering, or risk throwing your floppy drive out of alignment. (Which is not a great problem if you have realigning software anyway). NEXT!......
Last but not least is the file copier! Admittedly, the file copier is only really useful if you have a two drive system because it's not designed to handle a single drive. However, if you have two drives, all you have to do is put your disks in (or partition and subdirectory) set the source device and target device with the JiffyDOS commands @# (source) and @X (target), load up the source directory and place an asterisk next to the entry using a ConTRoL command, and then RUN the directory! I use this quite a bit myself, but I much prefer to use FCOPY+ because I then get to verify the copy and see exactly what my source and target is - a benefit which JiffyDOS doesn't give. JiffyDOS does all it's speedups and copies very fast, it does not cheat by failing to error check (like some other dubious copiers), but I feel more comfortable when I get to see a message on a screen that tells me the copy was successful! My only gripe with the file copier is that you have to dance back and forth setting the source and target device (made even worse with a CMD device), and then have to load the directory into BASIC memory if you want to copy many files "en masse". You can't see what source and target is set to. This is no problem if you have twin 1541 drives, but a partitioned device can be problematic as you also have to set partitions and directory within the device via a lot of commands.
So there you have it. So is it worth it? Well, if you are a serious C64 user the answer is yes. If you are not, well go away then. Seriously however, if you intend on getting a CMD HD or FD drive without a RAMlink or SuperCPU, then the answer is a definite YES in capital letters (RAMlink and the SuperCPU have JiffyDOS built in). It is an essential piece of hardware which once you will get you will wonder how you coped when you didn't have it (and the answer is that you coped badly indeed). The money you pay is a small fraction of the money/time you will save (and time is money) waiting around for things to load, and having to load utilities to do certain tasks that JiffyDOS can now do all on it's own. I was estatic that I didn't have to load file copiers, fast formatters, the 1541 Test/demo disk's wedge (hey! I never loaded that anyway!), and other disk utility programs ever again. What's more was that it turned my CMD HD into a speedy storage device, and not a 1541 with more space than it knew what to do with. If you don't have any other CMD drives, but still use your diskettes a lot - be it for programming etc. with your 1541, then JiffyDOS will still be very useful to you and you should then get it. The only situation where I wouldn't recommend getting JiffyDOS, is when your C64 is shelved away in the cupboard and you don't use it - or you don't even have a disk drive for it. In fact if you only use your C64 with that 300baud cassette player (man, if you're going to be proud of even having a 64....) then having JiffyDOS will be a hindrace and not a help because JiffyDOS steals the cassette driver's space in ROM and renders the player USELESS!! (You get an error when you attempt to load from cassette with JiffyDOS on!)