I’ve been searching for a way to resurrect my old C64 in all its glory, so I can someday try to introduce my son to programming. The two problems I’ve run into is that I’ve lost most of my software, and I’ve only been able to find a couple of blank floppies. It’s only an assumption they will still hold data reliably.

I came across the 64HDD project. It’s a promising looking solution to my problem, and looks like it’s been actively developed since 1999. Using a DOS PC with a parallel port and a xe1541 cable, pictured above, you can supposedly use the PC as a mass storage device for the C64. Essentially, it turns your PC into a 1541 floppy drive emulator, so you can load and save files on your C64 without trying to track down a working 1541 or disk media.

It also means that you could presumably download a bunch of disk images using your broadband connection, shove them onto a hard disk, and then access everything without having to rifle through piles of disks to find the program you want to run.

Has anyone used this before, or do you have any other recommendations or ideas for bringing a legacy system back to life?

64HDD