The X1541 cable is the original cable that connects Commodore machines or drives to the PC parallel port. It's compatible with SPP and PS/2 parallel ports and with all Commodore machines and drives and clones that have the usual serial bus port.
You need the following hardware to make use of this cable:
A Commodore 64, 128 or VIC20 machine or a Commodore 1541, 1570, 1571 or 1581 drive, or any other Commodore machine or drive or clone that has the usual serial bus port
The cable is supported by the following PC software:
64HDD (© by Nicholas Coplin, 1999-2010) (local copy)
C64 Software Emulator (© by Miha Peternel, 1994-1997)
Disk64 (© by Alfred Schwall, 1993-1994)
mtap & ptap (© by Markus Brenner, 1998-2002) (local copies)
prlink (© by Marko Mäkelä and Olaf Seibert, 1994-1996)
The Star Commander (© by Joe Forster/STA, 1994-2005)
Trans64 (© by Bernhard Schwall, 1994-1997) (local copy)
VC1541 (© by Torsten Paul, 1997-1998) (local copy)
X1541 (© by Leopoldo Ghielmetti, 1992) (local copy)
Don't let the name "X1541" fool you. This cable works with all kinds of Commodore drives that have the usual serial bus port, not only Commodore 1541 drives. Also, you can use it to connect a Commodore machine to the PC.
If you have a Commodore 1541, 1570 or 1571 drive, a SPP parallel port and you want to squeeze the most out of this setup then you might be better off with the XXH1541 cable combo which makes use of a semi-parallel cable and significantly raises the transfer speed.
This cable definitely needs an SPP or PS/2 port. You can check the compatibility between your parallel port and this cable with X1541Test. For parallel ports incompatible with this cable, you need one of the XE1541 extended cable, XM1541 multitask cable or XA1541 active cable instead.
You can find the details on how to build this cable at the construction page.
The assembled cable looks like this: complete cable, DIN plug at Commodore end.
These pictures should give you an overall idea on how the cable looks like and how it should be properly assembled. However, when building a cable yourself, you should not rely on the pictures only; see the construction guide instead.
Connect the serial plug into the serial port of your Commodore drive. Connect the parallel plug into the parallel port of your PC.
Important! Do not plug or unplug cables while your equipment is switched on. Make sure that all components of your equipment are connected to the same, properly grounded power outlet. Put your equipment far away from monitors, TV sets and other devices with strong emission, otherwise cables may pick up interference and you may experience data loss or corruption.
If you have problems with your cable then you can test it with XCTest and XCDetect. Also, test the compatibility of your motherboard with X1541Test.
The X1541 cable is © by Leopoldo Ghielmetti, 1992.
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