CMD Hard Drive
Specific System Requirements – CMD HD
Creative Micro Designs Hard Drive
The Creative Micro Designs (CMD) HD series hard drives are well suited for operating a Color 64 BBS. Disk space may be allocated flexibly by dividing storage into partitions. In Native Mode, CMD partitions also support subdirectories, allowing dynamic organization of file groups without requiring fixed drive assignments.
If you plan to store your Program Files on the CMD HD, improved disk performance is strongly recommended. This can be achieved by:
- Installing JiffyDOS or another compatible fast disk system
- Using a Commodore 17XX-series REU with RAMDOS
- Adding a CMD RamLink device for parallel operation
The CMD HD should not be used in conjunction with fastloader cartridges unless the cartridge manufacturer explicitly confirms compatibility. Certain fastloader cartridges have been known to cause data corruption on CMD HD systems.
For details on selecting partitions and subdirectories, refer to the section titled “Drive Initialization Commands.”
The Real Time Clock
Sysops using a CMD HD or CMD RamLink equipped with a Real Time Clock may enable automatic time synchronization by merging the file cmd.init into √bbs.init.
Before using this merge, ensure the CMD device clock is set accurately. Once merged, √bbs.init will read the current date and time directly from the CMD device during system startup.
After merging cmd.init, the following lines may be removed from √bbs.init:
24030 24190 24210 24220 24230 24250
Line 24007 contains a GOSUB 481 call that selects the System Files drive in order to read the time. If your System Files are not located on the CMD device, this call may need to be adjusted.
Note: In cmd.init, line 24020 sets the year prefix. If the value is set to 19, the system will interpret the year 2024 as 1924. For current systems, this value should be changed to 20 unless operating in the 2100s.