C64 OS USER'S GUIDE

Chapter 2: Installation

Advanced VICE Configuration for CMD HD

This subsection of Chapter 2: Installation, discusses the advanced set up and configuration of the VICE emulator on Windows or macOS for use with C64 OS. Advanced VICE configuration has the following steps:

• Set up KERNAL and drive ROMs
• Set up storage devices
• Install CMD HD DOS
• Partition the CMD HD
• Copy C64 OS files to CMD HD partition

Important resource links required for CMD HD configuration are found at the end of this page. You should fetch these resource files ahead of time and have them ready to go before proceeding with this tutorial.

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Requirements

These instructions are to set up a virtual CMD HD from which C64 OS will run. There are some minimum requirements and some additional resources that are required and/or recommended. Check the important resource links at the end of this page for further information about how to acquire the ROMs.

1. VICE v3.5 or greater: Version 3.5 is the first version with support for CMD HD.
2. CMD HD Boot ROM v2.80: The latest, most stable and feature complete CMD HD Boot ROM.
3. CMD HD Utilities disk: Has utilities needed to partition the CMD HD hard drive image.
4. JiffyDOS v6.01 KERNAL ROM: Highly recommended to improve the speed of the IEC serial bus.

Although the JiffyDOS KERNAL ROM is not strictly required, it is highly recommended. The stock C64 KERNAL ROM is notoriously slow. The CMD HD has built-in support for the JiffyDOS protocol, but requires the KERNAL ROM to be updated with JiffyDOS in order for the faster protocol to be used.

JiffyDOS provides numerous other important features to the READY prompt, and the C64 OS User's Guide describes command shortcuts that can be taken if JiffyDOS is available.

Set up KERNAL and drive ROMs

There is only one ROM which is required for the setup, the CMD HD Boot ROM. However, because JiffyDOS is recommended, we will start with configuring the C64's KERNAL ROM to use JiffyDOS, and also show how to optionally configure a 1541 disk drive with a JiffyDOS ROM.

In VICE, choose "Settings..." from the Preferences menu. From the left sidebar, unfold the Machine section. Select the ROM option under the Machine section heading. In the main configuration area on the right there are four tabs. Select the Machine ROMs tab first.

In the configuration area below the Machine ROMs tab, there are VICE standard file selection buttons. These are for the C64's 3 main ROMs: KERNAL, BASIC and Character Generator. VICE supplies default ROMs for all three.

If you have purchased a copy of the JiffyDOS KERNAL ROM overlay for C64, click the Browse... button at the end of the row for KERNAL. From the file picker dialog box that opens, locate the JiffyDOS KERNAL ROM file, select it and click Open, at the bottom right.

Select the JiffyDOS KERNAL ROM for the C64.

Next, select the Drive ROMs tab, next to the Machine ROMs tab. VICE supplies default ROMs for many of the various drive models that it can emulate, but not for them all. Locate the row for the CMD HD and click the Browse... button at the end of that row. From the file picker dialog box, locate the CMD HD Boot ROM which you have purchased, select it and click Open.

If you have purchased a JiffyDOS drive ROM overlay for a 1541, 1541-II, 1571 or 1581, proceed as described above to select and assign those JiffyDOS ROM files to the drives to which they belong. In the example highlighted below, the 1541-II has been assigned a JiffyDOS drive ROM.

Select the CMD HD Boot ROM and optionally the JiffyDOS ROM for other disk drives.

Close the settings window by clicking the close button in the bottom right corner. Then save VICE's settings by choosing "Save settings" from the Preferences menu.

Setup Storage Devices

C64 OS can be run with the CMD HD configured as the only storage device.

However, to create the CMD HD hard drive image, we need to load a program from the HD Utilities disk and so we will configure a 1541-II disk drive. Later we need to transfer the C64 OS installation files to the new hard drive image, and so instructions are provided to configure a VICE FS device, which gives the C64 OS access to a directory shared from the host operating system's file system.

Set up drive 8 as a 1541-II disk drive

Since most games, demos and other C64 software which runs from floppy disk is hardcoded to run from device 8, we will configure a virtual 1541 drive as device 8.

Choose "Settings..." from the Preferences menu. From the left sidebar, unfold the Peripheral devices section. Select the Drive option under the Peripheral devices section heading. In the main configuration area on the right there are four tabs, for Drive 8, 9, 10 and 11. Select the Drive 8 tab.

From the Drive model select box, choose CBM 1541-II. VICE provides default ROMs for the various disk drive models, however, during the set up of the drive ROMs, above, you can configure a drive type with a JiffyDOS ROM. In the example above, we highlighted that a JiffyDOS ROM was being configured for the 1541-II. That corresponds with us now configuring a 1541-II as the drive for device 8.

Check on the "True drive emulation" option, do not enable the "Virtual device" nor the "IEC device" options. All the other settings can be left with their default values.

Drive 8, 1541-II configuration.

Close the settings window by clicking the close button in the bottom right corner. Then save VICE's settings by choosing "Save settings" from the Preferences menu.

Attach the HD Utilities .D64 disk image

In the important resource links section found at the end of this page, download the CMD HD Utilities disk in .D64 format. This disk provides several programs for installing CMD HD DOS, creating and managing partitions and performing other configuration on the CMD HD.

Each time VICE is started up afresh, it is necessary to attach the disk images to the various drives that have been configured. Choose Drive #8 under the Attach disk image submenu from the File menu. Or press ALT+8 on Windows or CMD+8 on macOS.

Attach a disk image to Drive 8, 1541-II.

From the file picker dialog box that opens, locate the hd-utilities.d64 file that you just downloaded. Select it and click Attach/Load, at the bottom right. Do not click the Autostart button.

Attach the HD Utilities .D64 disk image.

The disk image is now attached and its contents are ready to be accessed via the virtual drive configured on device 8.

Set up drive 9 as a VICE FS device

VICE implements a special host file system device, which identifies itself to the C64 as VICE FS. This allows a directory from the host file system to be shared with the Commodore 64, giving C64 software direct access to any files placed in that directory. This is a convenient way to transfer files from the Mac or PC's native environment into the CMD HD hard drive image and into the C64 OS environment. The CMD HD itself will be device 10 and the 1541-II disk drive is device 8. We will configure VICE FS to use device 9.

Choose "Settings..." from the Preferences menu. From the left sidebar, unfold the Peripheral devices section. Select the Drive option under the Peripheral devices section heading. In the main configuration area on the right there are four tabs, for Drive 8, 9, 10 and 11. Select the Drive 9 tab.

From the Drive model select box, choose "None". Check on the "IEC device" option. From the IEC device type select box, which is now enabled, choose "Host file system". Do not enable the "True device emulation" nor the "Virtual device" options. All the other settings can be left with their default values.

Drive 9, VICE FS configuration.

A directory must be selected to be shared from the host file system. From the left sidebar, select Host file system device option under the Peripheral devices section heading. In the main configuration area on the right there are four tabs, for Drive 8, 9, 10 and 11. Select the Drive 9 tab.

In order to maintain compatibility with C64 OS, uncheck the option "Allow filenames longer than 16 characters."

Although not required, it is recommended that you create a special directory just for sharing files with VICE. In the example below the directory is called "VICEFS Shared". Any files copied into this directory become available to the C64.

In the row for the directory to share, click the Browse... button. From the file picker dialog box that opens, navigate to the directory you want to share with the C64. Click the Select button at the bottom right.

It is recommended to check on the options, "Access P00 files with their built-in filename," and "Create P00 files on save." These two options will cause the host file system device to automatically wrap new files that are created in a P00 container which retains features of the CBM file system even though the file is being saved to a foreign PC or Mac file system. It will also implicitly unwrap P00 files so they appear to the C64 as normal files, with the ability to have PETSCII filenames and a CBM file type.

Drive 9, Host file system directory configuration.

Close the settings window by clicking the close button in the bottom right corner. Then save VICE's settings by choosing "Save settings" from the Preferences menu.

Set up drive 10 as a CMD HD

Most games, demos and other C64 software have been hardcoded to run only from device 8. C64 OS does not have this limitation and can be safely run from any device number. We will configure the CMD HD for device 10, because device 8 has been assigned to the disk drive, and device 9 has been set up for VICE FS.

Choose "Settings..." from the Preferences menu. From the left sidebar, unfold the Peripheral devices section. Select the Drive option under the Peripheral devices section heading. In the main configuration area on the right there are four tabs, for Drive 8, 9, 10 and 11. Select the Drive 10 tab.

From the Drive model select box, choose CMD HD. Check on the "True drive emulation" option, do not enable the "Virtual device" nor the "IEC device" options. All the other settings can be left with their default values, as many of them do not pertain to the CMD HD.

Drive 10, CMD HD configuration.

Close the settings window by clicking the close button in the bottom right corner. Then save VICE's settings by choosing "Save settings" from the Preferences menu.

Create a blank CMD HD hard drive image (.DHD)

Since these instructions are all about how to set up a CMD HD in VICE from scratch, the next thing we need to do is create a blank file which will become a CMD HD hard drive image by changing its name, attaching it to device 10, installing CMD HD DOS, and then creating one or more partitions.

Creating an empty file in the Windows or macOS graphic environment can be a bit tricky, because these operating systems often hide the filename's extension and/or make it intentionally difficult to change a file's extension. For these reasons, it is faster and more reliable, and therefore recommended, to create the file using a command prompt.

Create a blank .DHD file in Windows

To open the Windows command prompt, first press WINDOWS+R to open the "Run" dialog box. Type "cmd" and click the OK button, or press ENTER.

In the command prompt window, enter the following commands, pressing ENTER at the end of each command.

cd %UserProfile%\Desktop

copy nul c64os.v1.04.dhd

A new blank file named "c64os.v1.04.dhd" should appear on the desktop. You can now close the Windows command prompt.

Create a blank .DHD file in macOS

To open the Terminal, from the Finder, choose Utilities from the Go menu. Or press SHIFT+COMMAND+U. From the Utilities window, double-click the Terminal application.

In the Terminal window, enter the following commands, pressing RETURN at the end of each command.

cd Desktop

touch c64os.v1.04.dhd

A new blank file named "c64os.v1.04.dhd" should appear on the desktop. You can now Quit the Terminal application, and close the Utilities window if it's still open.

Attach the blank CMD HD hard drive image

Each time VICE is started up afresh, it is necessary to attach the disk images to the various drives that have been configured. Choose Drive #10 under the Attach disk image submenu from the File menu. Or press ALT+0 on Windows or CMD+0 on macOS.

Attach a disk image to Drive 10, CMD HD.

From the file picker dialog box that opens, locate the empty c64os.v1.04.dhd file that you just created. Select it and click Attach/Load, at the bottom right. Do not click the Autostart button.

Attach blank CMD HD disk image.

When the blank .DHD file is selected in the file picker dialog, it is normal to see the message in the right-side preview area, "CANNOT READ IMAGE CONTENTS." VICE will be able to read the image contents after it has been configured with CMD HD DOS and partitioned.

Install CMD HD DOS

Before the CMD HD hard drive image can be used, it has to have CMD HD DOS installed on it. The CMD HD Utilties disk, which was previously attached to device 8, has a program called "create sys".

You can load and list a directory from device 8 to see what other programs are available on the HD Utilities disk.

load"$",8
list

Load and run CREATE SYS from the CMD HD Utilities disk.

Load and run the program "create sys" from device 8.

load"create sys",8
run

CREATE SYS tells you what it is going to do. It warns that it will destroy previous data on the hard drive, which is not a problem since the hard drive image is currently empty. It says it needs certain files on the disk, and these files are indeed available to it on the attached HD Utilities .D64.

As a security feature, to prevent software from performing low-level formatting of the hard drive medium, the CMD HD has to be put into an installation mode. On a physical CMD HD, this is performed on a by a combination of buttons on its front plate: Hold 'swap 8' and 'swap 9' while you press and release the CMD HD's reset button.

CREATE SYS starting instructions.

Since this is an emulated CMD HD, there is no physical front plate with buttons to press. As a convenience, when VICE detects that the attached .DHD image file is empty, it puts the CMD HD into installation mode automatically.

However, you can also manually confirm that it is in installation mode. In the command and status bar in the footer of the VICE window, the rightmost controls are for the storage devices. Click on the number 10 to open a menu of options for device 10. Choose Reset drive #10 to Installation Mode from this menu.

Put CMD HD in installation mode.

Press RETURN to proceed to the next stage of CREATE SYS.

The next screen of CREATE SYS has options for configuring which blocks of the hard drive medium the CMD HD DOS will make use of. These options exist to make it possible for a single physical drive to be shared by more than one operating system. For instance the same CMD HD can be attached to a C64 which uses part of the drive, but can later be removed from the C64 and attached to the SCSI port a classic Macintosh which uses a different part of the drive.

These advanced options are not necessary in this situation. Press RETURN to accept the default system starting block. Then press "y" to confirm that it is okay to clear the rest of the drive for use by CMD HD DOS.

Clear area below system.

CREATE SYS proceeds by reading some files from the HD Utilities disk and installing HD DOS into the new .DHD image file.

This process may take a couple of minutes.

Completed installation of CMD HD System.

After CREATE SYS finishes installing HD DOS, it asks you to press the reset button the CMD HD's front plate. This can be accomplished in VICE by clicking the drive number 10 again from the rightmost controls in the status bar in the footer of the VICE window. From the drive menu, choose Reset drive #10.

If you enabled WARP mode during HD DOS installation, disable WARP mode again.

Reset Drive #10.

Make a backup of the .DHD file

Now that you have created a new .DHD file, and installed CMD HD DOS into that hard drive image file, it is a good idea to make a back up of the file at this stage.

You can simply copy the file c64os.v1.04.dhd to somewhere else, and rename it to blank.dhd. For any future projects, whether they relate to C64 OS or not, you do not need to repeat the process of creating a .DHD file from scratch and installing HD DOS onto it. You can simply start a new CMD HD project from a copy of blank.dhd, and it's ready to be partitioned.

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Partition the CMD HD

The next stage is to create a partition on the CMD HD. There are 4 main partition types, 1541, 1571 and 1581 emulation-mode partitions, which are small and emulate the track and sector layout of their respective disk drives. The fourth partition type is called a native-mode partition. These partitions are native to the CMD HD, which means they support nested subdirectories and can vary in size from just a few kilobytes up to a maximum of 16 megabytes.

The original CMD HD shipped with either a 20 MB, 40 MB or 100 MB hard drive mechanism, and they shipped pre-partitioned with a mix of native and emulation-mode partitions. Since storage capacity is no longer a limit, it usually makes sense to create several 16 MB native-mode partitions. In the instructions below, we will create a single 16 MB native-mode partition for C64 OS. The CMD HD can have new partitions added to it down the road without disrupting existing partitions.

Load and run HD-TOOLS.64 from the HD Utilities disk.

Load and run the program "hd-tools.64" from device 8.

load"hd-tools.64",8
run

HD-TOOLS starting instructions.

Remember that CREATE SYS required the CMD HD to be in installation mode before it was able to modify the low-level use of the storage medium. For data security reasons, HD-TOOLS requires the CMD HD to be in configuration mode before it's able to change the partition table.

On a physical CMD HD, a combination of buttons on the front plate are used to enter configuration mode. Hold the write protect button while you press and release the reset button. Release the write protect button when the activity LED goes and stays off.

In VICE, open the drive menu by clicking the number 10 from the rightmost controls in the status bar in the footer of the VICE window. Choose Reset drive #10 to Configuration Mode from this menu.

Put CMD HD in configuration mode.

Press any key to proceed to the HD-TOOLS main menu.

From the main menu are options to create and delete partitions and to view the current partition table. If you have more than one partition there is an option to set the default partition. There is also an option to change the CMD HD's device number, but this should be set using VICE's settings instead.

HD-TOOLS main menu.

Press "4" to create a new partition. It takes a couple of seconds to read in the current partition table, and then presents a box with four fields. The user interface is a bit unintuitive. Once you set a field, you cannot return to that field to change its value. And the order of the fields does not go from left to right.

The first highlighted field is "NO." which stands for partition number. This defaults to the smallest unused number. 001 is the default for the first partition. Press RETURN to accept this number and proceed to the next field. The next field, however, is TYPE on the far right. It defaults to NATV, for a native-mode partition. You can use the plus and minus (+/-) keys to cycle through several different partition types.

Each emulation-mode partition type has a fixed number of blocks. For example, a 1541 partition has 684 blocks, because that is the number of blocks on a 1541 disk (including the BAM and directory blocks, etc.) For C64 OS, accept the default of type NATV and press RETURN to move to the next field.

If a partition type was selected which has fixed number of blocks, the BLKS field is skipped and you are taken to the NAME field right away. For NATV type partitions, however, you can adjust the block size of the partition. Each block is 256 bytes. Adjust the number of blocks with the plus and minus (+/-) keys. For example, if you wanted to have an 8 MB partition, adjust the number of blocks up to 32768. (32768 * 256 = 8,388,608 bytes or ~ 8 MB.)

Because storage capacity of the hard drive image is not a limitation, it is recommended that you create the partition at its maximum size. Press the minus key (that's the C64's minus key, which may be remapped in VICE to the plus key on your Mac or PC) so the field wraps around from the minimum of 256 blocks to the maximum of 65280 blocks. Press RETURN to accept the block size of the partition and proceed to the next field.

The next and last field is NAME. Here you can enter a name for the partition as it will appear in the CMD HD's partition directory. The name of a partition can be changed later from the READY prompt. Input the name "C64 OS" here, and press RETURN to accept and proceed.

It then asks you if you want to write the new partition table to the CMD HD. If you made a mistake, for example, the block size is not what you want, the only way to correct this is to press "N" to return to the main menu without writing to the partition table. From there you can press "4" again to repeat the create a new partition process.

If everything looks right, press "Y" to write the new partition table to the CMD HD.

Create new partition.

After writing the new table, an intermediate screen tells you that it is possible to reformat the partition from the READY prompt. This can be done without needing to come back into HD-TOOLS. Press any key to return to the main menu.

Optionally, you may press "3" from the main menu to view the current partition table. This helps when creating additional partitions by visualizing what partitions have already been created. It should look like the screenshot below.

View current partition table.

Press RETURN to leave the view partition table screen and return to the main menu.

Press "6" from the main menu to quit HD-TOOLS and return to the READY prompt. An intermediate message screen tells you to press reset on the CMD HD. In VICE, open the drive menu by clicking the number 10 from the rightmost controls in the status bar in the footer of the VICE window. Choose "Reset drive #10" from this menu. And press any key to reset the C64 and return to the READY prompt.

Reset drive #10.

Attach the partitioned CMD HD hard drive image

After partitioning the CMD HD for the first time, you must attach the hard drive image again. Choose Drive #10 under the Attach disk image submenu from the File menu. Or press ALT+0 on Windows or CMD+0 on macOS.

Attach a disk image to Drive 10, CMD HD.

From the file picker dialog box that opens, locate the c64os.v1.04.dhd file that was just partitioned. Select it and click Attach/Load, at the bottom right. Do not click the Autostart button.

Attach partitioned CMD HD disk image.

When the partitionted .DHD file is selected in the file picker dialog, you should no longer see the message in the right-side preview area, "CANNOT READ IMAGE CONTENTS." It should now show the empty directory of partition 1, with the title "C64 OS", and the blocks free count.

From the READY prompt, you can now load and list a directory from device 10, to see the directory contents that should look like what was just previewed in the right-side preview area of the file picker dialog box.

List directory of CMD HD Partition 1.

load"$",10
list

The CMD HD hard drive image is now ready to have C64 OS installed on it.

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Copy C64 OS files to CMD HD partition

In order to install C64 OS on the new CMD HD partition, you must copy the 4 installation files from the root of the C64 OS System Card to the directory which VICE FS, device 9, is sharing. The recommendation in the instructions above was to create a new directory called "VICEFS Shared" and configure that as the directory for the host file system device.

Copy the following 4 files to the VICE FS shared directory:

• c64os
• c64os setup
• c64restore
• restore.car

In addition to those 4 installation files found on the C64 OS System Card, download "filecopy", the universal, 2-drive, 1-file, file copier provided in the Important resource links section found at the end of this page.

Save "filecopy" to the VICE FS shared directory along with the 4 C64 OS installation files.

In VICE, load and list a directory from device 9, the device configured for VICE FS. You should see the 5 files which you copied there. The directory name may appear with some PETSCII graphics characters, and some other hidden files in that directory may appear in the C64 directory listing. These can be ignored.

Load the filecopy program from device 9, and run it.

List directory of VICEFS Shared directory, load filecopy.

load"$",9
list

load"filecopy",9
run

Filecopy is a very simple file copy utility provided by OpCoders Inc. for this kind of situation. It is a universal 2-drive 1-file file copier because it only copies one file at a time, it copies from the current location (partition and directory) of one device to the current location of another device. It is universal because it does not attempt to identify the devices, and it does not use any special DOS commands besides opening a file by name. This makes it ideal for copying files from a non-standard device such as VICE FS.

Use filecopy to copy "c64os".

It asks for a source device #. Enter "9" and press RETURN. It asks for a target device #. Enter "10" and press RETURN. This makes the source VICE FS and the target the CMD HD. Next it asks for a filename, enter "c64os" and press RETURN.

Lastly, it asks which CBM file type should be assigned to the file created on the target device. Press "p" to choose PRG. The file begins copying immediately, and when the copy is completed, it prints the word "DONE" and you are returned to the READY prompt.

Filecopy is still in memory. You can type "run" and press RETURN to immediately run filecopy again to copy the next file.

Use filecopy to copy "c64os setup" and "c64restore".

Use filecopy twice more, first to copy "c64os setup" as a PRG, and then to copy "c64restore" also as a PRG.

Run filecopy one final time, to copy "restore.car". This time, when asked for the target file type, press "s" to specify that restore.car should be transferred as a SEQ type file.

Note that restore.car is, by standards of the Commodore 64, a very large file. It's nearly 4000 blocks, which is the capacity of six 1541 disk sides. Additionally, and unfortunately, the VICE FS device is not accelerated by JiffyDOS. For these reasons, you should expect it to take several minutes to complete the copy. You can enable WARP mode in VICE to speed up the copy, however, it will still take a few minutes even with WARP enabled.

Bask in the nostalgia of computing from the 1980s; make a sandwich, and when you return the copy will be complete and ready to go.

When the copy is complete, before installing C64 OS, it is a good idea to completely quit VICE. Open VICE again, reattach the CMD HD hard drive image, and load a directory from device 10. You should see all four installation files, including the nearly 4000 block restore.car file, of type SEQ.

After a fresh start, load directory from CMD HD.

load"$",10
run

Install C64 OS

Congratulations, you have successfully created a brand new CMD HD hard drive image, from scratch! You've used the HD Utilities disk to install CMD HD DOS and create a new 16 MB partition on the image. This is knowledge that you can apply to any use of a CMD HD in VICE, it's not just for C64 OS.

We hope that this guide is the best guide on the internet for creating and configuring a CMD HD in VICE.

After that, you copied the C64 OS installation files from VICE FS to the new CMD HD partition. This is the virtual equivalent of copying the files from the System Card in an SD2IEC to a physical CMD HD on a real Commodore 64.

From here, you can follow the instructions in Chapter 2: Installation → Installation on CMD HD or RAMLink.

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Important resource links for VICE configuration

You need the CMD HD Boot ROM to use a CMD HD dhd image in VICE. This ROM image is a commercial product and can be purchased from Retro Innovations, here:

https://store.go4retro.com/commodore/cmd-hdd-boot-rom-2-80-binary-image/

To manage the CMD HD and to create new partitions, you also need the CMD HD Utilities disk image which you can download here.

Although JiffyDOS is not strictly required to use C64 OS, it is highly recommended for its speed and device compatibility. It also adds some much needed features to your C64's READY prompt. The JiffyDOS C64 KERNAL ROM image is a commercial product and can be purchased from Retro Innovations, here:

https://store.go4retro.com/jiffydos-64-kernal-rom-overlay-image/

You will need to copy the C64 OS installation files from the VICE FS device to the virtual CMD HD. The easiest way to do this is with the FileCopy tool by OpCoders Inc. It is available from the C64 OS Software Releases page, or you can directly download it here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/com.c64os.resources/c64os/software_installs/filecopy

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Next Chapter: Configuration and Settings

Table of Contents

This document is subject to revision updates.

Last modified: Jan 08, 2024