pokefinder-org/the-phantom

Reproduction of the Phantom 1541 Drive Enhancement

The Phantom

Reproduction of the Phantom 1541 Drive Enhancement

Back in about the 1986 timeframe, Tri-logic (UK) began marketing a board named "The Phantom". I cannot speak to the commercial success of this product, today this board is one of the most rare Commodore "artifacts" known to still exist, especially in north america. Being a product that resided within the host Commodore 64 and 1541 disk drive, it's reasonable to expect that as the years progressed knowledge that the product was installed in the system would have been forgotten. Then, as the years march on, these machines are disposed of, given that those people have moved on with technology.

As a result, very few examples of this exist anymore. For the most part, all that remained was a few short reviews, a magazine advertisement and miraculously a copy of the dedicated copier program that worked in concert with the board. But up until recently the board has simply been gone.

A few years ago a good friend of mine (John Barrell) mentioned to me that he had found one of these installations in a Commodore job-lot that he had purchased local to him. To understand who John was, is to think of a good natured man who shared a passion for Commodore products and was focused on the preservation of this hardware and software. John however did not possess the skills to recreate the installation. I offered to do this for him, as I had previously preserved other hardware such Chip Gracey's ISEPIC cartridge. John and I came to an arrangement and he shipped the boards (drive board and kernal board) to me. Unfortunately John passed away earlier this year, and never had the chance to see his wish come true. Johns goal was the preservation of this hardware, and I am going to ensure that his wish is fulfilled.

Once this project has been completed, and I've verified that my re-creation of the board is fully functional, I will be releasing the entire project here on Github to allow anyone in the community to build and enjoy. John wanted this product to be preserved for future entheusiasts. I will ensure this happens.

I've recently engaged the Commodore community to help figure out the functions available on this hardware. Unfortunately, we do not have any documentation for this. As such, I've enlisted help from community members on Lemon64 and we've been making great progress.

Github seemed to be the logical place to provide this project to the world. As such, I will be adding information as I work through this project.