Connecting to CommodoreServer.com without a Comet Internet Modem

CommodoreServer.com is a pretty cool online disk image storage system for the Commodore 64.  The problem is their documentation seems mostly out-of-date and more importantly seems to assume you have one of their Comet Internet Modems, which, as far as I can tell, is no longer obtainable.  All that being said here is my attempt at an updated version of getting your C64 connected to CommodoreServer.com.

Get your C64 on the Internet

There are many ways to do this, some of them I may get in later posts, but not today.  I personally use a WiModem, which is a pretty awesome product, but these instructions should work for any User Port based solution.

Create and Setup your CommodoreServer.com Account

The account creation page is here.  Once your account is created you will need to choose your “Remote Login” and “Remote Access PIN” on the My Account page.  Remember these two things for later steps.

Get the V-1541 Disk Image

Latest version can be found here.  Put the disk in your C64.  Lots of routes to make this happen depending on your hardware.  Going forward I assume the V-1541 disk is Drive 8.  If it isn’t substitute your drive number for the 8 going forward.

Connecting

On your C64 type (substituting USERNAME with your “Remote Login” and XXXX with your “Remote Access PIN”):

LOAD "V-1541",8,1
SYS 49152
NEW
OPEN2,2,2
PRINT#2,"ATDTCOMMODORESERVER.COM:1541"  
CLOSE2
LOAD "@USERNAME,XXXX",2

Getting Started

The easiest way to interact with all the features of CommodoreServer.com is to load the CSMenu application.  To do so type the following:

LOAD "CSMENU",2
RUN

Commands

You can also use commands to interact with CommodoreServer.com.  Here is a brief primer, from their documentation, on the commands supported by V-1541.

Wrapping Up

That is about it, not hard to do once you know that you need to manually connect to the server after starting up V-1541.  I am not proud of how long it took me to figure this out on my own.  In order to speed this process up I actually saved the last 4 commands above in a BASIC program, so I can simply load and run it without remembering the exact commands (and my username/pin).  The one thing I don’t have working yet is getting the 38k baud driver working, which would drastically speed things up.  The WiModem support 38k speeds, so it should be possible, but I haven’t take the time to figure out how to do it.

References

• Original CommodoreServer.com documentation:  Get V-1541 
• CBMSTUFF Support Forums:  Commodore V-1541 instructions