Reproduction of the Phantom 1541 Drive Enhancement
Order your PCB's for this project directly from PCBWay, using the following links:
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.
This project has long since passed verification and testing, and has been found to be a fully functional, fully tested re-creation of the original Phantom drive accelerator. This project in it's entirety is now available here in this github repository for anyone in the community to build and enjoy. John wanted this product to the preserved for future entheusiasts. This wish of his has now been realized. Unfortunately we have not yet located the original documentation for the Phantom. As such, all of the commands and features listed in the "user manual" is information that has been gleaned through testing, advertisements and disassembly. Some of the features remain elusive. I am hopeful that one day someone will locate an original Phantom manual and donate scans/photos of this document to this repository.
I will continue adding information as I work through this project and as more information becomes available.
If you fancy building this yourself, I've uploaded the board files to PCBWay's Shared Projects, so anyone can order their very own PCB's and build their own Phantom! How exciting eh! The Phantom is now within your reach. Click on the links below to order the boards.
NOTE: Effective March 5th, 2023, I have uploaded the design files as well as the gerbers of this project so that this wonderful product, that was almost lost to history, can be preserved and enjoyed well into the future.