+Larry Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 The Indus thread got me thinking about this, but I didn't want to hijack that thread. Were there any drives or speeders from Europe or elsewhere that had copying software similar to the Happy or Archiver? I know there was another 1050 drive modification from the U.S., but it's name escapes me at the moment. Was there anything similar for the Tom's drives or drives developed elsewhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bandit Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 There was the 1050 duplicator not good, but happy made an upgrade for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 We had a company that made SuperMon OS for the 400/800 (possibly XL as well) They also did a drive mod that gave turbo speed, proper double-density and I think it could do some happy type functions as well. Not sure what they called it, maybe Super 810 / Super 1050 ? The Dos you used was SuperDos which I suspect might have been a modification of an existing one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 There were a number of European mods. I think the Mega Speedy contains most of them. I don't think it's available any more but @tf_hh sells recreations of one or two mods, one of them very cleverly designed to work without additional RAM. IIRC correctly at least one of these booted a copy program from its firmware when you turned on the computer with the drive locking lever open, so no need to boot Happy software to get some copying done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrbrevin Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 We had the Lazer mod in the UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+kheller2 Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 2 hours ago, bandit said: There was the 1050 duplicator not good, but happy made an upgrade for it. That depends on your point of view. From a "I want to pirate stuff", yeah the Happy was better. From a speed POV, I still think the Duplicator is one of the fastest drives out there -- full track buffering (that works). I thought someone did some speed comparison tests of a lot of the upgrades at one time here on AA. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 2 hours ago, bandit said: There was the 1050 duplicator not good, but happy made an upgrade for it. Yes, the Duplicator -- that's the one I couldn't remember. IIRC, the creator put all his info/files up here on AA. And it was included in the MegaSpeedy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nasty niff Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 1 hour ago, Larry said: Yes, the Duplicator -- that's the one I couldn't remember. IIRC, the creator put all his info/files up here on AA. And it was included in the MegaSpeedy? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 2 hours ago, xrbrevin said: We had the Lazer mod in the UK I've heard of the Lazer before, but I'm not familiar with its functions. Were there copy programs for it, or perhaps it could run the Happy Backup program? I remember seeing pictures a Lazer mod. No board, and one inverted chip. Are there docs somewhere that you know of? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nasty niff Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 lazer was a happy clone, with less ram i think and could use happy software Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrbrevin Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 i picked up a 1050 that intrigued me because it had 2x front panel switches added. it turned out to be a Lazer mod that you can switch off and it becomes a normal USD mod it seems to be a happy clone but with a more homebrew approach to the hardware. see pics below and check out the ATR files to see the functions it can do 🙂 laser atrs.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sup8pdct Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 4 hours ago, Rybags said: We had a company that made SuperMon OS for the 400/800 (possibly XL as well) They also did a drive mod that gave turbo speed, proper double-density and I think it could do some happy type functions as well. Not sure what they called it, maybe Super 810 / Super 1050 ? The Dos you used was SuperDos which I suspect might have been a modification of an existing one. That 1050 upgrade was called SuperMax. It was a clone of USD but it had its own format command that made it incompatible with all high speed doses when it came to formatting disks except for SuperDos. 1st thing i did when i got the rights to all 8-bit super products was to add USD special format command to SuperMax. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 Upgrades similar to Happy ? - Speedy 1050 in various forms (e.g. Speedy N, Speedy T, Speedy D+S, mini-Speedy, Speedy-XF, Speedy in HDI, Speedy in Floppy 2000, Super Speedy, Mega-Speedy, Mini Super Speedy) - Turbo 1050 (and dozens of polish clones like TOMS Multidrive, Top-Drive, later even Turbo-XF, etc.; no track/cache buffer, uses sector interleave) - Highspeed-Board by Irata (Happy-Clone with track buffer) - Copyboard/Copycard by ??? (afaik, Happy clone with track buffer) - Hyper-XF (XF with Hyper-XF-OS by S.Dorndorf, no track buffer, uses sector interleave) - Supermax from Australia - Archiver and Super Archiver - 1050E Floppy drive Turbo (sold currently by Lotharek, ultraspeed with Pokey divisor 6 ?) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+kheller2 Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 Most of these are mentioned/documented in the 8bit FAQ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 Hello guys Wasn't the IS Plate from the UK also a Happy clone? Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted March 8, 2023 Share Posted March 8, 2023 The Happy did make it to the Atari ST as a cart called the Discovery cartridge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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