Freespin
Matthias Kramm1 HN recommenders · 2021–2026
148K views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2021-07-03
Freespin is a demo that runs on a Commodore 1541 floppy drive. It makes sound by vibrating the drive head and video by toggling the serial bus lines, and it keeps running after the C64 that booted it is disconnected.
Shared as a favorite example of retrocomputing hackery, a demo that runs entirely on a disk drive.
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5 comments from Hacker News
Here's a demo running directly on the 1541 disk drive. It generates video by hacking the serial cable that's usually used to connect to the computer, and audio from the drive motors. [VIDEO]
See also: [LINK] -- [VIDEO] A demo, including music and graphics, written for the 1541 disk drive -- no, it is not a C64 demo, it runs entirely on the 1541 (which has a 6502 CPU and some amount of RAM in it)
The "C64" demo "Freespin" wires the drive's data cable directly into the monitor's data cable to play a demo (including audio!) without an actual C64 involved at all: [VIDEO]
There's a demo that plays entirely out of the 1541, you can disconnect the rest of the computer: [VIDEO]
My most favourite demo is "Freespin" which runs entirely on a floppy drive without a computer. Crazy stuff. [VIDEO]