The RAMBOard story and how this all here was born

The »early« discussions

In the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 there were a couple of newsgroup discussion threads about the identification of a dedicated piece of hardware for the Commodore homecomputer disk drives series, see:

• First question for an installation guide of CLD's RAMBOard hardware. This request couldn't be fulfilled by anybody. Although the general installation procedure was described by another user, it didn't help because the original poster got another board revision.
  
  
• Original question about the board design and some of its specifications. It was somewhat clear at this time, that the hardware must be any revision of the so named »RAMBOard« series from the Commodore computer hardware expansion producer Chip Level Designs (CLD).
  
  
• Main discussion thread with some described reengineering tasks and descriptions about the function blocks of the board. This web page contains the final version of the schematic and board layout, that has been used within the discussion. Finally the board was identified as RAMBOard hardware revision for the Commdore 1541-C and 1541-II disk drives.
  
  
• Final thread about the acknowledgement from the original poster, that he has successfully tested the board within one of his drives.

The »later« discussions

In 2006 some interesting new followups grew up regarding hardware from CLD and their hardest competitor at that times, Utilities Unlimited. Fellows and readers of that newsgroup provided some interesting informations upon a call for such.

• A new RAMBOard related question and a followup with new material, the manual with installation instructions for the RAMBOard 2/C. This finally answers all and any questions from the first newsgroup thread cited above.
  
  
• Discussion about a device called the Maverick Speed Control Box that seemed to be available for the Commodore 1541, 1541-II and 1571 disk drives. To date, the existance of the device for the 1541 along with documentation got proofed.
  
  
• A request for informations on a speed control for the 1571 appeared next. Here most of the time hardware from CLD's competitor, Utilities Unlimited, was referred, namely their products Supercard and Supercard+. And then additional hardware that users optionally could install as advised in the manual: Speed control for the floppies as well as an additional index hole light barrier for the 1541 disk drives.

This little web pages collection tries to summarize the results of the whole process of discussing, analyzing and reengineering mainly the RAMBOard hardware from CLD. But accompaying artefacts like the speed control box or hardware from CLD's competitors will get documentated a little, too.