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Creative Micro Designs

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Creative Micro Designs, Inc. (CMD) was an American maker and seller of hardware for the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128, based in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Its products included the CMD HD series of SCSI hard drives and the RAMLink memory and drive interface.[1][2] The firm also sold the JiffyDOS speed-up system, floppy drives, an accelerator cartridge and other add-ons, and from 1994 it published the magazine Commodore World.[3][4][5] In mid-2001 CMD stopped taking new orders for Commodore equipment, and Click Here Software Co. of Michigan said it was finalising a deal to take over the product line.[6] Most of the sources used for this article are CMD's own manuals and magazine; independent hands-on reports on the HD appeared in RUN and Twin Cities 128.[1][7][8][9]

Company history

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Origins and people

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No business registration or incorporation record was located for this article, so the founding date rests on statements made by the company and its circle. A contributor's author's note in Commodore World issue 19 says that Mark Fellows began selling JiffyDOS in 1986 under the name Fellows, Inc., and that a year later he and Charles A. Christianson set up Creative Micro Designs to grow the business and develop further products.[10] The RAMLink manual likewise calls Fellows a CMD founder and dates the first RAMLink idea to 1987, adding that the project was shelved while memory was expensive.[11] Both statements appeared in CMD's own publications, so a 1987 start should be read as the company's account rather than a confirmed legal date.[10][11]

The HD manual's credits give working roles for the drive project: Fellows wrote the drive operating system and oversaw development, Charlie Andrews designed the hardware, Doug Cotton produced the utilities and manual, Charles A. Christianson persuaded the team to begin the project, and Charles R. Christianson handled organisation.[12] In the RAMLink manual Fellows is credited with the idea and with leading the project, as well as with the bulk of its circuit and firmware work. Other credits go to Paul Bosacki, who wrote the GEOS support, to Charles R. Christianson, who drew the enclosure, and to Cotton, who tested the unit and wrote its manual, while Peter Fiset of Performance Peripherals is thanked as an outside contributor to the electronics.[11] A news item in issue 29 of Twin Cities 128 that announced an HD price cut called Cotton a CMD software engineer.[13]

The Commodore World mastheads list Charles R. Christianson as general manager, Doug Cotton as editor and Charles A. Christianson in advertising sales; issues 1 and 8 also name Mark Fellows as technical editor, a title absent from the issue 19 and issue 25 mastheads.[4][7][10][5] These are publication roles printed in the magazine, not a full staff list or ownership record.[7]

Products and markets

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The HD manual consulted here is a remastered copy of a printing whose copyright page reads January 1991, so it shows what CMD was offering around the turn of 1991 rather than when the drives first went on sale.[1] In its accessory list CMD offered JiffyDOS for both computers, the C-SCAN serial multiplexer for shared classroom or office set-ups, the Lt. Konnector adaptor for Xetec Lt. Kernal mechanisms, replacement power supplies, cables, add-on SCSI drives, and a RAMLink that the manual expected to ship in January 1991.[3] The Twin Cities 128 preview reported that RAMLink had been delayed but expected it to be available by the time readers saw the issue.[13] A Commodore World contributor writing in 1997 recalled CMD bringing out RAMLink in 1991, a later recollection that agrees with the manual's schedule.[10]

A further news item in Twin Cities 128 issue 29 concerned two Dr. Evil Laboratories products, the SwiftLink-232 and the SID Symphony stereo cartridge: from 1 January 1991 buyers of new units dealt with CMD, while units already sold remained under Dr. Evil's warranty.[13] That arrangement concerned another firm's products and is not evidence about the ownership of CMD's own drive line.[13]

Later products appear only in passing in the sources used here. A 1997 Commodore World contributor recounted that the SuperCPU accelerator for the 64, first expected in February, did not ship until August, and called Fellows CMD's other founder.[10] The 1999 issue 25 price list still offered CMD FD floppy drives, the SuperCPU 64 and 128 with SuperRAM options, and a CMD 1750XL memory expander that the advertisement said would be dropped because its controller chips were running out.[5]

Distribution and Commodore World

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In the early 1990s CMD sold directly by telephone from East Longmeadow and also through dealers, and its manuals pointed customers to a support area on Q-Link as well as to the company's own dial-up bulletin board.[1][14] Twin Cities 128 printed a toll-free order number for CMD and mentioned weekly online conferences with Cotton on QuantumLink.[13]

Commodore World began with Volume 1, Number 1, dated 15 April 1994.[4] In the first editorial, Cotton explained the move into publishing by pointing to the end of RUN and to Compute's Gazette switching to a disk-based format, which in CMD's view left room for another printed magazine.[4] The mastheads give the publisher as Creative Micro Designs at 15 Benton Drive, East Longmeadow, with subscriptions handled through the firm's post-office box.[7][5] An undated subscription flyer offered eight issues a year for US$29.95 in the United States and asked for cheques to be made out to Creative Micro Designs.[15] The magazine also carried CMD's own price lists, which serve as the main catalogue evidence for the later product range.[5]

Exit from the Commodore market

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The latest Commodore World issue consulted, number 25, carries a 1999 copyright notice and still lists both CMD HD drives and RAMLink units for sale.[5] In July 2001 the users' group newsletter Commodore MaiLink reproduced a short CMD notice. It invited offers for CMD's leftover parts and stock and for the right to produce its designs, and named 1 June 2001 as the date after which no new orders for its Commodore products would be accepted.[6]

The same issue carried an article by Maurice Randall of Click Here Software Co., whom the newsletter linked with Wheels and geoFAX. Under the deal he described as being finalised, Click Here would hold the licence for the whole of CMD's Commodore product line and would build and sell it; CMD would also hand over the orders it had received at the end of May.[6] This is the buyer's own account, written before the purchase was complete; Randall was still about $10,000 short. He planned to move all of CMD's Commodore material to his shop in Charlotte, Michigan, and put CMD's withdrawal down to the time demands of its current business. In his words, "CMD is getting out completely."[6]

A report on the Chicago Commodore Expo of 8 September, printed in the November 2001 issue, described Randall showing CMD test models, prototypes and early products and referred to his acquisition of CMD's Commodore line as having gone ahead.[16] These are reports from the buyer and a users' group newsletter rather than a contract or registry record; no source consulted gives the final terms, and none says that Creative Micro Designs itself was dissolved.[6][16]

CMD HD series

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Design and models

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The CMD HD was an external hard drive for the Commodore 64 and 128 built around a SCSI mechanism. The manual explains that a SCSI drive carries its own controller processor, unlike the "dumb" drives used with separate controllers on IBM-compatible machines, and credits that design for letting the HD also serve Amiga, IBM-compatible or Macintosh computers.[17] Inside, the drive's own Commodore-side controller used a 6502A processor at 2 MHz with two 6522A chips, an 8255, 64 KB of RAM, a 16 KB ROM and a clock chip kept running by a battery.[18]

The specification appendix lists typical capacities of more than 20, 40, 100 and 200 million bytes for the HD-20, HD-40, HD-100 and HD-200.[18] Twin Cities 128 reported a price cut on the same four models, with the HD-20 falling from $599.95 to $499.95.[13] By 1999 the Commodore World price list showed a different line-up: an HD-40 at a call-for-price figure and HD-170, HD-500, HD-1000 and HD-2000 models labelled as special editions.[5] Because the two lists come from different years, neither should be taken as the complete set of models ever sold.[13][5]

Connections

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The HD attached to the computer's standard serial bus with an ordinary serial cable and had two serial sockets, so it could sit anywhere in a chain of drives and printers.[19] The rear panel also had an auxiliary port that the 1991 firmware left unused; CMD said a future version would turn it into a spooling printer port.[19] A separate parallel port was meant for a cable to RAMLink, which CMD presented as the route to the drive's top transfer speed.[19] The device number was stored in software rather than set by switches: it shipped as 12, could be moved anywhere from 8 to 29, and fell back to 30 if the system would not load.[19]

A DB-25 SCSI socket wired like the Macintosh connector accepted up to six further SCSI devices, which had to be powered separately, and the manual put the largest possible system at 4 GB.[19] The internal controller took SCSI ID 7, which could be changed in software, while the built-in mechanism was fixed at ID 0 unless a jumper inside the case was moved, an action the manual warned would void the warranty.[19] Added drives had to be registered with a supplied utility and low-level formatted before use.[19]

Partitions and DOS behaviour

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CMD's HD DOS divided the storage into as many as 254 user partitions of four kinds: native, emulation, print buffer and foreign.[20] Native partitions ranged from 256 to 65,280 blocks, reaching about 16 MB, and were the only type with real subdirectories.[20][18] Emulation partitions copied the track, sector, directory and block-availability layout of a Commodore 1541, a 1571 or a 1581, including a separate 1581 CP/M type, so that software expecting a particular floppy format would find it.[20] The manual is explicit that the drive did not reproduce the hardware or firmware memory maps of those floppy drives, because doing so would have made the HD too costly.[20] CMD claimed support for GEOS, CP/M, the standard Commodore disk commands and every serial transfer mode with burst operation. Its feature list also mentions clock-based date stamps on stored files and a write-protect switch mounted at the front.[17]

Upgrades and limits

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HD DOS lived in a system partition on the drive itself, so updates were installed from floppy disk.[21] The manual separates two tools: the REWRITE DOS programs replace the operating system and keep stored files, while CREATE SYS rebuilds the system partition from scratch and wipes every file on the drive.[21] CMD reserved CREATE SYS for cases where rewriting the DOS had failed; it was run with the drive held in Install Mode, and the partitions then had to be set up again.[21] RAMLink imposed a further condition: parallel use required HD DOS 1.64 or later, and owners of older drives were told to install the newer version from the RAMLink utilities disk with REWRITE DOS before setting up.[22]

Independent reviews

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Two outside writers tested early drives. For the August/September 1990 RUN, contributing editor John Ryan reviewed an HD-40; the series then came in 20, 40 and 100 MB sizes.[8] Ryan judged the HD not "100 percent Commodore compatible": titles with disk-based copy protection would not run on it, fast-load cartridges and drive-reprogramming software could not be copied to it, and BASIC 7.0 commands sometimes caused problems, although GEOS, CP/M and the many unprotected programs he tried gave little trouble.[8] His timing table for a 105-block file showed loads of 108.20 seconds from a 1541 against about 44 seconds from HD partitions in 64 mode, and in 128 mode about 4.2 seconds from the HD against 6.63 seconds from a 1571 and 5.25 seconds from a 1581.[8] In his reading the gain shrank for 1571- and 1581-style partitions and in 128 mode, and the serial HD could not match Xetec's Lt. Kernal.[8] He also recorded limits of the early software: GEOS could not yet boot from the drive, formatting HD partitions was difficult with CP/M system disks dated before May 1987, deleting a partition could keep the HD Tools program busy for up to 25 minutes, and HD Tools had no 128-mode version.[8]

Loren Lovhaug's overview in Twin Cities 128 issue 28, dated 5 September 1990, opens with an editor's apology. Readers who ordered drives after the issue 27 cover story had found many described features missing from the first shipping HD DOS; the magazine had previewed a "beta-test" version, and a later complete release supplied them.[9] Sidplayer 128, IPaint and Bible Search ran without problems in native partitions, while emulation partitions handled almost all the C128-mode software tried, among them direct-access titles such as Superbase 128, GEOS and Big Blue Reader.[9] Lovhaug contrasted the design with the Lt. Kernal: the HD, like Commodore's floppy drives, kept its DOS in the drive, which took commands over the command channel and processed them itself.[9]

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Purpose and design

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RAMLink was a large cartridge that plugged into the cartridge slot of a Commodore 64 or 128.[7] Its central task, in CMD's description, was to make memory look like a disk drive: the 1700, 1764 and 1750 expanders sold by Commodore, and the GEORAM from Berkeley Softworks, gained a drive-style operating system that ordinary programs could address.[2] According to the manual, it could also act as a memory expander on its own, keep its contents while the computer was off, supply the computer-side JiffyDOS routines for both machines, provide a parallel link to a CMD HD, and pass other cartridges through a second port.[2] The Twin Cities 128 preview noted that RAMLink had no processor of its own, so a press of its SWAP buttons went unnoticed until RAMLink next took control of the computer during a serial bus access.[13]

Memory configurations

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Internal memory came from an optional daughterboard called the RAMCard. A unit could hold only one RAMCard, carrying up to four SIMMs of either 1 MB or 4 MB; the two sizes could not be mixed, and the maximum was 16 MB.[14] Owners could pool RAMCard memory with an expander in the RAM port, or use them separately.[14] A separate power supply kept the memory alive when the computer was switched off, and an optional external battery, kept outside the case, protected the contents for a period that the manual put at a few hours to about a day, depending on how much memory was fitted.[14][13] Commodore World added that a real-time clock could be fitted to the RAMCard.[7]

The 1999 price list sold RAMLink as a base model with no RAMCard and as versions fitted with 1 MB, 4 MB or 16 MB RAMCards, alongside a RAMCard clock kit, a battery back-up and a parallel cable for the HD.[5] The HD manual had earlier priced the base model at $149.95 and the parallel cable at $14.95.[3]

Host and expansion compatibility

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The preview singled out one class of cartridge as a problem in the pass-through port: any that substitutes its own KERNAL for the computer's on a lasting basis would probably still work, at the cost of switching RAMLink off. Otherwise CMD reported broad compatibility in its own trials across the 64 and 128 range.[13] Named examples included Super Snapshot, SwiftLink-232 and the Vizastar and Partner programs.[13] On the 128D, the RAMLink reset button did not reset the built-in 1571 drive.[13] A front-panel switch selected Normal or Direct use of the RAM port, the latter letting programs reach an attached expansion unit directly.[7][13] The manual told owners to switch off or remove JiffyDOS or any other replacement KERNAL chip in the computer before fitting RAMLink, warning that some such chips could stop the machine working with it at all.[22]

Parallel connection and speed claims

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With HD DOS 1.64 or later installed, an HD could be cabled to RAMLink's rear parallel port so that transfers bypassed the serial bus.[22] For that link the RAMLink manual quotes about 51 KB/s when the computer runs as a 64 and about 100 KB/s in native C128 operation.[14] The Twin Cities 128 preview, co-written by Cotton, compared about 25 KB per second over the serial bus with JiffyDOS against about 100 KB per second over the parallel cable, without separating the two computer modes.[13] A Commodore World guide called RAM-disk access "almost instantaneous".[7] All of these figures and descriptions come from CMD, from material co-written by its staff or from CMD's own magazine; no independent measurement of RAMLink transfer speed was found for this article, so they are best treated as manufacturer claims.[14][13][7]

Evidence and open questions

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The sources leave several gaps. The founding year depends on CMD's own publications, the model lists are snapshots from particular years, the independent HD tests found here date from 1990 and early firmware, RAMLink's speed figures were not independently tested in the material reviewed, and the 2001 handover to Click Here Software is documented only by the buyer's article and a users' group report.[10][13][5][8][14][6][16]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Copyright Notice; Section 1, Introduction and Features, p. 1-1; Orders and Information, p. 1-4. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 “CMD RamLink Users Manual”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Section 1, Introduction and Main Functions, p. 1-1. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 1, Accessories, pp. 1-2 to 1-4. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 “Commodore World Issue 01”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1994-04-15). Masthead, Volume 1, Number 1; From The Editor, p. 2. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 “Commodore World Issue 25”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1999). Masthead; CMD price list, Hard Drives and RAM Devices; CMD 1750XL 2 Megabyte REU notice. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 “Commodore Mail Link Newsletter Issue 4 From July 2001”. Meeting 64/128 Users Through the Mail; Internet Archive(2001-07). Meeting News, p. 3; Click Here Software Company Buys Entire CMD Commodore Line, by Maurice Randall, pp. 19-20. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 “Commodore World Issue 08”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Masthead, Volume 2, Number 3; Commodore World's Guide To RAM Expansion, CMD's RAMLink (VSD). Accessed 2026-10-17.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 “Run Magazine Issue 79”. RUN; Internet Archive(August/September 1990). Hard-Drivin' News, by John Ryan, pp. 22-24, including Table 1, p. 24. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 “Twin Cities 128 Issue 28”. Twin Cities 128; Internet Archive(1990-09-05). Overview of The Creative Micro Designs Hard Disk, by Loren Lovhaug, including the Editor's Note, p. 26. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 “Commodore World Issue 19”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1997). Masthead; Commodore's Main Distributor, p. 12, including the Author's Note. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 “CMD RamLink Users Manual”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Section 1, Acknowledgements, p. 1-4. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  12. ↑ “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 1, Acknowledgments, p. 1-5. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 13.15 “Twin Cities 128 Issue 29”. Twin Cities 128; Internet Archive. RAMLink Preview, by Doug Cotton with Loren Lovhaug; So Where Can You By That Big, Fast Drive Now?; Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Heart of East Longmeadow, MA?. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 “CMD RamLink Users Manual”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Section 1, Accessories: RAMCard, SIMMs, Battery Backup and Parallel HD Cable, pp. 1-2 to 1-3; Orders and Information, p. 1-3. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  15. ↑ “Commodore World Magazine - Info/subscription flyer”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Subscription order form. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 “Commodore Mail Link Newsletter Issue 6 From November 2001”. Meeting 64/128 Users Through the Mail; Internet Archive(2001-11). Chicago Commodore Expo, by Linda Tanner, pp. 7-9, including Commodore/CMD History 101, p. 9. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 1, Features, p. 1-1, and About Hard Drives, p. 1-2. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Appendix I, Drive Specifications, p. I-1; Section 2, Miscellaneous Notes, The Real Time Clock Battery, p. 2-5. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 2, Connections, p. 2-1; Connecting Additional Drives, p. 2-5; Section 3, Default Device Number, p. 3-1; Auxiliary Port and Parallel Port, p. 3-7. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 4, Partitions, p. 4-1; Native Mode Partitions, p. 4-1; Emulation Mode Partitions, p. 4-2. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 “CMD HD Manual Remaster”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive(1991-01). Section 2, Upgrades and HD DOS Installation, p. 2-3; Section 3, Install Mode, p. 3-6. Accessed 2026-10-17.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 “CMD RamLink Users Manual”. Creative Micro Designs, Inc.; Internet Archive. Section 2, Before you Begin, HD Owners and HD Parallel Hookup. Accessed 2026-10-17.

Automation and sourcing note

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This article was independently synthesized from the cited sources under c64.wiki publication policy. Historical manuals and source archives were used as citation-only factual evidence; no source prose, code, images, scans, or screenshots were copied into the candidate.

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