Creative Micro Designs

The title of this article is ambiguous. CMD (Disambiguation).

Creative Micro Designs

Founded	1987
Closed
Headquarters	East Longmeadow, MA, USA
Manager	Charles A. Christianson, Mark Fellows (Founder)
Employees
Key People (choice)	Mark Fellows, Doug Cotton
Turnover
Sector	Hardware, Software
Website	http://www.cmdweb.com/
Information	2001: Closed the selling and support of Commodore products.

Creative Micro Designs (CMD) was founded by Mark Fellows and Charles A. Christianson in 1987. Today the company name is CMD Technology Group, not to be confused with www.creativemicrodesigns.com (www.cmdfab.com).

The company started by developing and selling hardware peripherals for Commodore computers. The first products included a hardware floppy fast loader and the floppy OS JiffyDOS. At the close of C64 production by Commodore CMD bought the distribution rights of the OS GEOS from Berkeley Softworks.

In 2001 CMD discontinued selling and supporting Commodore products. From 2001 until 2009 distribution was taken over by Maurice Randall's company Click Here Software; Randall is the programmer of the GEOS upgrade "Wheels". Starting in 2006 posters to online C64 discussion forums commented on problems with distribution by Click Here Software.

Since 2010 the JiffyDOS product series has been sold by Jim Brain's company RETRO Innovations.

Company History[edit | edit source]

1985: Mark Fellows developed JiffyDOS.
1986: Starting in autumn 1986 JiffyDOS was offered via small ads in computer magazines, firstly under the company name 'Fellos, Inc.
1987: In autumn '87 Fellows founded the company Creative Micro Designs along with Charles A. Christianson.
1988: By now CMD had become a full time job for the founders.
1989: JiffyDOS version 6 was published in the summer. CMD started a new project: Developing a hard disk drive for Commodore home computers based on SCSI-HDDs.
1990: The delivery of the first HDDs HD-Series (20 MByte until 4 GByte) was started).
1991: Acquisition of SwiftLink (a high speed RS-232 interface), which was developed by Dr. Evil Labs, and SID Symphony (an extra SID chip cartridge for the expansion port and stereo sound for the C64/128).
1992: Developing and selling of the disk drive CMD FD-2000 (1.6 MByte), that is compatible with the 1581.
1993: Publishing of utility disks for CMD and Commodore devices. Selling of the new mouse "SmartMouse" with 3 buttons, which is compatible with the Commodore mouse 1351.
1994: Starting the production of the 2+1 Expansions Port Expander from the company Skyles Electric Works. In April the publishing of the CMD computer magazine Commodore World was started. From August the track ball "SmartTrack" was sold, which is compatible with the "SmartMouse". A computer and device repair service was opened.
1995: Production start of the expansion port switch EX3, because the costs of the "2+1 Expansions Port Expander" were too high.
1996: The CMD SuperCPU 64 for the C64 with a 20 MHz 65816 CPU and upgradable to a maximum of 16 MByte RAM was sold.
1997: The SuperRAM-Card enhanced a C64/128 to a maximum of 16 MByte RAM in combination with a SuperCPU 64. The SuperCPU 128 was sold.
1999: The computer magazine Commodore World was taken over by the German publisher CSW-Verlag.
2001: Discontinuation of sales and distribution of Commodore products.

Products[edit | edit source]

SuperCPU - 20 MHz turbo cartridge with CPU 65816 for C64/C128
FD Series:
- FD-2000 - 1581 compatible 3.5"-floppy disk drive, HD floppy disks are usable (1.6 MByte capacity with native mode)
- FD-4000 - also 1581 compatible, supports also ED floppy disks (maximum: 3.2 MBytes)
CMD-HD - SCSI controller and hard disk drive (maximum: 4 GByte)
JiffyDOS - Hardware floppy speeder on chips.
RAMLink - RAM disk drive, that is used like a normal Commodore floppy disk drive (maximum: 16 MByte)
SmartMouse/SmartTrack - Mouse 1351 with three buttons and RTC, and track ball models.
SwiftLink/Turbo232 - serial RS232
1750 XL - 2 MByte REU - compatible RAM disk drive