I know it's weird but I still miss disk drives, the satisfying clicks and whirring noises

A tip on lubricating the spindle like you did... You have to use some caution applying lubricant to the spindle. It has to be able to grip the floppy disk when it spins. So if you get lubricant in the wrong place, the disk won't grip right, and so it won't spin correctly. It didn't look like you had this problem, but it's something to watch out for when working with the 5 1/4" drives.

I really enjoyed your video :) - 1541 always reminds me of these stuffed monkey's my mother and I used to make. We sold them at local festivals to pay for one back in the day (it was $400-$500 dollars as I recall - I really only recently appreciated the sacrifice that must have been to get it).

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+SkuldChan42 Thanks! Yeah, the 1541 was more expensive than the C64 in the beginning, I think. I was lucky and got my father's old drive for Christmas when he moved to Amiga in 1987 or 88.

I’d like to make a recommendation to anyone working on a floppy drive like this and needs to lubricate something. You should never apply lubricant from an aerosol can, even with a straw. You know how it goes: you try to press the cap very lightly and suddenly it sprays at full force. That can get oil on the head, which can be cleaned off, but if it gets on the felt load pad on the spring arm, it will soak in and you’ll never get that oil out and it will contaminate any disk you ever put in there. If all you have is aerosol oil, spray it on a cotton swab a good distance away from the drive and then rub it on where you need it to go, or spray a good amount into a bottle of some kind and use an eye dropper.

Thanks for the Ray Carlsen link. Invaluable info there.

This video was really helpful! I just got my first 1541 in the mail today and it was really cheap because the seller said it failed to read disks. All I did was clean the head and lubricate it and it came back to life. I had no good floppies to test with but the alignment check I loaded with my SD2IEC said it's 0% in alignment, I tried to format a disk and noticed it stopped about halfway instead of failing instantly, which according to Ray Carlsens text guide meant that the floppy was bad or the head had intermittent problems. Well, turns out the floppy I tried was bad. It formatted perfectly on another disk and it actually worked! So happy to have a real drive now, some demos wont work on a SD2IEC and I don't have one of the other more expensive devices that emulate a 1541 perfectly, so a real drive is definitely the best way to go!

@JanBeta

4 жыл бұрын

Nice! Glad I could help bringing your 1541 back to life. Nothing like the real thing. ;)

Thanks Jan, just picked up an SX-64 and it's 1541 doesn't sound too health... this video is very helpful 👍

Another great fix! A welcome success after your "crappy day at work" -- I caught that Tweet the other day. That is one handy little box of old ICs you have -- contains just the right replacements -- perfect. To be clear, did you leave the replacement 6522 inserted? Was the suspect one actually faulty? Yes, I would replace the electrolytic caps as a preventative measure, as well -- perhaps with ceramic caps. ;) Kidding, of course. On another note, I really like the way you present your videos with the various camera angles, close-ups, wide shots, etc. Well done.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+MindFlareRetro Thanks! Yes, the little box o'chips is very handy. Got it from my father who used to tinker with his Commodore stuff a lot back in the 80s. The 6522 is fine actually. Changed it back to the original one. The little 7406 was the culprit. Maybe I'll do another short vid on recapping and maintenance in a few days. :)

The man for commodore stuff is Bil Herd.

Most informative video I have seen on repairing these units - thanks!

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! There's another 1541 video coming up in the next weeks/months where I (hopefully) adjust it and do some more restoration work on it.

@ModernRetroGaming1972

7 жыл бұрын

Awesome - looking forward to it. Would any spray lubricant be good or does it have to be silicon based? We have something here in the States called WD-40 and wanted to make sure that would be OK to lube the motor like you did in this video.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+Iced_Nine If you are veeeery careful, WD-40 should be okay for the motor. The problem with it is that it dissolves plastics over time so I always use silicon or lithium based lubricants for these sensitive devices.

@ModernRetroGaming1972

7 жыл бұрын

duly noted - I want to do it right and make sure it lasts, so I think I will go with a silicon based lube as used in your video. Many thanks, Jan!

Hah, i recall my parents paying some $800 from a personal loan for this drive and i paid back the loan from a news paper route thru the winter ... that was tough! Going to peoples door in the night at 14yrs of age begging them to pay their news paper subscription. Ah the stuff that newspaper empires are built on ... child labour. I'm strangely greatefull.

@ssdravidian

3 жыл бұрын

I washed cars....to buy me some goodies back in the day....

Nice one. Btw, the recommended order is to turn on the 1541 first, C64 last. The shutdown procedure would be reversed I guess: C64 first, 1541 last. Your VIAs and CIAs would be grateful. :)

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! You're right! I tend to forget that there's a right order for that and do it differently every time. :/

@billsandiego3385

6 жыл бұрын

Rodger Phillips Is it bad If you turn off the drive before the computer? I knew about the computer being last, but never heard about it being first off.

@Ryges

6 жыл бұрын

Bill Sandiego yeah, the computer is the boss: last one to meet in and the first to leave 😂

@saroku

5 жыл бұрын

this is absolutely correct

@dave_7235

3 жыл бұрын

I know this is an old video at this point, but the way my computer class teacher made us remember this (probably around 1985 or 86) was : For Power Up - My (Monitor) Dear (Drive) Computer (C-64). For Power Down - Computer (C-64) Don't (Drive) Move (Monitor). Silly, I know, but I remember it 35 years later, so I guess it worked! ;) I have no idea if that memory trick would work well if translated to German though. :)

Great job! I have a similar 1541 that blew up with fire and smoke in the mains area. Never dared to try and fix it, but maybe I should! Thank for keeping the dreams alive :-)

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+Arrayzable Uh. Fire and smoke doesn't sound nice. Maybe quite an easy fix, though. Probably either one of the caps or one of the voltage regulators blew up. Which would be a visible fault. I highly recommend Ray Carlsen's guides I linked to. Go for it! :D

@ArrayzableMusic

7 жыл бұрын

Jan Beta Thanks for the advice. I might have a go at it.

YOUR THE MOST PERSISTENT TECH IVE EVER SEING KEEP UP GOOD WORK I ONCE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE A CB RADIO 27 MHZ THAT WAS LEFT IN A DRAIN IN WATER I FIXED IT AFTER REPLACING CRYSTAL FILTER IF CIRCUIT I WAS HAPPY MY BOSS COULDNT BELEIVE I FIXED IT... I LEFT HIM FEELING BAD HE COULDNT FIX IT I DID......BYE JAN

Excellent video that will help me soon. Just got two 1541 drives, 1 works perfect, the 2nd has this same issue. Thanks for the link to Ray Carlsen

@JanBeta

5 жыл бұрын

Glad to help. :) Fingers crossed for your repair!

I still have an old Commodore 2031 drive out in the garage. But it has a 16-wire parallel interface known as the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB or IEEE-488). 8 wires were used as a bidirectional data transfer bus and the other 8 are the ground plus 7 control lines. I still remember that one of the control lines was "ATN" which needed to be brought low in order to signal the drive that you were about to send a command, and then you needed to wait for the acknowledgement on another control line before sending a command byte. I managed to construct an interface circuit to pair the drive with my "Super-80" which was a kit computer, not to be confused with the System-80 which was a Dick Smith Electronics copy of the TRS-80. But there was an ongoing problem. The problem I had with the drive, and which I never solved, is that after being used for a while it would suddenly be unable to read the disk. Reformat the disk and it would work again for a while and then stop working again. And before you say "loose read/write head" that was the first thing I thought of and when I checked it, all the screws were tight and the head won't move except as it's supposed to in response to the stepper motor to make it seek to different tracks. I might pull the drive out of the garage some time and have another go at finding the problem. Now that I think about it, track misalignment would be the next thing to check. Maybe the track alignment mechanism was slightly loose all this time. Edit: I had the model number wrong so the first paragraph has been edited to correct that. I've also gone and hauled the drive out of the garage. Believe it or not, I discovered that I'd stored it with its cardboard head protector in place. Unfortunately, the cardboard is so badly deteriorated that I won't be able to use it again.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Oh, the old drives were monsters. Would love to tinker with one of them. I don't really know enough about them to have a clue at what's wrong with yours. Could be a variety of things I guess. It must be some misalignement issue if it works for a while. Did you try aligning it with an oscilloscope?

@ethanpoole3443

6 жыл бұрын

With failures that only occur after some power on time, be suspicious of possible poor or broken solder joints, cracked PCB or traces, or sometimes an IC will develop an internal fault and stop working after it gets hot (due to thermal expansion), then resumes working again after it cools off, which you can test by chilling the the ICs one by one (just use an inverted canned air duster and freeze each chip one at a time). However, because you say reformatting seems to fix things for awhile, that may suggest you have a tracking issue allowing the head to become misaligned relative to the tracks laid out on the disk when it was last formatted. This could be a fault in the tracking motor and its assembly or a failure to send all the proper stepping commands.

@timrichter1980

6 жыл бұрын

I can highly recommend to sign up on the german forum64.de even if you don't speak german. There is a user named 'axorp', he was the official commodore service man in germany in the 80s. He is happy to help especially with those pre C64 devices. Don't know if he speaks english, but there were english people before on the board, no problem, and it is a very friendly board/forum. My name is 'mczero' there, if you want help because of translation or something, I am happy to help.

Every 1541 I see on KZread is this model, with the same colour as the breadbin and the same locking mechanism. I had a C64c coloured 1541 with the lever that turned and not this kind of locking mechanism. Seems rare now!

Did you replace all the electrolytics inside it? Also, do you know of a way to protect the VIAs better on the motherboard? I also had to remind myself which order to turn these on and off with the C64..

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

No, the electrolytics in this one are still the originals. I don't really know a way to protect the VIAs (except it makes sense to put heat sinks on them).

Helpfull indeed! Thanks.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Thank you. :)

Hi Jan, schönes Video :-) von dieser 1541 habe ich auch noch einige. Ich mag diese Version der 1541. Ich mag das Regenbogenlogo und den Schnappmechanismus des Alps-Laufwerkes :-) Kleiner Hinweis: Ich hätte sicherhaltshalber noch den Riemen getauscht. Das werde ich jetzt demnächst bei meinen 1541'er machen, da ich im Moment im Riemen austausch Modus (Tapedecks, Walkman, VHS-Video Recorder, Schneider CPC464) bin ;-)

Hi Jan, I have a 1541 disk drive, but the door that shuts it comes down from the left. For some reason, the door won't close and actually moves clockwise. Im afraid to open it as I don't know what I'm doing. Do you think it's just something small wrong with it? thanks.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Could just be a loose screw on the mechanism. There's not much that can go wrong if you open it and have a look. The mechanism is pretty easy to understand when you see it. It might also be the lever that's not stuck on there correctly (or part of the plastic is missing) but the only way to find out is to have a look I think.

So you can touch those big capacitors (26:45). I assumed it was unsafe. Can you confirm it's safe on any 1541? Thanks (PS: I have a squeaky 1541C I need to inspect).

Hi Jan ! Maybe you can help me. Where can I find a proper video tutorial explaining how to align a 1571 drive head? I did not find any proper video, showing the stepper motor screws and how you work with them.... Or better, maybe you can make a video explaining the whole process... I have got the Free Spirit head alignment utility Disk....

Hello! Great video! I am wondering if you ever discovered what was causing the 1541 to squeak during disk rotation? It can be heard near the end of this video. My drive makes the same noise and I'm wondering what I need to lubricate? Thanks!

@danedewaard8215

5 жыл бұрын

Hello again, I figured I would reply to myself since I found what needed to be lightly oiled! It was the disk centering spindle shaft, topside! Just a tiny nano drip of light oil on the shaft. That should cure your noise also, but this post is more than year later so I'm sure you have moved on by now. Thanks for your videos and you can save your reply!

@WinrichNaujoks

4 жыл бұрын

@@danedewaard8215 My 1541 is making squeaky noises to, when the head reaches a certain position. Where exactly is that spindle shaft you mentioned?

@danedewaard8215

4 жыл бұрын

@@WinrichNaujoks The shaft of the puck above the disc that clamps it onto the motor driven spindle needs a very very small amount of oil. Not to much or it will get your disks oily.

You sir are a Commodore wizard.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Haha, thank you! :) I heavily relied on Ray Carlsen's work (who is the real Commodore wizard) for this though. Check out some of his troubleshooting guides (linked in the description). Brilliant stuff.

What motor is that? It looks quite a bit different from the motor in my 1541 (a Copal LC-177B). I'm wondering because I think my motor is shot, and I need a replacement.

I just picked one up with some software boxes in mint condition from a friends attic. The Computer works fine, but the Drive isn't spinning when a disk is inserted. Stepping motor moves the head back and forth, and if I don't put a disk in there but type a command to load, the spindle motor does turn. Probably need a new belt and lube it while in there.

great video - thats interesting about the head - I used to buy single sided disks cut a notch on the side and flip them over so both sides of a disk stored data. Worked brilliantly! however I'm curious as people said disk manufacturers only guaranteed one side for quality, etc - I'm curious now which side of the disk did they mean? or did all disk manufacturers read/write the same side of a single sided disk

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

I think the "backside" would have been the standard side to write on for single sided disks. Otherwise they would have had to specify for which systems a disk works every time to avoid trouble. ;) That aside, I also used single sided disks from both sides back in the day and it worked most of the time.

Hi Jan. Great video! I've got very similar problems to you. I've got to the point of replacing the 7406 (the existing one was faulty) but after the disk spin up and red led going out I still have the "searching for" prompt and no activity😦 when trying to load something. Testing the new 7406 in circuit I am seeing 0v on both pins 13 and 12 after drive initiation. That doesn't seem right? The 7414 looks correct (e.g. each not gate is the inverse). I'm running out of ideas after replacing 6502 and 6522s...! Rom gets hot, but can see data lines looking busy. Ideas anyone?!

Congrats! I had the same system in the 80s but did not keep it. Would have been fun if i had. I enjoy your videos and the music you play when fast forwarding.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+DirtyDon RC Thanks! Made the music myself. :) I also didn't keep my original system I had in the 80s/early 90s. Just came back to the C64 very recently. Amazing machine!

Hallo Jan, ich habe gesehen das du Jiffy Dos hast. Wo hast du das gekauft? danke und lg Rolf

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Die legalen Jiffy ROM-Images gibt es hier: store.go4retro.com/categories/Commodore/Firmware/JiffyDOS/ Du kannst da auch ein fertiges EPROM kaufen (Versand wird aber vermutlich teuer).

@grave8digger8

6 жыл бұрын

Vielen Dank. Dann sind die 8 Dollar pro Rom ( C64 und 1541) der downloadpreis ohne Zoll :)

I wonder if it would be possible to replace all the circuitry on an original 1541 with a CPLD or something else similarly modern (to fully reproduce it) - but with full ram expansion built in.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

I think it would be absolutely possible (although I am unable to do it). The 1541 Ultimate emulates the whole machine cycle exact so I guess you could use portions of that and attach the real drive mechanism to it.

@menotu000

6 жыл бұрын

exactly what I was thinking. The drive mechanism would be easy to replicate since it's just a dumb mechanism and all the control logic is on the board. I think the only thing you might have trouble finding is a suitable replacement drive head. Everything else could likely be 3D printed (as far as the mechanism itself goes). I think it would be useful to be able to replicate the 1541 particularly and since we could reproduce the whole board as a simple CPLD, it would be considerably smaller physically.

hi jan u have that nice tablemat or placemate...do u have a link of it?

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Oh, I don't remember where I got mine exactly. You can search for "cutting mat" and it should bring up a variety of colors and shapes of these things. Hope that helps!

Great job ... Always . different Germany 🇩🇪..well done .

My brother and i were trying to figure out the same thing happening with his 1541 tonight. After watching this video im almost certain its the same issue as yours 7406. Will have to try find one....

How come you have the Philips logo partially covered up on your monitor?

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

It's just a silly joke of mine. I sometimes cover up huge brand names with tape because I find them annoying and distracting and realized that just leaving "lips" would be fun in this case.

Haha....sniffing your 1541drive! Do you recommend to recap the 1541 drive?

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

I like the smell of disk drives in the morning... Yes, definitely would recommend recapping. These run pretty hot so the caps are under constant stress. The large ones will probably be fine (although it wouldn't hurt to replace them, too) but the smaller ones are likely to fail anytime.

@NiekkieNick

6 жыл бұрын

Hahaha.....you must have seen the movie Full Metal Jacket :-) There are a lot of these caps in the 1541. Not sure which capacity they have. Is the capacity printed on each cap or is it printed on the board?

Great video =D Those metal canned components on the heat sink there are voltage regulators, not transistors! Still watching at the moment!

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+GadgetUK164 Thanks! Oh, yes. That makes more sense. :D

@GadgetUK164

7 жыл бұрын

I often refer to caps as resistors, and vice versa - easy mistake to make when you are thinking about 10 things at once lol =D

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

GadgetUK164 Yeah, making these repair videos AND actually repairing stuff is quite difficult sometimes. I also often confuse the languages and have to think about the right English word for a component for a while. ;)

@GadgetUK164

7 жыл бұрын

No worries - I do understand the language can also be the barrier! Hats off to you central europeans for speaking english as well as your native language - us brits often just speak english, and I can't speak english very well most of the time lol!

I just got a 1571 disk drive. I cleaned the heads and oiled the drive. When I turn on the computer and type printDS$ I get message 73. When I try to load the directory I get 27 Read Error,18,00. Any help would be appreciated. I’m not very good with electronics

One more question: can I plug German 1541 to European (220-240v ac) socket?

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Yes you can. The German 1541 is set to 220V from factory. The voltage in Germany has been raised to 230V for years now and my drives still work flawlessly. If you want to put less stress on the voltage regulators, you can rewire the transformer. The connections for 230/240V are there (there are some tutorials online on how to do it). I yet have to do that to my 1541. In the meantime, they work absolutely fine with the voltage slightly off.

@MrProfesorek15

6 жыл бұрын

Ok, thanks a lot!

Hi, meine 1541 hat ein Problem, welches ich leider nicht gelöst bekomme. meine 1541 geht an, der Motor dreht aber dauerhaft, die rote LED geht aus, die 1541 nimmt aber keine Befehle vom C64 an. Wäre zu schade zum wegwerfen, weil keine Vergilbungen und in OVP Hi, I also have a problem with my 1541, which I cannot solve. It turns on normaly, the motor spins continuously, the red LED turns off, but it doesn't react on commands send from the C64.

Hi, I'm about to get a 1541. Can I use my PC power cable to power 1541? Thanks a lot for your responce!

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+Wojciech Jakubowicz Yes, it uses a standard IEC cable. :)

@MrProfesorek15

6 жыл бұрын

Sorry, no serial IEC, but power from the wall ;)

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+Wojciech Jakubowicz Yes, that's what I meant, too. The standard power connector on your PC is called IEC (the one with the three pins). Same on the 1541. Sorry for the confusion. :D

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+Jan Beta It has a standard one like this: goo.gl/images/xeXHES

@MrProfesorek15

6 жыл бұрын

Jan Beta ok, thanks you helped me a lot!

HI JAN THE CAPSTAN MOTOR VERY IMPORTANT .AND ITS SIMILIAR TO VCR .....ANY WAY GOOOD JOB

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks Ross! :)

You replaced the 6522 after you swapped them, so it looked like you replaced the ic that worked to spin up.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

TheDefpom Oh, didn't realize that. This is edited quite heavily so maybe I left out a part or confused something. I think after swapping them I removed one of the 6522s completely and it spun up fine without it so I replaced the one I removed with a spare one.

Can't remember which was quicker - my C2N datasette or my mates 1541 disk drive. Both horribly slow, but the loading music and graphics made it all worth it. Now I have 3 disk drives, 2 x 1541-II units (one which has buggered heads, the other works perfectly) and a 1571 which I MUST return to my friend (borrowed it to troubleshoot my 1541-II busted head model (prior didn't have the second 1541-II, only recently came into posession of it)

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Haha, yeah, these are painfully slow even compared to other drives of the time. Datasettes were even slower but awesome. Didn't dare to get hold of one (again) yet though. ;)

@dash8brj

7 жыл бұрын

Well my 1541-II just arrived from Ebay - guess its time for me to fire up the '64 and make sure it works. :)

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+dash8brj Fingers crossed!

@dash8brj

7 жыл бұрын

yeah then I will have a backup (and 3 of the bloody things) - one for parts and two working units!)

@SpearM3064

6 жыл бұрын

dash8brj Definitely the disk drive is faster. An unmodified 1541 has a speed of about 512 bytes per second, while the C2N has a speed of about 50 bytes per second. (It's no wonder why speed loading programs or after-market modifications like JiffyDOS were so popular.) It's interesting to note that the 1541 *would* have been faster, but there is a flaw in the 6522 VIA chips. Originally it was to use a hardware shift register to control the data transfer, but the flaw forced Commodore to resort to "bit banging" (using software control), which is slower. Commodore fixed the flaw on the 6526 chips used in the Commodore 64, *but* the board manufacturer accidentally put a screw hole right where one of the traces for the shift register would have been, so you would *still* have had to use bit banging. That's why Commodore never bothered to upgrade the 1541 with the new 6526 chips. We had to wait for the Commodore 128 and the 1571 disk drive for a pair of fully-functional 6526 chips.

Have you tried to put a disc in the drive ? Maybe that helps ?

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+BelieveNoGod Have you tried watching the video? Maybe that helps?

@BelieveNoGod

6 жыл бұрын

Yes I have. I didn't listen very close though. But to me it seemed like you where expecting the drive to continue spinning, without a disc in it.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+BelieveNoGod Oh, okay. It actually should spin up if you send a command to it no matter if you insert a disk or not. Maybe that came across wrongly. Tried with a disk later obviously. ;)

"...aaaand there is still nothing!" - I know that feeling :)

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

A lot of this work is a bit trial-and-error usually. ;)

@FrankieTheFluff

6 жыл бұрын

yes, I agree. But that's for me also the fun in it. And if it's surprisingly working then we feel like heros :))

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Absolutely true. :)

I was an Atari 800xl user in the 80s. I bought a C64 & two 1541 drives because the Commodore had so many games available. I quickly discovered the Commodore disk drive system was junk. Very buggy and slow as dirt....

exciting video. was thinking motor control myself. via, gate array, 7406, or anything in the motot ctrl path. in mine it was an electrolytic shorted on the mtr ctrl signal. need to watch the rest now :)

@bwack

7 жыл бұрын

and it works again, yay :) and now over to bear essentials :D

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! I think I'll replace some of the caps as preventive maintenance.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

\o/ So happy I got it working again. I have a working 1541-II but it just doesn't cut it in terms of awesomeness. ;)

I remain quite confused. I'm not fluent in english and so could'nt understand totally if the solution was the 7406 chip replacement or the power cable because at this moment you do not test them separately.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+Roberto Ventilii Sorry if that remained unclear. This video was quite heavily edited. The 7406 was definitely bad. The power socket was also loose but that didn't cause the initial fault.

nice lcd brand :) "LIPS"

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

Glad that somebody noticed. ;)

@JesusisJesus

4 жыл бұрын

Phil has left the building.

I wonder whether it was the chip or the connector which caused the fault... good debugging though.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks! I don't remember exactly but I think it was a mix of both. Wiggling the connector caused faults but I repaired that and it still failed before I found the faulty logic IC. (It's a bit hard to tell because the video was edited heavily and filmed over a week or so... ;))

@batlin

6 жыл бұрын

A week is pretty good... I have a C64 and tape which work, and a 1541 in a box which I got about 3 years ago and can't test because there's not enough space in our house anymore, as well as two Atari STEs and a Falcon. I'm worried that by the time we move into a bigger place, I will have much more than a week of fixing to do :[ Now, having seen your Futureproofing video, I'm feeling like a new switched power supply is a good idea!

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Oh well, the space problem. Tell me about it. :/ I have most of my computer stuff stored away in the basement and my crammed room at the moment. I really want to get a proper shop or a bigger flat some time... Switched power supplies are the future really. At least they mostly only destroy themselves when they fail. Had an Amiga 500 smps blow up spectacularly some time ago but luckily the computer was not harmed at all. ;)

My spindle won't stop spinning. Oh BTW it loads the floppies fine. I just can't seem to track down why it won't stop spinning. ?

@JanBeta

5 жыл бұрын

If it reads floppies fine it might be normal behavior. If the logic was defective, it most likely wouldn't read anything.

@Liberty309

5 жыл бұрын

@@JanBeta Thanks for the reply Jan. That never occured to me it might be normal. The drive is actually very quiet when reading as well. I will keep an eye on it then and do some more research. BTW love you and your videos. Keep up the excellent work. 😎😎😎

Love your videos..id love to see you do a repair job on an Atari 1050 disk drve..i have one and the drive sensor doesnt reset;(

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

If only I had an Atari drive. Let alone an old Atari. Maybe someday. ;)

@naytch2003

7 жыл бұрын

I await with baited breath;)

The capstan should have been removed and cleaned, As an old TV/Radio tech working on these. And VCR's, Turntables and Tape deck's. I always cleaned the capstans

Wow, that was overly complicated mainboard compared to the old Apple Disk ][ drives! :)

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

+William Squires Yeah, the 1541 has all the control logic build in while the Apple drive is controlled by the computer. ;)

@williamsquires3070

6 жыл бұрын

Jan Beta - It makes me wonder what Commodore was doing with all that extra computing power; on-drive copy protection, maybe? Even the Disk ][ interface board only had 2 PAL/GAL-type ICs as "custom" silicon, but not another whole 6502! :)

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

I think the whole drive is controlled from the board inside and just delivers the preprocessed data to the computer. All the routines for formatting, deleting, reading, writing, etc. are in the 1541 ROM and are processed by the "little computer" inside there. On other systems, all that stuff is controlled by the computer. I guess both has advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage in case of the 1541 being that it cost more than the computer initially. ;)

Can you do a VIC-1541 next?

@JanBeta

Жыл бұрын

I wish I had one!

I guess you're guessing a lot.... :) Sorry, couldn't resist

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+LFOSyncToo Haha, yeah, I was told this before. I'm trying. ;)

@LFOSyncToo

7 жыл бұрын

yeah I know it's hard lol I think I would have similar problems as well (I'm french living in Germany so my english is quite rusty lol) The only thing to avoid it would be more scripting and editing so it means a lot of work...

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+LFOSyncToo Oh yeah, I tried to do voiceover but it at least doubles the editing time needed and feels a lot less "live". Which is one of the things I want in my videos. I guess (haha) I'll just improve my skills over time. :)

@timrichter1980

6 жыл бұрын

I guess it is a german thing :D

I wonder if anyone has looked into tapping into those connectors that go from the main board to the mechanics, perhaps one could make an emulator for that mechanical part and drive head on an arduino and make it work like a pi1541.

I scored a new switching power supply for mine today.

surprising that the belt is still intact.

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

I think it's not a rubber belt but some kind of plastic, probably a good choice of material.

Spraying all over the place, watch those read heads! Better use grease syringes to lube than spray.

I bought one DOA but the case is perfect..Maybe it broke earl in life. I am watching to see what to do.

@JanBeta

7 жыл бұрын

+Herb Myers Hope it helps! There's many things that can break in these old drives. I highly recommend Ray Carlsen's repair documents (linked in the description).

hi this unit is very heavy on power i later transformer is far better in this kind of drive unit someone did a video changing it over i had a drive like this on a old computer a long time data on them is not safe

I cant open mine the screws are to tight and I broke my pliers

@JanBeta

6 жыл бұрын

Bummer. I had some success using a slightly larger PZ screwdriver for stubborn screws. Maybe that helps. Otherwise the 1541 case is pretty impossible to open. It's pretty well designed and sturdy. :/

Nice Video. Could it be that you are from Germany, weil du hast einen leichten deutschen Akzent 😁