Short? Wait where? O.L is open. I do wonder what repair methods we may be able to devise nowadays. You can SLA print precision parts and we can build precision coil winding machines at home. I do have a drive somewhere in a box stored under low humidity that may potentially be affected, i should check it out.
Thanks for pointing that out! I carelessly saw a 0 instead of O and stopped there. My bad. Clearly I need to be more observant. That's twice in two videos where I've missed obviously things that were right in front of me. I disassembled the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil. That would be nice. I don't think I'm up to the task, but I'd love it if someone built a jig to re-wind a 1084 deflection yoke. At least that's big and bulky. The r/w head coil is so tiny and I'm all thumbs when it comes to delicate work.
@@retrobitstv Maybe there's a market for someone to make a run of new compatible heads for the Newtronics 1541? - and have them stock them at Console5 or similar.
hi, great informative video. I thought it would take someone to start producing new cartridges free of this insidious defect. I have a classic 1541 with the lever (and therefore it could fail, but it still works well) I have a 1541 II with this cartridge too and finally a 1541 II with a good cartridge, but whose mechanics make a deadly noise (it is the model with recessed lever and with the disc ejection mechanism when the lever opens)
I worked for Mitsubishi electronics from 84 to 90, 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, I was the resident expert at perfect radial and azimuth alignment that had tight screws, as shipping in trucks are bumpy and misaligns heads with not so tight screws. The good ol Brikon FDD tester/exerciser, I knew that equipment like the back of my hand. Good ol memories.
it is not shorted but open. They can be "repared" if one of the two coils is working you can bridge the other coil with a resistor. It will be slower, but will work.
that "reparation" gives as a result of unreliable reading, I mean a lot of reading errors, doesn't work well, don't waste your time doing that stupidity...
My 1541-II drives with Chinon mechanisms are still going strong 30 years later. I was aware of the Newtronics issues, but did not know that the Mark IIs had a direct correlation between the external case design and the internal mechanism. That is a brilliant tip for buyers! -- JC
is not true what he says in the video, typical youtube guy who has no clue... The one with the flush case can have a D500 or JPN DS-50F, the one with the indent (recession) has a F501M. And there is another version (no recession at all, 1571 style) where I only know one picture on the internet, but never saw that version ever again. The DS50F has in my opinion no difference from the case/looks, but when you have one its easy to find out: The lever on the DS50F is very light any you only have a small click on the down position and it springu up very freely and without much resistence. The D500 has a hard CLICK when you close it and a bit more tension or resistence. If you have those two, its very obvious if you can compare them directly.
I never worked with Commodere drives but back in the days I repaired lots of FDDs. You can use any head coil from drive with similar geometry. The hardest part is to glue it properly. After you'll need a special disk where zeros are written on track 0 and 1 on other track according to your geometry. Then you have to position head on each track with low level commands and control the alignment with oscilloscope connected to head preamp.
Azimuth needs to be set as well before you glue it. It needs to be inside of about 1/5th of a degree. Is that reasonably achievable or testable prior to gluing? I've never tried to do this.
Wow! I didn't realize that someone actually read my blog posts from 2017! btw. I still didn't say the last word on this topic and want to sort this case out. I am slowly gathering knowledge ... like really slowly as I am kinda overwhelmed by other projects lol. As usual, this was an EXCELLENT VIDEO!
Haha I've come across your post multiple times over the years! Thanks for sharing what you discovered. I'm sure the world would be very interested if there were a workable solution to the problem some day so please keep us posted of any new developments! I know the feeling about being overwhelmed by projects :)
@@retrobitstv Shooting in the dark, but since the moisture seems to cause the issue, wouldn't drying the head completely, in a desert-like conditioning, fix it?
@@UltimatePerfection Disclaimer: I haven't extracted the coil from my bad drive or examined it under a microscope. That said, I believe the issues to be a result of oxidation, not the presence of moisture itself. Over time, oxidation of the delicate wires either causes a short where there shouldn't be, or in my case, a complete break in one or more of the coils. It one were able to extract the coil from the potting, find the break or short with a microscope, and repair the damage, it could conceivably be fixed, but I have neither to tools nor the skill to work with something that small myself and I am not aware of anyone who has successfully repaired one yet and shared info about it :(
I literally just purchased a 1541 MKII 2 days ago, thankfully the condition of the drive was stated and it was fully working, serviced and head aligned and for 67.00UK ie a really good price. But when I heard you say that they can just go with fault my heart sank, BUT when I looked at the drive it had the recessed lever, cue a big smile. I was lucky, I got a proper retro commodore seller and the product was fully documented before sale. As you say, the little games that some sellers use, ie the powers on or untested is just annoying and usually deliberate, trying to get money for their old dead crap......Thanks Matt, great short video..
This is great info! Thanks for sharing. I'm an OG 64 guy who only had the older Alps mechanisms... I did have my days of fighting alignment issues, and had to teach myself how to re-align them. Now I know that if I ever do want to recreate my original setup I should beware the caveats with the later models even more. Thanks again.
Thanks for the informative video! I recall wishing my original 1541 had the lever operated mechanism. I thought the push down ALPS 1541 drive lever was weird and clunky. Some friends had the Newtronics version and they felt a lot nicer to use... but here we are 40 years later and my 1541 is still going strong! Both of my 1541-II drives are Chinon based and work perfectly!
Awesome, glad your drives are still all working! I've only had the one fail so far myself, but I'm going to have to keep an eye open for a Chinon 1541-II I think :)
THANK YOU! Great information. I did not know this tip. As soon as you mentioned the recessed lever, I hit pause, turned my head to look at my 1541-II sitting to my left and cheered when I saw that my drive lever was not flush!
Thanks for the great tips! Been thinking of picking up a 1541, since I always like to have a drive available to read physical media "just in case" and/or to be able to make physical media for friends/people in need. I knew there were some "bad" 1541s out there, but didn't really know the details. Until now. :)
I had the 1541-C model I believe. I also bought the C-64-C with cash from my part time job. Somewhere around $400 I think. I remember playing a ton of Ultima IV.
We could afford a C64 in the 80's but never a diskette drive. Some of my friends had one but I kept using tapes till the end. It felt like being a secondary citizen of the C64 universe. Even today when I see a 1541 I feel the same desire to finally have one.
I had a 1541 with the Alps mechanism, and at one point I had to take the drive in for alignment and the repairman did the extra step of adding a pin so that it would not lose alignment and that drive worked perfectly after that. The thing still ran hot however.
I have been looking for this for so long, but i didn’t know the name. The reason for my search is because this is what my grandfather had and he used it to teach me how to use a computer. I miss him but seeing this makes my heart feel warm. Thank you
In 1983 I bought one with money I made over the summer. I was 13, and my C64 was $288 at Kmart. I connected it to an old black and white TV my dad had, but I couldn't afford the 1541 at that time. Had to make more money! But later I was able to buy my own 13" color TV for the monitor and the drive. I had a lot of fun playing games on that machine. I got married in 1990, and I remember one time using it to play a lot of music. The C64 had one of the very best music chips in it of all home computers back then. My wife and I moved to where we live now shortly after that, and the tragedy is that the Commodore disappeared at some point there. I have no idea what happened to it, and I miss it to this day. Now that I have a 2 year old grandson I wish I had it so that I could do what your grandfather did. He loved you very much to want to show you those things because he knew it would help you...and he knew it is fun! You always try to be the man in your family's lives that your grandfather was in yours. I had a grandfather like yours and that how I try to live. Have a great life, Benjamin!
I have an Alps 1541 that marginally works, except the motor sounds like a dying cow... though the 1541-II (with non-recessed lever) I've had since childhood has been working fine, shockingly enough. Thanks to this excellent info I'll have to go check my other drives and see where they stand. I was hoping by now someone could make replacement heads (somehow) so dead drives could be put back into service.
An interesting presentation, concise and to the point, packed with lots of useful information. Well done! (We'll forgive ya for confusing an air gap with a short. Happens all the time.)
@4:20 the Pin 1 is not short - your multimeter shows +inf resistance, which is OPEN circuit. The pin 1 is therefore rotten, eroded, open, disconnected, etc..
You are correct; thanks for pointing that out! I disassembled the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil.
Thanks for all the research - and sharing this, Matt! Best explanation I've seen yet. :) Mine from '84 Newtronics 1541 is currently working great, but now I am forewarned that I should probably backup all those disks to another medium.
YW! I think I am going to keep an eye open for a Chinon 1541-II just to have something for the long haul. Of course my 1571s are all fine so far so there's that option too :)
@@retrobitstv well, after this video, prices for those NOT Newtronics will go spice up! I had lot of ALPS and Chinon, just one Nwtx, as I knew the flaw.
Some 23 years ago a friend and I experimented with two 1541's with remarkably different circuit boards, and slightly different mechanisms, with the head and track motor wires coming from different spots but able to reach. We managed to get the mechanism from one (not sure which) to work fully with the other boards, wires carefully routed to avoid snagging. I think both had the "flap" on the front though, so these likely were two revisions of MK1. One appeared completely dead towards the C64, the other had some mechanical issue... it is likely that both were repairable as is, but we managed to Frankenstein one working drive from two non-working ones and we were happy with the result then.
thanks for video. this is fantastic as always! without knowing this problem I bought 2 untested 1541 drives. I knew it was not working for sure before I bought it. both of them are powered on with LED lit but that's all. luckily I fixed one of them by replacing IC but the other one never had any improvement even if I did same trouble shooting like other working one. Now I understand that It was not about IC at all... oh well I was lucky to have at least 1 working one :)
When I bought my first used C64 (a few years ago) I went mad trying to troubleshoot the 1541 it came with, thinking that there was some sort of logic-board fault. It took a good month of messing with it to realize that it was an unfixable head problem... I went out and bought another one.
My OG 1541 lasted for six years of near constant use. My first MK2 barely lasted a year conveniently out of warranty. Good to see everyone here keeping the old doorstops alive.
7:26 - Yeah "Powers on" usually just means the power LED works. Some sellers will use even more deceptive (or outright false) language like "boots" or "starts up" - indicating that maybe a cooling fan or hard drive might be spinning as well. And "worked last time I tried it" of course, is totally meaningless.
Great video. I've got my equipment in the attic. I'm hoping all of it still works, but I'll likely have it checked out by a repair guy, before hooking it up. I'm especially hoping all of my floppies are still readable. I've already got a XUM1541 adapter lying around. The guy I bought it from, was able to read all of his!
Good video. I remember going through two 1541-2 drives in the late eighties before I got fed up and bought a third party, FSD-2 drive. These things are built like a tank and never seem to wear out or go out of alignment and I've only ever came across a couple games that had issues with it. It's still the drive I prefer today. Though I actually have two of the original pull down tab drives in my collection that I got from a yard sale in the mid 90's that still work but they do get hot. I don't really use them much unless I need an extra drive to copy disks with.
I've just discovered an O.L. between pin 5 and everything else on my newly acquired newtronics 1541. Boo. Thanks for this great video. Wish I had watched this earlier.
I actually learned this from Ray Carlsen when he was helping me troubleshoot a faulty 1541 I got. I got a Alps drive mechanism from Germany for cheap listed as working and swapped them out. The DOS ROM was also bad on that drive, but I got that working
Good to know, I didn't know the later 1541's were prone to this kind of failure. I got some of my dad's old C64 stuff (fortunately my mom had kept it around) including multiple systems, some old disks, and one older-model 1541 drive... Generally I don't feel I need another 1541 in my life but I have entertained the possibility, especially for the more compact 1541-II version. Wouldn't have been super fun to get another drive that's big and slow and heavy but also irreparably failed.
Believe it or not, I've never owned an old style 1541. My first Commodore was a 64C with a 1541-II, so when I got into retro of course I sought out the things I used to have. I've not really had any desire to own an original 1541, but if a nice Alps one comes along for the right price I'd still consider it.
OL means overload. It is telling you that the resistance value exceeds the range of the meter. A short circuit is one with a lower than normal resistance. This head has a very high resistance (considered open circuit). There is no short in the head. The corrosion has eaten the enameled wire away
You are right, I totally saw the O and read it as a 0 and stopped there. I need to pay more attention, that's twice in two videos I've missed something obvious. That said, I did disassemble the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil.
I read about failing Mitsumi drives years ago which made me look for alternatives. However both my Mitsumi 1541C still work fine to this day (both came "untested" from ebay). All of my 1541 drives are modded 220V->240V. I had two other 1541 giving me read errors because of defective bridge rectifiers on 5V, and a 1541-II giving me read errors because the cap in the potted PSU had dried up. Just because your Mitsumi 1541 starts giving you read errors, it doesn't have to have a broken head. And I'd still buy them untested if the offer is good.
And a 1541C with the opened jumper is so nicely silent :). I modded two of my drives by replacing the transformers according to the video by Adrian Black. So no overheating there anymore. And the drives became so light xD Oh and of course, luckily, no read errors here (all incl. 2x 1541, 1x 1541C, 2x 1541-II)
@@katho8472 My C models both have a board that doesn't support the track 0 sensor, but one drive has it actually fitted. I was thinking of modding the boards to support the sensor to reduce the risk of damage. I like the weight of the drive and won't mod the transformer out. The drives look and feel, the sound and its weight bring back my childhood memories like it was yesterday ;-)
There is third party still making their version of the 1541. Which when it was reviewed got marks high marks for working with the C64 and not eating your floppy.
Good video, thanks for making this. Fortunately there are many modern, alternative options to the original disk drives. Still, nothing beats the feel of using OG hardware.
Excellent video. I had the original tab 1541 and never had a problem back when. I emulate now. At some point I’d like to require my old setup. All I’d care about is cosmetics. Wouldn’t care if it functioned just for display. We are entering a time where these will start to consistently fail so anything that says powers on not tested and they can’t even jury rig it to test on a new TV is telling you it’s broken. And like you say even if it works at this instant during shipping something could happen.
Thanks for the video. I just checked my 1541-II now. Sadly, it's a newtronics. The handle is not recessed into the plastic. I got it for free quite a few years ago, so not a loss. And when I tried it a few years ago it was working. Haven't tested it since. I use my Turbo Chameleon 64 V2s for my 1541 needs. Too much hassle to deal with real floppies and a clunky floppy drive that needs it's own PSU.
Hopefully it still works and will continue to do so, like my primary 1541-II. I prefer to use a modern solution (1541UII+ or SD2IEC) for day-to-day usage but it's nice to have a working floppy drive for the occasions you want to use it. The "bad" 1541-II came with the recent auction lot so it's not a big loss since I didn't really pay much of anything for it.
Ah memories of the 80s thanks for posting. Way back when I got my Commodore 64 instead of the 1541, I got the Indus GT floppy drive loved it and I still kept it all these years. Yeah I'm hoarder.
Oh noes....ignorance is bliss. I have been running 4 of these for years and didn't know this. A small realignment here and there, but now that I know this, watch em all bite the dust. Thanks a lot.
Thanks a bunch. 🎉 (Even knowing of the possible failures, I’m still eying for one, simply because I like the color scheme and form, and I might be lucky, or can use the housing with some magical new electronics inside, perhaps a microSD or usb drive). 😊 I’ll see what the future brings, I might acquire the skills to fix/make the drive head myself or with a friend.
I'm trying to fix a 1541 right now. I have a bad voltage regulator. But I'm going to check the drive with my multimeter so I don't waste anymore time. Thanks.
I really wanted one of these. We had the cassette tape drive but my friend had the floppy drive and you could load a game of Spy Vs. Spy in mere minutes!
Just took a look at my two 1541-IIs. Turns out one of them is a Chinon and the other is a Newtronics. I haven’t really seen other than Alps model 1541s here. Even the C models have Alps mechs, although in those, I’ve seen the Newtronics mechs.
I used to cut pencils off and push 4 of them into the screw holes on the bottom to raise the whole drive up by 3 to 4 inches so more air could get around them. I also made a cylinder with a piece of paper and set it on top of the vent in the back to make a chimney.
It looked like the first measurement indicated an open not a short. A short would read 0.00 not OL. If it is an open it could very well be a broken wire at from constant flexing back and fort. I would make sure that it is not the case before declaring it beyond repair.
I had the early version, complete with four No 2 pencils in the bottom screw holes to elevate it for ventilation. I never had a problem with it, or the single hole punch I used to turn my floppy disks from one-sided to two-sided. I remember when the 1541-2's came out, but mine still worked so I never got one. I did have the 1571(?), as I bought it when I got my C128.
@7:21 - I work with a local recycler, and they post stuff all the time "unknown/untested for parts" because A.) they literally don't even know what they are posting B.) they don't have the time to really test it C.) turns on spins, because they at least plug it in to see if it gives signs of life. These are just people who have little to no knowledge about what it is they are even looking at, or how it's supposed to function, they often don't even have a machine to plug the drive into. EVEN if they had all of the above, the act of setting up a spot to test a one off floppy drive, even if they have disks and a dedicated station to "test it" on.. just isn't worth the paltry margins in these places. I used to think the same way, people just always post it as "for parts/untested" on junk they don't want, and I'm sure it happens, but after watching the amount of volume that goes through this place and then realizing they truly don't want good retro stuff to end up trashed. I give those posts more of a bennefit of doubt than I once did.
You make an excellent point - recyclers/resellers don't have the time or capability to test but are putting these things out there which is good for the enthusiast/collectors. However, there are those that are pricing things at >$100 as untested and uninformed people are buying them which is really unfortunate. All we can hope to do is raise awareness, which is why I made this video in the first place :)
@@retrobitstv absolutely! It's great to have more information out there. One last bit, something I wish we could change on the ebay side. When an item is listed on ebay, you can literally click a button that say "I want to sell this too" and it populates all the fields with the same information/pricing as the item listed on the screen. It's a bit of an anti-pattern where items are overpriced and then sell overpriced, and then feed further overpriced sales. I will fault people for this, as they probably know their item isn't "just like the one they found on ebay"
Well, I guess it is time to buy the bad drives for peanuts now, when everyone believes they are going to be beyond repair. It is probably only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to reproduce the heads.
Excellent video. My Alps just started doing this after traveling 20,000 miles around the world on planes and ships for 30 years thank to the military. Have to says that's pretty good handling resistance for never being packaged properly by movers. May I ask where you buy parts and chips like the 6502? mouser? digikey? alibaba?
Nice, that's surprisingly robust! Some chips are still available NOS from vendors like www.retroleum.co.uk/c64-chips and retro8bitshop.com/product-category/hardware/chips/ other can be pillaged from old broken hardware, and some things like the 6502 are still being manufactured new to this day! www.westerndesigncenter.com/
@@retrohaxblog ebay chips are $25-$50 unless it's the white one for $2500, then you don't know if it works. Alibaba sells brand new one's for like .99, the W65C02S6TPG-14 version. Do you know if those function ok?
I got tired of fixing my drives so some years ago I shelved my 9x 1541 drives (3 have Newtronics mechs but are working) and mostly just use an Ultimate1541-II cart but if I want to use a real floppy I use one of my 4x 1581 drives. 6 years ago I reversed the 1581 drive PCB and made an exact 1:1 reproduction (exact to within 0.1mm in every aspect) so now I just use that one drive for everything.
Some other options: stick a pi1541 inside the case or build an automated floppy disk cleaner that walks the carriage assembly while applying isopropyl alcohol to a microfiber cloth where the r/w head used to be!
Another terrible secret (in old 1541) is the power filter integrated into the C14 socket. Due to possible sparking and "magic" mass, it may cause a short circuit, lack of electricity, damage to electronics and even fire.
I had nothing but problems with mine back in the day. I got a 1541 for xmas 85 and it died within 3 weeks, was "repaired" in about a month and it failed again 2 weeks later, was replaced with a 1541-II and that also died in under a month!! Thankfully the guy in the shop was nice and rather than send the 1541-II off for repairs he allowed me to swap it for an Oceanic drive, which I used flawlessly until I sold my C64 years later. So yeah, not a fan of commodores floppy drives. haha
Yeah, buyer beware! I now have two 1541 drives with the Neutronics D500 drives. I bought one a few years ago and one last month.!!?? Both have open heads! Otherwise they function perfectly…. Dang! Hope I can find at least one good drive, or at least a head!!!??? Any suggestions???
Fascinating. I didn't know about this. I have a couple drives, they have been laying around for literally decades... I'm afraid to see if they still work! LOL
My 1541 workin to this day. Disk drive from first photo but with diffrent close mechanism beige colour. Two 1541-II units of My friend was break down within a short period of use.
Well that's new to me! I know that some production numbers had some cooling issues but in fact is was one of the better disk drives in those days. 😄I never encountered problems at least, not more than a head cleaning every now and then.
I had an Enhancer 2000 floppy drive back in the '80s, which was quieter and sleeker. It was probably faster too. I never had any compatibility problems with it.
The 1541 was only so slow because of the data transfer protocol that Commodore used, and there are videos on this channel that explain how that happened (wasn't intended). This impacts all drives connected to the C64, and although some of the 1541 alternatives were better drives in some respects, they were never faster. How could they be? In fact, unless such a drive is compatible enough to run fastloaders (some Enhancer 2000s are and some aren't, as it happens), which change the data transfer protocol, it would often be much slower than the 1541.
Yeap, I have both an ALPS and a newtronics drive, and I've got both these issues. The ALPS works, but had to re-align, and it's still not 100% correct. The newtronics has a dead read/write head, and I've bagged it for parts, or at least until I find a replacement head.
This makes me really glad I went with an SD2IEC and completely skipped the disk drive and floppy disks for my C64. I still use floppies with my Apple //e because I already have stacks and stacks of them.
I had the original 1541 drive, with the long board, and it was the drive that everybody wanted because they failed much less often. Further, we had a program that used to run that would align the drive head by yanking the head back and forth as hard as they could. I got that drive along with my C64 and a Gemini dot matrix printer for $1100 bucks (or I should say that my DAD got me that as I was all of 12 or so at the time.)
Such drives can be repaired! It needs another defective drive (the heads still working) to switch over the head assembly. It may be difficult to do this and you have to adjust the drive before using, but the drive is working after the repair. In my workplace (a HP Museum), I have a lot of drives to deal with. The most difficult repair was on a HP Vectra QS/20 with two 5,25" drives. One was defective, the other one works fine. The difficulty was to match up the drive, so data written on drive A was reading on drive B (the defective one) and the other way too.
That's one more reason to go for a 1571 instead. If the drive mechanism ever breaks, you can rip one out of a random PC and be on your way. Or even convert it into a poor man's 1581 if you want.
Second hand dealers are crazy. I try to buy stuff via forums from members that I know a bit if possible. And nowadays I buy old stuff from which I know that it doesn't break down for sure after 20+ years. And only stuff that's cheap. NOTHING on earth is built to last forever. I've had 20 year old stuff, that was built like a tank, that worked perfectly fine break down after a month. So certain hardware like Commodore drives: I'm not even gonna try. I don't have the time and resources. Sad but true. Thanks for the fine video! :)
Yea, I only buy when I find a good deal but I am shocked at the prices some people are paying on eBay for untested gear. It's pretty amazing that any of this stuff is working at all 40 years later! I'm glad that most of my drives still work and I've only had the one fail so far. Later stuff like the 1571 seems to be more robust as well.
Good to know! I'm an Apple II guy, but have a collection of C64's and had *no* idea about the Newtronics mechanism. Peeked in my closet and I have two older 1541 drives with push in-levers (a brown and beige) and two Newtronic drives (a 1541 with flip-switch and a 1541-II which I just opened, great!). Also have a third-party Indus GT drive, no idea what's in that but I think it's worth keeping, no? I really should look into that power-protection dongle (between the powersupply) for the C64, if they're still available.
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Short? Wait where? O.L is open.
I do wonder what repair methods we may be able to devise nowadays. You can SLA print precision parts and we can build precision coil winding machines at home. I do have a drive somewhere in a box stored under low humidity that may potentially be affected, i should check it out.
Yeah, OL is indicating open line, not shorted one.
Thanks for pointing that out! I carelessly saw a 0 instead of O and stopped there. My bad. Clearly I need to be more observant. That's twice in two videos where I've missed obviously things that were right in front of me. I disassembled the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil.
That would be nice. I don't think I'm up to the task, but I'd love it if someone built a jig to re-wind a 1084 deflection yoke. At least that's big and bulky. The r/w head coil is so tiny and I'm all thumbs when it comes to delicate work.
@@retrobitstv Maybe there's a market for someone to make a run of new compatible heads for the Newtronics 1541? - and have them stock them at Console5 or similar.
O.L. = "Open Loop"... a throw back to Telco. More specifically the "battery" circuit between the central office and your home (wired) phone.
hi, great informative video. I thought it would take someone to start producing new cartridges free of this insidious defect. I have a classic 1541 with the lever (and therefore it could fail, but it still works well) I have a 1541 II with this cartridge too and finally a 1541 II with a good cartridge, but whose mechanics make a deadly noise (it is the model with recessed lever and with the disc ejection mechanism when the lever opens)
I worked for Mitsubishi electronics from 84 to 90, 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, I was the resident expert at perfect radial and azimuth alignment that had tight screws, as shipping in trucks are bumpy and misaligns heads with not so tight screws. The good ol Brikon FDD tester/exerciser, I knew that equipment like the back of my hand. Good ol memories.
it is not shorted but open. They can be "repared" if one of the two coils is working you can bridge the other coil with a resistor. It will be slower, but will work.
Hey thank you is there any tutorial or forum post about that? Just in case?
that "reparation" gives as a result of unreliable reading, I mean a lot of reading errors, doesn't work well, don't waste your time doing that stupidity...
Bypassing one of the coils with a resistor is an absolutely stupid idea. Who the heck told you that would ever work?
My 1541-II drives with Chinon mechanisms are still going strong 30 years later. I was aware of the Newtronics issues, but did not know that the Mark IIs had a direct correlation between the external case design and the internal mechanism. That is a brilliant tip for buyers! -- JC
is not true what he says in the video, typical youtube guy who has no clue... The one with the flush case can have a D500 or JPN DS-50F, the one with the indent (recession) has a F501M. And there is another version (no recession at all, 1571 style) where I only know one picture on the internet, but never saw that version ever again. The DS50F has in my opinion no difference from the case/looks, but when you have one its easy to find out: The lever on the DS50F is very light any you only have a small click on the down position and it springu up very freely and without much resistence. The D500 has a hard CLICK when you close it and a bit more tension or resistence. If you have those two, its very obvious if you can compare them directly.
I also have one of these that sat for 20 years. Cleaned up. Works like a charm. Little noisey due to oxidation.. but Works perfectly:)
I never worked with Commodere drives but back in the days I repaired lots of FDDs. You can use any head coil from drive with similar geometry. The hardest part is to glue it properly. After you'll need a special disk where zeros are written on track 0 and 1 on other track according to your geometry. Then you have to position head on each track with low level commands and control the alignment with oscilloscope connected to head preamp.
Azimuth needs to be set as well before you glue it. It needs to be inside of about 1/5th of a degree. Is that reasonably achievable or testable prior to gluing? I've never tried to do this.
Wow! I didn't realize that someone actually read my blog posts from 2017! btw. I still didn't say the last word on this topic and want to sort this case out. I am slowly gathering knowledge ... like really slowly as I am kinda overwhelmed by other projects lol. As usual, this was an EXCELLENT VIDEO!
Haha I've come across your post multiple times over the years! Thanks for sharing what you discovered. I'm sure the world would be very interested if there were a workable solution to the problem some day so please keep us posted of any new developments! I know the feeling about being overwhelmed by projects :)
@@retrobitstv Shooting in the dark, but since the moisture seems to cause the issue, wouldn't drying the head completely, in a desert-like conditioning, fix it?
@@UltimatePerfection Disclaimer: I haven't extracted the coil from my bad drive or examined it under a microscope. That said, I believe the issues to be a result of oxidation, not the presence of moisture itself. Over time, oxidation of the delicate wires either causes a short where there shouldn't be, or in my case, a complete break in one or more of the coils. It one were able to extract the coil from the potting, find the break or short with a microscope, and repair the damage, it could conceivably be fixed, but I have neither to tools nor the skill to work with something that small myself and I am not aware of anyone who has successfully repaired one yet and shared info about it :(
Come on! Your posts are gold. I recall the internal SD2IEC one, which encouraged me to start making some :)
@@rapiqui Thank you for warm words sir ;)
I literally just purchased a 1541 MKII 2 days ago, thankfully the condition of the drive was stated and it was fully working, serviced and head aligned and for 67.00UK ie a really good price. But when I heard you say that they can just go with fault my heart sank, BUT when I looked at the drive it had the recessed lever, cue a big smile. I was lucky, I got a proper retro commodore seller and the product was fully documented before sale. As you say, the little games that some sellers use, ie the powers on or untested is just annoying and usually deliberate, trying to get money for their old dead crap......Thanks Matt, great short video..
Wow, the prices went up insane! In Germany you can buy 1541 drives for 30-50 Bucks in working condition.
Never heard about the bad drive head issue before. Thank you for making the video.
This is great info! Thanks for sharing. I'm an OG 64 guy who only had the older Alps mechanisms... I did have my days of fighting alignment issues, and had to teach myself how to re-align them. Now I know that if I ever do want to recreate my original setup I should beware the caveats with the later models even more. Thanks again.
Thanks for the informative video! I recall wishing my original 1541 had the lever operated mechanism. I thought the push down ALPS 1541 drive lever was weird and clunky. Some friends had the Newtronics version and they felt a lot nicer to use... but here we are 40 years later and my 1541 is still going strong!
Both of my 1541-II drives are Chinon based and work perfectly!
Awesome, glad your drives are still all working! I've only had the one fail so far myself, but I'm going to have to keep an eye open for a Chinon 1541-II I think :)
THANK YOU! Great information. I did not know this tip. As soon as you mentioned the recessed lever, I hit pause, turned my head to look at my 1541-II sitting to my left and cheered when I saw that my drive lever was not flush!
There is an "open" on pin 1 of the bad drive, not a "short". The DMM reads infinite ohms on the pin 1 measurements. Pin 1 = OPEN.
Exactly! The day I would get a shorted open circuit I would freak out ha ha
Yup. Noticed that right away. He just miss spoke.
Thanks for the great tips! Been thinking of picking up a 1541, since I always like to have a drive available to read physical media "just in case" and/or to be able to make physical media for friends/people in need. I knew there were some "bad" 1541s out there, but didn't really know the details. Until now. :)
I had the 1541-C model I believe. I also bought the C-64-C with cash from my part time job. Somewhere around $400 I think. I remember playing a ton of Ultima IV.
We could afford a C64 in the 80's but never a diskette drive. Some of my friends had one but I kept using tapes till the end. It felt like being a secondary citizen of the C64 universe. Even today when I see a 1541 I feel the same desire to finally have one.
I had a 1541 with the Alps mechanism, and at one point I had to take the drive in for alignment and the repairman did the extra step of adding a pin so that it would not lose alignment and that drive worked perfectly after that. The thing still ran hot however.
I have been looking for this for so long, but i didn’t know the name. The reason for my search is because this is what my grandfather had and he used it to teach me how to use a computer. I miss him but seeing this makes my heart feel warm. Thank you
In 1983 I bought one with money I made over the summer. I was 13, and my C64 was $288 at Kmart. I connected it to an old black and white TV my dad had, but I couldn't afford the 1541 at that time. Had to make more money! But later I was able to buy my own 13" color TV for the monitor and the drive. I had a lot of fun playing games on that machine. I got married in 1990, and I remember one time using it to play a lot of music. The C64 had one of the very best music chips in it of all home computers back then.
My wife and I moved to where we live now shortly after that, and the tragedy is that the Commodore disappeared at some point there. I have no idea what happened to it, and I miss it to this day. Now that I have a 2 year old grandson I wish I had it so that I could do what your grandfather did. He loved you very much to want to show you those things because he knew it would help you...and he knew it is fun! You always try to be the man in your family's lives that your grandfather was in yours. I had a grandfather like yours and that how I try to live.
Have a great life, Benjamin!
I have an Alps 1541 that marginally works, except the motor sounds like a dying cow... though the 1541-II (with non-recessed lever) I've had since childhood has been working fine, shockingly enough. Thanks to this excellent info I'll have to go check my other drives and see where they stand. I was hoping by now someone could make replacement heads (somehow) so dead drives could be put back into service.
An interesting presentation, concise and to the point, packed with lots of useful information. Well done! (We'll forgive ya for confusing an air gap with a short. Happens all the time.)
@4:20 the Pin 1 is not short - your multimeter shows +inf resistance, which is OPEN circuit. The pin 1 is therefore rotten, eroded, open, disconnected, etc..
You are correct; thanks for pointing that out! I disassembled the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil.
Thanks for all the research - and sharing this, Matt! Best explanation I've seen yet. :)
Mine from '84 Newtronics 1541 is currently working great, but now I am forewarned that I should probably backup all those disks to another medium.
YW! I think I am going to keep an eye open for a Chinon 1541-II just to have something for the long haul. Of course my 1571s are all fine so far so there's that option too :)
@@retrobitstv well, after this video, prices for those NOT Newtronics will go spice up! I had lot of ALPS and Chinon, just one Nwtx, as I knew the flaw.
Some 23 years ago a friend and I experimented with two 1541's with remarkably different circuit boards, and slightly different mechanisms, with the head and track motor wires coming from different spots but able to reach. We managed to get the mechanism from one (not sure which) to work fully with the other boards, wires carefully routed to avoid snagging. I think both had the "flap" on the front though, so these likely were two revisions of MK1. One appeared completely dead towards the C64, the other had some mechanical issue... it is likely that both were repairable as is, but we managed to Frankenstein one working drive from two non-working ones and we were happy with the result then.
EDIT: 23 years ago (typo).
thanks for video. this is fantastic as always! without knowing this problem I bought 2 untested 1541 drives. I knew it was not working for sure before I bought it. both of them are powered on with LED lit but that's all. luckily I fixed one of them by replacing IC but the other one never had any improvement even if I did same trouble shooting like other working one.
Now I understand that It was not about IC at all... oh well I was lucky to have at least 1 working one :)
Glad I have an Alps model! Working great after some chip replacements.
Can't wait for "this 1976 vintage 8 track tape player will DESTROY your 8 track tapes!!!"
When I bought my first used C64 (a few years ago) I went mad trying to troubleshoot the 1541 it came with, thinking that there was some sort of logic-board fault. It took a good month of messing with it to realize that it was an unfixable head problem... I went out and bought another one.
My OG 1541 lasted for six years of near constant use. My first MK2 barely lasted a year conveniently out of warranty. Good to see everyone here keeping the old doorstops alive.
One of the most useful videos on the internet!
7:26 - Yeah "Powers on" usually just means the power LED works. Some sellers will use even more deceptive (or outright false) language like "boots" or "starts up" - indicating that maybe a cooling fan or hard drive might be spinning as well. And "worked last time I tried it" of course, is totally meaningless.
Great video. I've got my equipment in the attic. I'm hoping all of it still works, but I'll likely have it checked out by a repair guy, before hooking it up.
I'm especially hoping all of my floppies are still readable. I've already got a XUM1541 adapter lying around. The guy I bought it from, was able to read all of his!
Good video. I remember going through two 1541-2 drives in the late eighties before I got fed up and bought a third party, FSD-2 drive. These things are built like a tank and never seem to wear out or go out of alignment and I've only ever came across a couple games that had issues with it. It's still the drive I prefer today. Though I actually have two of the original pull down tab drives in my collection that I got from a yard sale in the mid 90's that still work but they do get hot. I don't really use them much unless I need an extra drive to copy disks with.
I've just discovered an O.L. between pin 5 and everything else on my newly acquired newtronics 1541. Boo. Thanks for this great video. Wish I had watched this earlier.
This was a very well done video. Thank you for making it.
I had one around 2005-2010 and it still worked, even in a humid climate. Sold it off still working around 2012.
I actually learned this from Ray Carlsen when he was helping me troubleshoot a faulty 1541 I got. I got a Alps drive mechanism from Germany for cheap listed as working and swapped them out. The DOS ROM was also bad on that drive, but I got that working
Good to know, I didn't know the later 1541's were prone to this kind of failure. I got some of my dad's old C64 stuff (fortunately my mom had kept it around) including multiple systems, some old disks, and one older-model 1541 drive... Generally I don't feel I need another 1541 in my life but I have entertained the possibility, especially for the more compact 1541-II version. Wouldn't have been super fun to get another drive that's big and slow and heavy but also irreparably failed.
Believe it or not, I've never owned an old style 1541. My first Commodore was a 64C with a 1541-II, so when I got into retro of course I sought out the things I used to have. I've not really had any desire to own an original 1541, but if a nice Alps one comes along for the right price I'd still consider it.
OL means overload. It is telling you that the resistance value exceeds the range of the meter. A short circuit is one with a lower than normal resistance. This head has a very high resistance (considered open circuit). There is no short in the head. The corrosion has eaten the enameled wire away
Perfect vid! So, so helpful to us retro-nuts!
The drive head is measuring open, not short.
You are right, I totally saw the O and read it as a 0 and stopped there. I need to pay more attention, that's twice in two videos I've missed something obvious. That said, I did disassemble the drive and checked continuity of pin1 from the connector all the way to the PCB on the head just to ensure it was not a wire break and that tested out fine, so the break is somewhere inside the potting/coil.
Just checked both of my old 1541-II's and both are the newer ones with the recessed front case! Woot!
I still have 1541-II for my Commodore 64C,
and it still works.
I even filmed a video of a gameplay ROAD RUNNER on a disk for TH-cam.
😺👍🕹️
Thanks a lot for the great information.
You may be able to bake in oven at 200F for 12h to drive out moisture of epoxy. Worked for a chainsaw coil of mine.
I read about failing Mitsumi drives years ago which made me look for alternatives. However both my Mitsumi 1541C still work fine to this day (both came "untested" from ebay). All of my 1541 drives are modded 220V->240V. I had two other 1541 giving me read errors because of defective bridge rectifiers on 5V, and a 1541-II giving me read errors because the cap in the potted PSU had dried up. Just because your Mitsumi 1541 starts giving you read errors, it doesn't have to have a broken head. And I'd still buy them untested if the offer is good.
And a 1541C with the opened jumper is so nicely silent :). I modded two of my drives by replacing the transformers according to the video by Adrian Black. So no overheating there anymore. And the drives became so light xD
Oh and of course, luckily, no read errors here (all incl. 2x 1541, 1x 1541C, 2x 1541-II)
@@katho8472 My C models both have a board that doesn't support the track 0 sensor, but one drive has it actually fitted. I was thinking of modding the boards to support the sensor to reduce the risk of damage. I like the weight of the drive and won't mod the transformer out. The drives look and feel, the sound and its weight bring back my childhood memories like it was yesterday ;-)
@@Shmbler Well I mainly modded mine to not fry the chips ;)
I had two original 1541s. Luckily, they always worked like a charm. And I gave them quite a workout in the eighties
There is third party still making their version of the 1541. Which when it was reviewed got marks high marks for working with the C64 and not eating your floppy.
I have to say, of all my many C64 drives, the 1541 II is my favorite and that includes a 1571 and 1581.
Good video, thanks for making this. Fortunately there are many modern, alternative options to the original disk drives. Still, nothing beats the feel of using OG hardware.
Agreed, there's just something special about using original disks once in a while but all the modern solutions are nice for day-to-day use!
Excellent video. I had the original tab 1541 and never had a problem back when. I emulate now. At some point I’d like to require my old setup. All I’d care about is cosmetics. Wouldn’t care if it functioned just for display. We are entering a time where these will start to consistently fail so anything that says powers on not tested and they can’t even jury rig it to test on a new TV is telling you it’s broken. And like you say even if it works at this instant during shipping something could happen.
Thanks for the video. I just checked my 1541-II now. Sadly, it's a newtronics. The handle is not recessed into the plastic. I got it for free quite a few years ago, so not a loss. And when I tried it a few years ago it was working. Haven't tested it since. I use my Turbo Chameleon 64 V2s for my 1541 needs. Too much hassle to deal with real floppies and a clunky floppy drive that needs it's own PSU.
Hopefully it still works and will continue to do so, like my primary 1541-II. I prefer to use a modern solution (1541UII+ or SD2IEC) for day-to-day usage but it's nice to have a working floppy drive for the occasions you want to use it. The "bad" 1541-II came with the recent auction lot so it's not a big loss since I didn't really pay much of anything for it.
Mine use to do that. I wound put the transport cardboard insert in it turn it on, it wound "fix" it. Not sure why it worked but it did.
I didn't even know about this. Thanks!
Thank you , really interesting!
Ah memories of the 80s thanks for posting. Way back when I got my Commodore 64 instead of the 1541, I got the Indus GT floppy drive loved it and I still kept it all these years. Yeah I'm hoarder.
I just checked my 1541-II and it's got the recessed lever. I also have the "revised" OG 1541. Both still work, I guess I'm lucky.
Man I miss my c64. What a great system
Great info. Just subscribed.
Thant you too to avoid us more headaches 💚
Oh noes....ignorance is bliss. I have been running 4 of these for years and didn't know this. A small realignment here and there, but now that I know this, watch em all bite the dust. Thanks a lot.
Sorry about that. May the odds be ever in your favor!
Thanks a bunch. 🎉 (Even knowing of the possible failures, I’m still eying for one, simply because I like the color scheme and form, and I might be lucky, or can use the housing with some magical new electronics inside, perhaps a microSD or usb drive). 😊 I’ll see what the future brings, I might acquire the skills to fix/make the drive head myself or with a friend.
I'm trying to fix a 1541 right now. I have a bad voltage regulator. But I'm going to check the drive with my multimeter so I don't waste anymore time. Thanks.
Good video!!
I really wanted one of these. We had the cassette tape drive but my friend had the floppy drive and you could load a game of Spy Vs. Spy in mere minutes!
Awesome video, although now I feel gutted as my 1541-II has the Newtronics mechanism inside. Do you know if the 1571 also used the Newtronics?
I don't think the 1571 has the Same mech, because it's a Double sided Drive.
But I might be wrong on this.
Just took a look at my two 1541-IIs. Turns out one of them is a Chinon and the other is a Newtronics. I haven’t really seen other than Alps model 1541s here. Even the C models have Alps mechs, although in those, I’ve seen the Newtronics mechs.
I used to cut pencils off and push 4 of them into the screw holes on the bottom to raise the whole drive up by 3 to 4 inches so more air could get around them. I also made a cylinder with a piece of paper and set it on top of the vent in the back to make a chimney.
I have 1541's coming out my ears... Luckily about 90% of them I have been able to get working!
It looked like the first measurement indicated an open not a short. A short would read 0.00 not OL. If it is an open it could very well be a broken wire at from constant flexing back and fort. I would make sure that it is not the case before declaring it beyond repair.
I had the early version, complete with four No 2 pencils in the bottom screw holes to elevate it for ventilation. I never had a problem with it, or the single hole punch I used to turn my floppy disks from one-sided to two-sided.
I remember when the 1541-2's came out, but mine still worked so I never got one. I did have the 1571(?), as I bought it when I got my C128.
@7:21 - I work with a local recycler, and they post stuff all the time "unknown/untested for parts" because A.) they literally don't even know what they are posting B.) they don't have the time to really test it C.) turns on spins, because they at least plug it in to see if it gives signs of life.
These are just people who have little to no knowledge about what it is they are even looking at, or how it's supposed to function, they often don't even have a machine to plug the drive into. EVEN if they had all of the above, the act of setting up a spot to test a one off floppy drive, even if they have disks and a dedicated station to "test it" on.. just isn't worth the paltry margins in these places.
I used to think the same way, people just always post it as "for parts/untested" on junk they don't want, and I'm sure it happens, but after watching the amount of volume that goes through this place and then realizing they truly don't want good retro stuff to end up trashed. I give those posts more of a bennefit of doubt than I once did.
You make an excellent point - recyclers/resellers don't have the time or capability to test but are putting these things out there which is good for the enthusiast/collectors. However, there are those that are pricing things at >$100 as untested and uninformed people are buying them which is really unfortunate. All we can hope to do is raise awareness, which is why I made this video in the first place :)
@@retrobitstv absolutely! It's great to have more information out there.
One last bit, something I wish we could change on the ebay side. When an item is listed on ebay, you can literally click a button that say "I want to sell this too" and it populates all the fields with the same information/pricing as the item listed on the screen.
It's a bit of an anti-pattern where items are overpriced and then sell overpriced, and then feed further overpriced sales.
I will fault people for this, as they probably know their item isn't "just like the one they found on ebay"
very useful!
its great seeing this video about commodore drives I had 1581 hard drive before,
Well, I guess it is time to buy the bad drives for peanuts now, when everyone believes they are going to be beyond repair. It is probably only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to reproduce the heads.
Excellent video. My Alps just started doing this after traveling 20,000 miles around the world on planes and ships for 30 years thank to the military. Have to says that's pretty good handling resistance for never being packaged properly by movers.
May I ask where you buy parts and chips like the 6502? mouser? digikey? alibaba?
eBay :) scavenging other "for sure dead" drives :)
Nice, that's surprisingly robust! Some chips are still available NOS from vendors like www.retroleum.co.uk/c64-chips and retro8bitshop.com/product-category/hardware/chips/ other can be pillaged from old broken hardware, and some things like the 6502 are still being manufactured new to this day! www.westerndesigncenter.com/
@@retrohaxblog ebay chips are $25-$50 unless it's the white one for $2500, then you don't know if it works. Alibaba sells brand new one's for like .99, the W65C02S6TPG-14 version. Do you know if those function ok?
I got tired of fixing my drives so some years ago I shelved my 9x 1541 drives (3 have Newtronics mechs but are working) and mostly just use an Ultimate1541-II cart but if I want to use a real floppy I use one of my 4x 1581 drives. 6 years ago I reversed the 1581 drive PCB and made an exact 1:1 reproduction (exact to within 0.1mm in every aspect) so now I just use that one drive for everything.
So... what about those crazy people that just want the 1541 case? I'll give you $20 for your broken drive! 😁
Putting a greaseweazel and shugart drive in it to connect to pc?
Some other options: stick a pi1541 inside the case or build an automated floppy disk cleaner that walks the carriage assembly while applying isopropyl alcohol to a microfiber cloth where the r/w head used to be!
Nice video. I have a lot of drives, but none has failed like that. Still, I was not aware about this problem
i have a bunch of those drive all they are untested but i will test them all because you show us now how to do it ! thx for this video !
Another terrible secret (in old 1541) is the power filter integrated into the C14 socket. Due to possible sparking and "magic" mass, it may cause a short circuit, lack of electricity, damage to electronics and even fire.
I had nothing but problems with mine back in the day. I got a 1541 for xmas 85 and it died within 3 weeks, was "repaired" in about a month and it failed again 2 weeks later, was replaced with a 1541-II and that also died in under a month!! Thankfully the guy in the shop was nice and rather than send the 1541-II off for repairs he allowed me to swap it for an Oceanic drive, which I used flawlessly until I sold my C64 years later. So yeah, not a fan of commodores floppy drives. haha
Yeah, buyer beware! I now have two 1541 drives with the Neutronics D500 drives. I bought one a few years ago and one last month.!!?? Both have open heads! Otherwise they function perfectly…. Dang! Hope I can find at least one good drive, or at least a head!!!??? Any suggestions???
Fascinating. I didn't know about this. I have a couple drives, they have been laying around for literally decades... I'm afraid to see if they still work! LOL
I repaired the head on my C128 D. It wasn't easy, but I did it. The wire is very delicate and it took me 2 weeks to do.
My 1541 workin to this day. Disk drive from first photo but with diffrent close mechanism beige colour. Two 1541-II units of My friend was break down within a short period of use.
Well that's new to me!
I know that some production numbers had some cooling issues but in fact is was one of the better disk drives in those days. 😄I never encountered problems at least, not more than a head cleaning every now and then.
I had an Enhancer 2000 floppy drive back in the '80s, which was quieter and sleeker. It was probably faster too. I never had any compatibility problems with it.
The 1541 was only so slow because of the data transfer protocol that Commodore used, and there are videos on this channel that explain how that happened (wasn't intended). This impacts all drives connected to the C64, and although some of the 1541 alternatives were better drives in some respects, they were never faster. How could they be? In fact, unless such a drive is compatible enough to run fastloaders (some Enhancer 2000s are and some aren't, as it happens), which change the data transfer protocol, it would often be much slower than the 1541.
Yeap, I have both an ALPS and a newtronics drive, and I've got both these issues. The ALPS works, but had to re-align, and it's still not 100% correct. The newtronics has a dead read/write head, and I've bagged it for parts, or at least until I find a replacement head.
This makes me really glad I went with an SD2IEC and completely skipped the disk drive and floppy disks for my C64. I still use floppies with my Apple //e because I already have stacks and stacks of them.
I had the original 1541 drive, with the long board, and it was the drive that everybody wanted because they failed much less often. Further, we had a program that used to run that would align the drive head by yanking the head back and forth as hard as they could. I got that drive along with my C64 and a Gemini dot matrix printer for $1100 bucks (or I should say that my DAD got me that as I was all of 12 or so at the time.)
Can't thank you enough for this video.
Thanks for the important PSA!
The 1571 on the 128D never failed me.
I have so many of these I have a literal wall of 1541s in my basement. Good for parts and the odd movie shoot. :)
Such drives can be repaired! It needs another defective drive (the heads still working) to switch over the head assembly. It may be difficult to do this and you have to adjust the drive before using, but the drive is working after the repair. In my workplace (a HP Museum), I have a lot of drives to deal with. The most difficult repair was on a HP Vectra QS/20 with two 5,25" drives. One was defective, the other one works fine. The difficulty was to match up the drive, so data written on drive A was reading on drive B (the defective one) and the other way too.
That's one more reason to go for a 1571 instead. If the drive mechanism ever breaks, you can rip one out of a random PC and be on your way. Or even convert it into a poor man's 1581 if you want.
Does this work? Can you really replace the drive mechanism in a 1571 with a PC drive? I have a 1571 where the drive head just broke…
Second hand dealers are crazy. I try to buy stuff via forums from members that I know a bit if possible. And nowadays I buy old stuff from which I know that it doesn't break down for sure after 20+ years. And only stuff that's cheap. NOTHING on earth is built to last forever. I've had 20 year old stuff, that was built like a tank, that worked perfectly fine break down after a month.
So certain hardware like Commodore drives: I'm not even gonna try. I don't have the time and resources. Sad but true. Thanks for the fine video! :)
Yea, I only buy when I find a good deal but I am shocked at the prices some people are paying on eBay for untested gear. It's pretty amazing that any of this stuff is working at all 40 years later! I'm glad that most of my drives still work and I've only had the one fail so far. Later stuff like the 1571 seems to be more robust as well.
That's so rubbish! Newtronics didn't realise that just a few decades after build there'd be a moisture leak? We should start a class action law suit.
Good to know! I'm an Apple II guy, but have a collection of C64's and had *no* idea about the Newtronics mechanism. Peeked in my closet and I have two older 1541 drives with push in-levers (a brown and beige) and two Newtronic drives (a 1541 with flip-switch and a 1541-II which I just opened, great!). Also have a third-party Indus GT drive, no idea what's in that but I think it's worth keeping, no? I really should look into that power-protection dongle (between the powersupply) for the C64, if they're still available.
Keep the indus drive! =)
Had this one and never had problems.