Commodore 1541 drive advice

[Merlin]

I am currently arranging to get 2 1541 drives shipped over from Belgium to me. They are in unknown condition and I'd like an answer to a question I have about them, assuming that they both power up in the first place.

Will I need a 1541 head alignment disc to do some drive diagnostics on them, or is there some software out there that you can use on the C64 to test and set up the drive head alignment?

Advice and guidance is welcomed. Thanks.

 

[desiv]

I do NOT recommend this, but......

http://home.comcast.net/~safeharborbay/tcr/cbm/cbmfiles/banger.txt

It's been known to work.

His general website is a great reference:
http://home.comcast.net/~safeharborbay/tcr/cbm/1541.html

desiv

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Hey Merlin!

Actually, the best way to test a drive is to make sure the head is clean then read a disk or two. You should also try to make a copy of a disk then verify the copy works properly. If you have trouble reading the disks and get lots of the head banging against the stop then the alignment is most likely out.

Unfortunately, you need an alignment disk to try to re-align the drive. The back side of the disk I have is formatted in a very special way to be used as during the alignment procedure. As far as I know, these disks cannot be duplicated.

Good luck with the drives and let me know how it works out!

Heather

---------- Post added at 20:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:30 ----------

I did find a 1541 Test Suite that may work well for testing your drive. It appears to be quite thorough.

Heather

 

[jvdbossc]

tools

tools

The 1541 drive came with some tools, to be honest, never used them.

A too late advice, give to me from various sources, it was alaways said chip or transport it whith a disk in!

Like advice already given, cleaning the drive worked for all my 1541 drives.

If you are in need of some chip, have spares enough.

 

[UberFreak]

Dont worry too much, these drives get out of alignment very rarely.
I bought several at flea-markets that looked really banged up from outside, but worked flawlessly!

If these are the old type drives (non white) they will do "head banging" upon any read error on the disk, it doesnt mean the drive is misaligned.

The best way to check, if you have two drives, is format a disk in one drive & fill it with files (any junk will do) and then try to read all the files in the 2nd drive.
If both read each other's written disks, you have nothing to worry about!

These old 1541 mk1 drives are real work horses

 

[protek]

The 1541 drive came with some tools, to be honest, never used them.

A too late advice, give to me from various sources, it was alaways said chip or transport it whith a disk in!

I think this applies more to 1571. My experiences with a 1541 is that they can take pretty much anything and still keep working.