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Well, I'm done. Giving up Commodore 64s for good.

G

Guybrush3pwood

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2015
Messages
155
Constant drive issues never end. I just had TWO drives go out of alignment at the same time. A 1541 and a 1541-ii. I'M DONE. I love the thing when it works, but how many drives do I have to buy?!

Unless somebody has a simple solution for aligning these things, I'm out!
 
Are you sure it's alignment and not just dirty heads?

Otherwise, tools like Torquemada 1541 or Vorpal Toolkit can do software remedies for alignment (you'll need a good drive to boot them, of course). They don't substitute for opening the drive up and aligning it manually, but they can get marginal drives back in order.
 
ClassicHasClass said:
Are you sure it's alignment and not just dirty heads?

Otherwise, tools like Torquemada 1541 or Vorpal Toolkit can do software remedies for alignment (you'll need a good drive to boot them, of course). They don't substitute for opening the drive up and aligning it manually, but they can get marginal drives back in order.
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Pretty sure. I've cleaned the heads a few times. No dice.

How do I manually align the head?
 
A 1541 II drive will rarely go out of alignment. Did you use the same disk on both the 1541 and II and now you are having problems. What condition is the disk in. It could be breaking down and you have left disk particles on the heads. Cleaning the normal way will not get it off. Carefully lift the head and scrap with your fingernail over the head, you will "feel" the disk particles on the heads. Scrap them off and then re clean with a head cleaner or just alcohol.

I haven't owned a 1541 drive in decades (85) . I will only use the 1571. I can personally say that I have NEVER had a problem with one ever.
 
They either get gunked up from moldy floppy disks or over heat. I don't think any of my drives have issues so far.
 
Unknown_K said:
They either get gunked up from moldy floppy disks or over heat. I don't think any of my drives have issues so far.
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Yes. Certainly drives can go out of alignment and this might be the cause. Their rotation speed can also drift. However in my experience, problems are far more likely likely to be caused by deteriorating disks. Sometimes it's not obvious the media is flaky just from looking at the disk surface (other times it is!). The point is, when dealing with suspect drives, it's worth eliminating degraded media continually gunking up the heads as an issue first, before exploring other causes.

Tez
 
What tezza said is 100% accurate. One bad disk can continuously foul numerous heads until you throw the piece of crap away!

BTW, you said you cleaned the heads a few times but you didn't say how. Not all cleaning methods produce equally satisfactory results. A head cleaning disk moistened with cleaning solution is by far the best method.
 
Have you tried formatting and reading your own disk? If you can't - it's probably not an alignment issue.

If you can - then it may be, but a drive going out of alignment is a physical thing, caused by shock or other environmental factor. It's not usual for a drive to spontaneously go out of alignment if it's just been sitting on a desk.

Rob
 
Stone said:
What tezza said is 100% accurate. One bad disk can continuously foul numerous heads until you throw the piece of crap away!

BTW, you said you cleaned the heads a few times but you didn't say how. Not all cleaning methods produce equally satisfactory results. A head cleaning disk moistened with cleaning solution is by far the best method.
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Absolutely! I have thrown away a number of disks from my collection of disks I use with my PCjr and Coleco ADAM due to this.

This isn't a sure fire way to tell, but it can definitely help diagnose. If you can read/write a disk on one drive and not the other and vice versa, that's usually a good sign of an alignment problem. If this is not the case however then your alignment is probably okay, or at least okay enough. These days in practice alignment is not really too much of an issue unless you are going to share disks between drives/computers or use bulk duplicated disks (factory originals), and it's even less of an issue on Commodore 8-bit drives since you generally can't write disk images out on a separate drive on a PC. If you're burning images from .d64 onto a disk with the same drive you're using it from, so long as it's not grossly out of alignment (i.e. enough to hit the stops at either end of the travel) then it should work.
 
I've actually NEVER had a drive alignment problem. I usually find the disks to be problematic, and even that isn't all that common.

My biggest problems with the C-64 have been the power supplies. The C-64 starts to glitch because of flaky voltage, and you can't repair the damn things because they're coated in potting compound.
 
Greetings ClassiHasClass.

Can "Torquemada 1541 or Vorpal Toolkit" software work on any other drives? I have two 5 1/4 drives that both work on my Coco3 but if I write to one drive then the other drive cannot read the disk. I have to use separate disks and label them drive 1 or 2. I was told it's likely alignment.

Where can these tools be gotten?

Thanks!
 
No, they drive the Commodore floppy disk firmware specifically. Torquemada 1541 is free and appeared on comp.binaries.cbm fairly regularly. I have a copy around here if you can't find it. Vorpal Toolkit is commercial software, but it's pretty cheap to find on ePay and such.
 
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