1541 Read Error

[Charter]

Has anyone have thses problem with their 1541 drives?

The drives has been sitting for 20 years or so and also the disk as well.
Two weeks ago I pull out one 1541 and use everyday typing in programs from
Run magazine to just get some flash back from the good days.

Today, I pull out all my old disk and started to go thru them to see what
are on them. Something happen.. the drive started to ratter about 4 times
and stop with the red light blinking. Could never read the dir again. Pull
out another 1541 and went on about my business seeing what were on the disk
and cataloge them. That ratter noise sounded again and won't read the dir.

Using a 1541-II drive and load up a diskdoctor software and it went to
work. It ratter and ratter... still have the problem..

No Disk In Drive
21, READ ERROR,18,00

Got this error report on both 1541 drives. Anyone here could help me on
this?

Thanks.. Paul

[Sam Gillett]

"Charter" <bush...@charter.net> wrote ...

Old disks are infamous for losing small amounts of the magnetic media from
the disk surface to the drive heads until the heads are so dirty that they no
longer are able to read a disk. If you happen to have a cleaning disk from
the old days try using that first. Otherwise, clean the heads with a cotton
swab dampened in alcohol or naphtha. (WARNING: both are flammable)

I think there is some info on Ray Carlsen's website about cleaning and other
repairs to 1541 drives.

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/

Hope some of the info will help you.
--
Best regards,

Sam Gillett

Change is inevitable,
except from vending machines!

[J. B. Wood]

In article <4a503740$0$29035$946...@news.usenetserver.com>, "Charter"
<bush...@charter.net> wrote:

Hello, and IIRC sometimes the 1541 drive head gets off-track (usually as a
result of software crashes or power interruption) even though the head
would be aligned otherwise. In this situation the head is out-of-position
wrt to track "0" (the "bump" stop) on the drive. Merely turning the drive
off then on won't correct this problem. What we need to do is
deliberately cause a head bump to reposition/reset the head. Try using
the problem drive to format a blank disk. If that goes well then see if
the read capability is restored.

The only other non-floppy related problems I can see as causes are (1) a
dirty R/W head (not really as common as a lot of folks would like to
think), (2) a misaligned drive head (3) a drive motor speed that's way off
its nominal 300 rpm value or (4) a problem with the 1541 electronics.
Sincerely,

John Wood (Code 5550) e-mail: wo...@itd.nrl.navy.mil
Naval Research Laboratory
4555 Overlook Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20375-5337

[Six of Style]

"Charter" <bush...@charter.net> wrote in
news:4a503740$0$29035$946...@news.usenetserver.com:

> Got this error report on both 1541 drives. Anyone here could help me
> on this?

Yeah, your disk is probably toast, but you can likely get the drives going
again by opening them up and swabbing the read head off with alcohol using
a q-tip. I don't even put screws in the case of my 1541 that I use for
disk imaging.

You should use newer media. Joe Palumbo had some for sale the last time I
checked, and IIRC, Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club has new-ish disks for
sale.

HTH
6