Commodore Remix

Hi!

Well after some 8 years or so in storage at my Mum's place, i finally dusted off my old C64. Amazingly it still works, well, it did....

So there I was shoving disk after disk into my 1541 in an attempt to weed out the disks that have been destroyed by time or dust, when after about 2-3 hours, the 1541 stopped reading disks.

I went back and checked everything, including the disks that DID work. Nothing. All it does is it attempts to read each "good" disk, does 3-4 track seeks then does its nasty head block brrrrrrrrrrrrr and the light starts flashing "error" at me.

So there are two possibilities, 1) either something has died inside, or 2) I've clogged up the head with so much rubbish I need to clean it off.

I don't have anything right now (white spirits) to clean the heads. I will try this.

However, does anyone know if you can still get an Azumith alignment disk and software for the C64?

Any chance of getting something else to read these disks? Some mod job done on an IBM 5/14 drive?

Answers in a post card to this message.....

Theres so many goodies on these disks that I really want to get things running.

cheers,
Tim.

Uhm... are you able to understand german ? Then try

http://www.forum-64.de

I'll have a look for a realignment tool... try following URLs for yourself:

http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/documents/disk-drives/
http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/fix1541.txt

If you want to read / write 1541-disks on a PC/Amiga, have a look at

http://www.e-trade.to/en/catweasel/catweasel.html


Welcome back aboard, Tim !

P.S.: Maybe it's just a problem with a "cold" moldering or heat. Open the top cover to let more air into the drive.

Thanks mate, the links you've given me are great.

Seems like I've probably got dirty heads, so I'll try that first, but its really cool to see this kind of helpful information out there!

I'll let you know how I get on!

tim.

Is it a 1541-I (big thing with internat powerconverter) or 1541-II (smaller, with the converter on the powerchord)?

The 1541-I has a bug that can make the head "lock" or get out of alignment. This has happened to me several times, and it sounds exactly like you've fallen victim too. I found out (on my own) that you could use some disc-command on it to get it to "pop" into place again........... now if I could only remember the string to use............. I think it was something that made the head "bang the wrong direction" by trying to jump down *past* track 0. It helped, anyways. =)

Here's a "reverse-head-alignment" program I found on a site. Give it a try. It's completely harmless (unless you write something wrong), but very noisy. So prepare to have your drive jumping on the table from the "hammering-machinegun-syndrome". Make sure to have a disc in the drive, and that it's one you're not fond of though.

****
Reverse head knock on the floppy drive
Posted in the newsgroup comp.sys.cbm by Michael Parson (mparson@mercury.utb.edu):

The following was taken from RUN magazine, Sept 1988 Issue, Magic Trick $4CC, page 12.

If your 1541 or 1581 disk drive hasn't been behaving well lately, it may be out of alignment. You could take it to a repair shop, but before you shell out $0 or $50, try "knocking" some sense into it with my Reverse Knocker program.

This 64- and 128-mode program reverse-knocks the drive head 100 times, which may re-align the drive just enough to postpone and expensive realignment. Be forewwarned: have an old work disk in the drive when you run it, and don't worry if running this program makes your disk drive sound like a smoldering Buddy Rich drum solo. It is a noisy program, but if you type it in correctly, it won't hurt the drive or disk at all.

0 REM REVERSE KNOCK YOUR DRIVE - STEPHEN CHEUNG
10 OPEN 15,8,15,"I"
20 SP=1:FORI=1 TO 100:GOSUB40:NEXT
30 FORI=1 TO 20:SP=-1:GOSUB40:NEXT:PRINT"ALL DONE!":PRINT#15,"I":CLOSE15:END
40 PRINT#15,"M-R"CHR$(0)CHR$(28):GET#15,A$:A=ASC(A$+CHR$(0)):BI=A AND 3
50 BI=BI+SP:BI=BI AND 3
60 R=(A AND 252) OR BI: PRINT#15,"M-W"CHR$(0)CHR$(28)CHR$(1)CHR$(R):RETURN

****

Hey, that looks familiar!

It definitely OPEN 15,8,15 something........... I think the 15,8,15,"I" in the program I posted is some kind of data intergrity check. If you're gonna use the "F" version, be *extremely* sure to have a disk you don't care about in the drive. =)

Try the proggie, wich don't erase any data, first, then the OPEN 15,8,15,"F" version. The answer is hidden so close.............ah, thos braincells aren't what they used to be. =/

I tried unlocking the heads by doing:

open15,8,15
print#15, "I"
close15

Didn't work, I also tried pushing the head back to track zero (like the transit disk does).

Believe it or not, I haven't found any cleaning materials yet, as I've been busy at work.

Its a 1541-I by the way.

Also, and I totally forgot this, its got a speed-dos ROM in it. The mad thing is that I fogot that I modded my C64 when I was 15! And who says that PC MOD'ding is a new craze! Hey we were doing it 17 years ago!!

Cheers for all the advice guys, guess I need to get to a hardware store and get some white-spirits/cleaning stuff!!

tim.

Did you try the "head-banger"-program too?

will do when I get in!!

Will play some Death Metal music while coding it in

say, what kind of stuff are you smoking, buddy ?

> say, what kind of stuff are you smoking, buddy
Kryptonite...?

* I is initialize, hand shake
* N is new, format disk
* V is validate, clean up (but it does not defragment)

The syntax to format a disk is OPEN 1,8,15,"N0:name,id" where:

* the unit number is 0, unless you have a rare double floppy unit. Often the zero can be omitted, but it doesn't hurt etc etc.

* the device number often is is 8, but in theory can be 8-11 or maybe even higher.

* the command channel is 15, which is a special channel which the drive listens to.

Oh by the way; maybe your drive will act normally again after a round of Drive Music? Some people (like me) believe it is death to a floppy drive, while others claim to have been running it for continuous hours without making any harm to the drive.

Vosla wrote:say, what kind of stuff are you smoking, buddy ?

Only one answer there can be - grass

Just chewing the cud.......

Paul