Denial

Allright Experts - I think my brown 1541 drive has a misaligned head. I get file not found when searching for the $ file, but my 1571 drive finds $ just fine.

Does anyone have some instructions I can use? I see them on ebay, but I really don't want to buy a PDF if someone has one to share!

Start by making sure the head is clean and that the head moves back and forth freely on the rails. You might want to clean them off then re-lube them with some light oil.

Yes, just because it can't find anything it's not necessarily in need of a realignment. It can be dirt on the head, a busted chip.

To re-align it you're likely to need special tools, like an oscilloscope and special disks.

There are alignment programs though that basically knocks things back in position again (as good as possible), you could try one of those after you looked inside to see that it is clean and moves like it should.

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=42684
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=77473 (also has the Disk Exerciser program)

I took it apart, cleaned the head, eliminated all the dust inside and cleaned and lubed the rails. Waited overnight, still won't find a directory, and knocks like a machine gun!

Corsair24x2 wrote:...still won't find a directory, and knocks like a machine gun!

Ah, you may have to reinitialize the drive.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org

There is a disk I ran into that did the same thing to one of my drives. It worked fine until I tried this specific disk then the drive failed. Turning it off and on trying to reset it does not work. Do as Robert says and it might be the trick you need.

Corsair24x2 wrote:I took it apart, cleaned the head, eliminated all the dust inside and cleaned and lubed the rails. Waited overnight, still won't find a directory, and knocks like a machine gun!

If the head only is misalligned, it still should be able to format disks and then to be able to write and read them. If that is impossible as well, then there is more wrong. That can vary from damaged heads to brooken electronics.

Does anyone have the instructions for realigning the head?

And, since I am so fully of questions, does anyone know where I solder a switch to make the drive device 8 or 9?

Corsair24x2 wrote:And, since I am so fully of questions, does anyone know where I solder a switch to make the drive device 8 or 9?

Ray Carlsen to the rescue, as always: How to add a device change switch (8 to 9, 10, or 11) to your Commodore disk drive.

Nice. The Oceanic clone actually has two dips on the bottom so you can select the device number.

I just bought a C64 with a 1541 drive yesterday, and when I brought it home it was very obvious that the drive needed realignment.

I can be pretty clumsy when it comes to working with electronic components though. And even after reading about what I have to do to realign the head, I'm still wondering if theres anything I have to be extra careful about.

Is there anything that could happen while I'm realigning the head that could seriously damage the drive? I've been trying to get a 1541 for over a year, and I don't want to break the one I've finally found.

Well, perhaps if you short something out if you mess around while power is on.

You may end up with an even worse aligned drive and not being able to get it right again. You could try and find someone that has experience and equipment to do it right. Open it up and check that everything is clean first though.

I believe I read somewhere that someone put nail polish on the disk drive read head/s what's that all about?

RobertBe wrote:Ah, you may have to reinitialize the drive.

Robert, how is this done?

vimfuego wrote:

RobertBe wrote:Ah, you may have to reinitialize the drive.

Robert, how is this done?

Normally you initialize using this command from BASIC:
OPEN 1,8,15,"I":CLOSE 1 (return)

I don't really understand how that would help though.

If you have a TFC3 I think you can just write DOS"I (return) - or shift+F7 I and then return.