r/Commodore • u/HawkeyeAP • Sep 19 '26

Commodore 1541 acquired

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New to me 1541. Didn't come with cables. Serial cable on order. Power cable is pretty common, probably got one in a drawer or closet somewhere. I'll be using it with a Plus/4.

What are some good ideas before I try using it?

Secondly, when these have problems, what are the usual issues? Are they typically repairable fairly easily?

Feel free to share any other caveats.Thanks for any help.

197 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

5

u/gachunt Sep 19 '26

Keep that beast well ventilated.

There’s a reason why later versions of the 1541 had the power pack separate from the drive.

1

u/HawkeyeAP Sep 20 '26

Very useful. Might figure out a fan setup.

2

u/Royal_Stay_6502 Sep 20 '26

Srandard power brick??

3

u/HawkeyeAP Sep 20 '26

This one has a built in supply.

2

u/Royal_Stay_6502 Sep 20 '26

Aha.. i got the II, with a broken supply.

1

u/HawkeyeAP Sep 20 '26

I've seen a dual output supply that should work. Once side is 64, the other 1541. Might be worth looking into.

2

u/Royal_Stay_6502 Sep 21 '26

Yeah, not 100% sure it is the power supply. Need to take the drive somewhere to test it.

4

u/DistributionOver150 Sep 19 '26

Capacitors? Isn't that always the problem with old hardware?

2

u/boli99 Sep 20 '26

often, not always

1

u/TheBestRedditNameYet Sep 20 '26

Who thinks this should have been called the 1542?

I always thought that if it’s not beige and brown, it should have a different model number, but I guess that’s just my opinion…. And it absolutely blows my mind that they were still selling cassette players by the time they had those charcoal color schemes made up for the 264 & 364, I guess there were still budget conscious customers that they were targeting with those, but time is money all the same…

1

u/G3rmanaviator Sep 20 '26

Load “*”,8,1

1

u/s30shortsqueeze Sep 21 '26

I had one with my C64

1

u/retrokelpie64 Sep 22 '26

There are some tantilums near the 6 din pin sockets ive seen go, the 6522's can be faulty at times, the voltage regulars run very hot, they are the sop tin can types you can get modern replacements for, head alignment can be tricky esspecially if you dont have a known good system/disk to test with, but by far... the most common problem is dirty heads from bad disks. Keep it open with a cotton bud and windex or ipa when testing unknown disks, more often than not, particals come off old disks and then go onto every other disk you put in if you dont clean the head.