Ahhh, thank you for explaining and showing the head alignment process in detail, and a link to the diagnostic cart..... Now I understand.... Appreciate it :)
Cheers! I've only really found either a very dirty head as the other example for this fault. The Newtronics mechs in these are pretty commonly known to have failing heads by this point.
Hi! question regarding a 1541... When I turn on the drive, there are not lights at all, but I can hear the motor and see the (don't know its name) circular thing which goes in the middle of the diskette spinning around... do you have any idea about what could be the problem? many thanks in advance and for your time
Luckily I had another D500 mechanism from a 1541-II that had a completely destroyed mainboard... unfortunately this seems to be the only way to get a new head mech :-(
I have a 1541-II that used to read disks but now does not. Just file read errors. I cleaned the head and now it will not even do a directory listing. I have other drives and will try them.
The heads on Newtronics mechanisms just fail by themselves. There's nothing you can do about that. You can open up the drive and measure the coil resistances and they should be about 15 ohms.
Weird how you have a 1541c, with the correct -02 ROM version, yet the track zero sensor isn't actually enabled. If you open jumper J3 you won't get the noisy alignment wrecking head rattles with standard DOS ROM routines.
Great catch! I learned of this after I had already completed the vid and sent the drive back to the customer, so unfortunately not able to set that jumper, but if I ever get another I'll definitely perform that!
Unfortunately, you can only get replacement heads from another 1541 drive that has some other problems (like physically broken, or dead main board etc)
Yep it seems to be getting more and more common, and unfortunately even broken drives (if you can even find one) are fetching high prices currently... Good luck in the search!
Anymore when I run into a newtronics mechanism with error 21, I go right to to testing the head. I had one essentially new in the box, plastic film still on the emblem on the front of the case, dead head. It's really a shame.
Definitely a shame, if only there was some modern or alternate replacement head we could swap in rather than having to salvage from other Newtronics mechs and hoping they don't fail too.
@@silvestronsbitsandbytes There is one other (expensive) way, and that is for someone to contact one of the companies that make disk drive heads and have them find one that matches or make one that can be installed in a Mitsumi D500. Heck, has anyone even contacted Mitsumi to see if they actually have any sitting around on a shelf?
You know it wasn't intentional - I had only just gotten the boxed copy recently and wanted to show it off, but I'll take credit for it after the fact :) I didn't know that about Test Drive and Rapidlok! Kismet on many levels it seems!
@@silvestronsbitsandbytes It's probably 'only' a couple of thousand (~170,000 bytes per disk, ~80bytes per old school card). I seem to remember IBM working on a new version of punched cards for archive storage reasonably recently with impressive densities (in excess of spinning platter drives)?
@@madmartigan1498 same unfortunately, I have a few tucked away on my shelf, hoping I'll get lucky one day and source some heads or at least other drives with a good head but broken in some other way. A man can dream!
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Ahhh, thank you for explaining and showing the head alignment process in detail, and a link to the diagnostic cart..... Now I understand.... Appreciate it :)
Very very Good Video
This Helps me a LOT
Thank you
Thanks! Appreciate it, and am glad to have helped :)
Thanks. You made this look very easy. What are some other possible causes for this type of problem?
Cheers! I've only really found either a very dirty head as the other example for this fault. The Newtronics mechs in these are pretty commonly known to have failing heads by this point.
Hi! question regarding a 1541... When I turn on the drive, there are not lights at all, but I can hear the motor and see the (don't know its name) circular thing which goes in the middle of the diskette spinning around... do you have any idea about what could be the problem? many thanks in advance and for your time
I live in Charleston, SC USA. Where can I find someone to repair my 1541 drive?
Where did you get the Mitsumi D500 replacement head? I have searched far and wide, with no luck...
Luckily I had another D500 mechanism from a 1541-II that had a completely destroyed mainboard... unfortunately this seems to be the only way to get a new head mech :-(
I have a 1541-II that used to read disks but now does not. Just file read errors. I cleaned the head and now it will not even do a directory listing. I have other drives and will try them.
The heads on Newtronics mechanisms just fail by themselves. There's nothing you can do about that. You can open up the drive and measure the coil resistances and they should be about 15 ohms.
Weird how you have a 1541c, with the correct -02 ROM version, yet the track zero sensor isn't actually enabled. If you open jumper J3 you won't get the noisy alignment wrecking head rattles with standard DOS ROM routines.
Great catch! I learned of this after I had already completed the vid and sent the drive back to the customer, so unfortunately not able to set that jumper, but if I ever get another I'll definitely perform that!
I have the exact same disk drive and problem does anyone know where to get a new read/write head at
Unfortunately, you can only get replacement heads from another 1541 drive that has some other problems (like physically broken, or dead main board etc)
I have a 1541 with this same problem. Handy. Not sure where I'll source a drive or a head, though. I'll do some searching.
Yep it seems to be getting more and more common, and unfortunately even broken drives (if you can even find one) are fetching high prices currently... Good luck in the search!
Anymore when I run into a newtronics mechanism with error 21, I go right to to testing the head. I had one essentially new in the box, plastic film still on the emblem on the front of the case, dead head. It's really a shame.
Definitely a shame, if only there was some modern or alternate replacement head we could swap in rather than having to salvage from other Newtronics mechs and hoping they don't fail too.
Nice, tanks for sharing :)
Excellent video. No one knows of a source to purchase these head do they?
Thanks, appreciate it! The only source of replacement heads is parts salvaged from drives with other issues, unfortunately :-(
@@silvestronsbitsandbytes There is one other (expensive) way, and that is for someone to contact one of the companies that make disk drive heads and have them find one that matches or make one that can be installed in a Mitsumi D500. Heck, has anyone even contacted Mitsumi to see if they actually have any sitting around on a shelf?
“Test Drive” - pun intended? You chose a good disc to check because it has Rapidlok protection, which is very sensitive to drive alignment.
You know it wasn't intentional - I had only just gotten the boxed copy recently and wanted to show it off, but I'll take credit for it after the fact :)
I didn't know that about Test Drive and Rapidlok! Kismet on many levels it seems!
I remember that jackhammer sound…
Don't have these (specific) problems with punch cards...
I don't even wanna do the math on how many punch cards you'd have to go through to match the storage capacity of a 1541 diskette!
@@silvestronsbitsandbytes It's probably 'only' a couple of thousand (~170,000 bytes per disk, ~80bytes per old school card).
I seem to remember IBM working on a new version of punched cards for archive storage reasonably recently with impressive densities (in excess of spinning platter drives)?
~170k is per side as well, so you'd need at least twice that many cards!
You should use an original disk like the commodore 1541 test disk for the alignment test.
Correct and I mention this and the reasons why around 23:40
@@silvestronsbitsandbytes Yes, you did later on. - Btw great job. I had to bury several 1541s because of a dead head. Nothing I could do about :-(.
@@madmartigan1498 same unfortunately, I have a few tucked away on my shelf, hoping I'll get lucky one day and source some heads or at least other drives with a good head but broken in some other way. A man can dream!
Sound kinda bonkers
Thank you for this. Ahahahah