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Comment by zandorg | Hacker News Reader

A few months ago, I found some C64 5 1/4 inch disks in my Mum's loft. I didn't need "crates of Apple II's", just a 1541 drive from Ebay and a XA1541 cable to connect to my laptop's parallel port.

I worked out a system whereby I'd read a disk, then when the drive head got magnetic filth on it, I'd swab the disk head with isopropyl alcohol.

Anyway, I recovered about 1/2 of the disks with no errors, recovering 4 short stories - thought lost forever - and 52 Boulderdash 4 caves I did with a friend. Also, a sampler/sequencer.

My point is that the C64's 1541 disk drive has its own ROM, so you don't need a C64 to read its disks!

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If you want to try recovering the rest, keep in mind the 1541 is notorious for losing head alignment. For 1541's that's been used a lot you can pretty safely assume that it won't be properly aligned, but even if it was, chances are your disks were last written by a 1541 that wasn't perfectly aligned...

Look up how to adjust it, and chances are you'll be able to recover a good chunk of the rest. The "crude" approach is to just manually try adjusting the alignment screw, but there are proper instructions online and software to aid finding the right alignment.

(and the 1541 didn't have just it's own ROM - it has it's own 6502 CPU - it's as powerful as the C64 itself... And you can download programs to it over the serial port)

Have you got the URL of any websites that offer such an alignment tool? Preferably done using PC software and the XA1541 cable.

No, sorry it's been years and years since I had any disks. But there's any number of guides available for doing it "manually" as well. For example (PDF): http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/re/Tuning%20the%201541%20...

The software tools don't replace manual adjustments - all most of them do is to try to give you some indicator whether you're getting closer or not but you can achieve that simply by attempting to load files and look for / listen for signs the drive is attempting to re-read the same track more or less often as well. Read errors has a pretty characteristic sound on the 1541.

For those of you who don't have a printer port on your PC, try the ZoomFloppy. It's a USB-attached board that connects any Commodore floppy drive to your Windows, Mac, or Linux box.

http://store.go4retro.com/zoomfloppy/

Key features:

  - Can copy all protected disks, using a cable you install in your 1541
  or without a cable if you have a 1571
  - Supports IEEE-488 (PET drives) with optional connector
  - Also can write back images

Compared to the Kryoflux:

  + No need to make a hardware modification to your drive 
  to copy the back side of floppies
  + Better support for Commodore image formats like G64
  + Write support (although Kryoflux is improving here)
  + Much less expensive
  - Commodore-only, no PC, Mac, Apple II, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm the designer of this device and its firmware, but not the manufacturer. I'm interested in seeing more people use it to rescue old data but do not make any money from it. All firmware and schematics are GPL.

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