Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!ptimtc!nntp-server.caltech.edu!rknop
From: rknop@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Robert Andrew Knop)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: 1541 Blues
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.180254.29146@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 91 18:02:54 GMT
References: <9103221704.AA09898@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 20

ap515@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Tom Wilson) writes:
>Just recently my 1541 has started acting up on me.  It will work
>fine for a while, then, it will refuse to load anything from
>the disk.  It searches the disk, but it's as if it's encountered
>a read error.  The disks are not the problem as I've tested them
>on other drives and had no problems.  My question is:  Is one
>of the 6522's or the 6502 bad?

This sounds very much like the infamous alignment problem.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know, blaming it on alignment is sort of like blaming 64 problems on the
power supply, but don't you agree that this sounds like that???)  It is
actually relatively easy to fix.  There are some places you can send it away
to get aligned, although for less than the cost of an alignment you can buy a
aligment testing program that includes instructions to do it yourself- and it
is only minorly frusturating to do so.  The one I've got is Free Spirit's
1541/1571 alignment program, and I aligned my 1541 with it a couple of years
ago and had good results.

-Rob Knop
rknop@tybalt.caltech.edu