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Me: Commodore 64 and Commodore 1541 repair. Various broken 1541, at least 2 working 1541, soldering iron, 1541 speed controller, and if I can find a disk cleaner kit.

You: ?

I will bring 1541 focus things. I have some good useful gear for this topic. b

Bringing various tools, soldering iron / meters / part supplies / scope / resocketing tools etc. I've never dived into 1541's, or done any alignment, will want to get involved in some of that. So, I'll bring a mix of working vs non-working stuff. - Steve

As far as 1541's go, what I will start with is a few working drives. I want to set up some measuring equipment so we can take baseline readings of the electrical characteristics of the drives. Then with this info we can play doctor 1541 to diagnose non-working drives. We can line 10 drives up at a time, probe targeted points and determine which are the best candidates for repair. We can also swap parts, etc. I have an oscilloscope but if anyone wants to bring a better one, please advise and I will leave mine at home.

Good plan. I've never looked at 1541's before, so I have no schematic / maintenance docs.... yet. That being said, I'll happily help anyone. I plan to bring a modern scope, although I'm only around Saturday, so you might want to lug something up to NJ anyway.

I am also planning on bringing a few DEC power supplies to test out. h742a's. These are 115V and can be tested from a regular outlet. I have restored one from the grave, I hope to be able to bring up at least two more (I have 4 to be restored). Restoring the supply was a great learning experience for me, I was totally clueless about DEC repairs before I started. I know VCF has at least one h742a power supply in the store room we can take a look at, maybe diagnose the condition of VCFs pdp 11/40 power supply.

Power supplies (design/debug) I'm weaker than I'd like. I'd like to help with any DEC stuff - or listen/learn, either way is fine. Overall, I've never needed to realign a C64 drive, although I have done some Apple II driver calibration. Sounds like fun. - Steve

The article seems very straightforward: www.vcfed.org/evan/1541.pdf. I encourage everyone to read it and consider its advice. Sometimes simple adjustments are a smarter choice vs. immediately jumping into all kinds of fancy electronic stuff. :)

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The article seems very straightforward: www.vcfed.org/evan/1541.pdf.

I encourage everyone to read it and consider its advice. Sometimes simple adjustments are a smarter choice vs. immediately jumping into all kinds of fancy electronic stuff. :)

Thanks Evan, this is a nice article. I have a few books on repairing 1541's too, I was thinking to bring. b

You're welcome. I like this article because it is very simple. "Even an Evan can understand!" Obviously some of the drives will need sophisticated repair. But I'm thinking that the basics in this article should be tried before we starting probing and soldering anything. :) Someone should bring a metric crap-ton of sticky labels, so we don't get confused about who owns which drives. VCF itself probably has a dozen or so of the 1541s.

On Thursday, January 28, 2016, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

The article seems very straightforward: www.vcfed.org/evan/1541.pdf.

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I encourage everyone to read it and consider its advice. Sometimes simple adjustments are a smarter choice vs. immediately jumping into all kinds of fancy electronic stuff. :)

Thanks Evan, this is a nice article. I have a few books on repairing 1541's too, I was thinking to bring. b

You're welcome.

I like this article because it is very simple. "Even an Evan can understand!"

Obviously some of the drives will need sophisticated repair. But I'm thinking that the basics in this article should be tried before we starting probing and soldering anything. :)

Someone should bring a metric crap-ton of sticky labels, so we don't get confused about who owns which drives. VCF itself probably has a dozen or so of the 1541s.

I'm guessing VCF has about 100 1541.

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 12:44 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

I'm guessing VCF has about 100 1541.

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That is a slight exaggeration. :)

We probably have about 15-20.

All bad? What bad luck. b

They were donated to us via Bryan Pope who got a majority of them via 3 defunct Commodore user groups. They have been stored in the warehouse for years in all sorts of temperature and humidity conditions. I suspect that they all have one problem or another that makes them all unusable. I have not tested all of them. There are just too many. I would take one try it, then another and another, and just give up. On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 2:14 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 12:44 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

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I'm guessing VCF has about 100 1541.

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That is a slight exaggeration. :)

We probably have about 15-20.

All bad? What bad luck. b

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

The article seems very straightforward: www.vcfed.org/evan/1541.pdf.

I encourage everyone to read it and consider its advice. Sometimes simple adjustments are a smarter choice vs. immediately jumping into all kinds of fancy electronic stuff. :)

Looks good. I printed a few copies which I will bring to the workshop. I also have other documentation and manuals for the 1541 which I will bring.

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

Probably the best thing I can personally do at the workshop is de-assembling all the 1541s to get the drives ready for repair. I may lack the electronic skills that you guys all have, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work a screwdriver. :)

I'll also be meeting with some InfoAge management people about details of our museum move; etc.

Anything in the museum that needs some workshop attention? - Steve

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

Can someone supply a good desolder station for removing ICs! Last time we had Corey's and it proved really really helpful.

I plan to bring mine. - Steve