My C-64 disks drives quit loading.

[atari5200dude82]

Hi have 2 c-64 disk drives. They were both loading and working great. Untli i found some copy games on floppy disks. I couldn't tell if it was c-64 or atari. I loaded one in and worked. The others didn't. Then when i put my regular c-64 disk games in. It wouldn't load the game. This happen on both of my 1541 disk drives. Do they reboot themselves. I do not know much about the disk drives. Any help or suggestions, would be appreciated.

[Midnight Synergy]

If the same thing happened to both drives (no longer working after using a particular disk) it's quite possible that the disk was "dirty" (e.g. decomposing disk surface) and mucked up the heads. You can try cleaning the heads - but be very (!) gentle.

 

First, though, I'd check if there is an alignment issue... the easiest way to try to "reset" a drive is to format a blank floppy. Put in a blank (or no longer used, but clean looking) floppy, turn on the C64 and type in

 

OPEN1,8,15,"N:MYDISK,01":CLOSE1

 

You'll hear a brief "ratatat" noise (if all works), and the process takes at least a minute. Then try loading the directory from that disk LOAD"$",8. If that works, proceed to try your other disks. If not, you can try repeating the process, or you may need to look at cleaning/re-aligning the head manually.

[Charlie_]

Use a qtip and 90% alcohol and gently clean the head. These c= drives are very large and easy to work on.

[RickR]

I agree that it sounds like a decomposing disk dirtied up the heads. Gonna have to open those drives up and carefully clean the heads.

[ApolloBoy]

I had that same issue with my DOS PC's floppy drive, put in some old floppies and they gunked up the heads to the point where it wouldn't read anything. Cleaning the heads brought it back thankfully. It doesn't sound like an alignment issue although it's certainly not impossible considering the 1541. When I went back to getting original disks for my C64 collection I decided to get a 1541-II and I haven't had any problems since.

[RickR]

If the same thing happened to both drives (no longer working after using a particular disk) it's quite possible that the disk was "dirty" (e.g. decomposing disk surface) and mucked up the heads. You can try cleaning the heads - but be very (!) gentle.

 

First, though, I'd check if there is an alignment issue... the easiest way to try to "reset" a drive is to format a blank floppy. Put in a blank (or no longer used, but clean looking) floppy, turn on the C64 and type in

 

OPEN1,8,15,"N:MYDISK,01":CLOSE1

 

You'll hear a brief "ratatat" noise (if all works), and the process takes at least a minute. Then try loading the directory from that disk LOAD"$",8. If that works, proceed to try your other disks. If not, you can try repeating the process, or you may need to look at cleaning/re-aligning the head manually.

 

Learn something new every day -- I had no idea simply formatting a disk would reset the heads. Thanks for the info.

[atari5200dude82]

Thank you guys for the info. I got one working again. The other is a refurbished one. It was working fine until i use those copy games disk. I will try to clean it. and see what happens. Thanks again.