Posted By
TLC
on 2007-09-14
01:52:34
|  Re: 1551 - alignment?
You can know if the drive really has alignment problems, if you try formatting and reading a disk.
If it's an alignment problem, it will work with disks formatted by itself (as, for those, the alignment is still "perfect"), and refuses to read disks formatted by other drives.
If it'd turn out that it even refuses to format a disk, it's most probably not an alignment problem. In that case, although I never tried this myself, as far as I know, it's possible to replace the drive of the 1551 by one of a 1541C... so you can make a test.
You won't break anything, as I guess. The 1551 is mechanically a 1541C derivative, and most of them were even assembled with the same "turn-down" type lever drive (from Newtronics). You'll see... If you find similar connectors on them, from that on, I doubt that you could hurt anything (...and if they didn't match, you won't exchange the drive mechanics anyway). One thing to make sure, the orientation of the cable connectors when connected to the board (as these have no notch or similar that make it impossible to connect them oppositely... just check and make notes of which pin of the connectors go to pin 1 of the connectors on the mainboard, plus some attention, that's probably enough).
Good luck!
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