1541 floppy drive

JoshuaHorn · Post by **JoshuaHorn** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:40 pm

Hi everyone,

I'm having a problem with my 1541 fdd and my VIC-20. I power it on, then turn on my VIC-20 and enter a brand new floppy disk. I write a program and it saves and the screen says "Ready." But the drive light (red) is flashing right after the save completes, then the drive wont respond. If I reset the drive, and then try to load the program, it says the program does not exist....

Help?

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:50 pm

Obvious questions:

- Have you tried different discs?
- Is the disk of the proper type (Double Density or "DD" rather than "HD")
- Is the disk writeable (i.e. no write protection sticker over the indentation)?
- Did you format the disk?
- if formatted, did you format it in the SAME drive?
- Are you inserting the disc the right way up (if it's a 1 sided disc) / right way round.
- does the drive load from commercial / pre-written disks?

Sorry. I'm sure these seem like idiotic questions, but I'm not sure if you've ever owned a Commodore 8-bit before, so I'm trying to be thorough.

JoshuaHorn · Post by **JoshuaHorn** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:55 pm

Moderators: please delete this thread, I have solved the problem with a proper format.

at first I THOUGHT the disks we're formatted... but they werernt... sorry!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:13 pm

Nah, no reason to be embarassed. We've all had a first time. In your case you may not have thought about there are at least 50, if not 70-80 different computers which once have used 5.25" floppy disks. Most of them use custom formats. Brand new floppy disks certainly could have been sold pre-formatted and probably were at least for IBM PCs, perhaps also Commodore, Apple II, Atari but only for a limited while. All the others would have to format a disk before it can be used, likewise if you would reuse one floppy disk from one system to another.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:17 pm

JoshuaHorn wrote:Moderators: please delete this thread, I have solved the problem with a proper format.

at first I THOUGHT the disks we're formatted... but they werernt... sorry!

Yes, what Carlsson says is correct. So even if the box of disks says "pre-formatted" or something like that, it probably means formatted for MS-DOS (IBM compatibles). That type of formatting doesn't work on a stock VIC-20 or Commodore 64.