C1581

I assumed that the Commodore 1581 was failing because of a bad WD1772 IC (as documented in Part I). So I ordered a WD1772 replacement + the IC socket, I developed some basic desoldering skills, watched some desoldering videos, and also got a cheap desoldering iron from Radio Shack: So, I removed the board from the Commodore 1581 and started to desolder the IC. To my surprise the $11-buck desolder iron worked pretty well. I was able to remove all the solder from the the pins in a few minutes. The desolder iron just takes some time to reach the needed temperature, but besides that, it seems to be a great tool for occasional desoldering tasks (a hobbyist desoldering iron cost more than $250)

I got my 1581 like one year ago. It worked for 2 or 3 weeks and it stopped working. The stepper and the motor weren’t moving. So I guessed that the “floppy drive” was broken. Quick introduction: the Commodore floppy disk drives have 2 major components: The controller board: which has the 6502, RAM, ROM and other ICs to control the drive The floppy disk drive: which is the “thing” that has the header, the stepper, the motor to spin the floppy disk, etc. So, in my case, my quick guess was that the “floppy disk drive” was broken because the stepper and the motor were not moving. ...