1541 drive help.

[Tupin]

Okay, so I got a drive for my C64 today. No serial cable, but I took a power cable off an old PC of mine and powered it up. The green light came on, and the red light continued to blink continously as the drive span. When I put a disk in, it feels like it is stopping the drive from spinning, but it goes back to normal after I insert it all the way.

So, what's wrong? Do I need to recalibrate the drive heads or is it just like a matter of being hooked up to the computer? Or is it something even worse?

[zektor]

I would get the serial cable and hook it up to the C64 first. I do admit that when my drives are turned on and the computer is not, the light does not blink but is solid. Get a serial cable and try it anyway. I purchased a 10ft on ebay for under 10 bucks recently. Make sure to turn on the drive first and then the computer when you do have it hooked up...so that the C64 can initialize the drive.

[Tupin]

Yeah, that's what I figured, I just wasn't sure.

At least all of the Commodore cables are standard and easy to find...

[Wookie]

For all things related to Commodore troubleshooting and repair, check out Ray Carlsen's pages at:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm.html

[Tupin]

I'm still under the hope that it's a matter of being connected, I'm going to get a serial cable soon.

If not, at least the drives are cheap.

[Tupin]

So yeah, I hooked it up, and it just blinks red, displaying "SEARCHING FOR *"

What should I do now?

[Wookie]

Once again, for troubleshooting info check out Ray Carlsen's pages, linked in my earlier post.