I bought a 1571 on eBay:
Bid: 21,50 EUR
Shipping 15,00 EUR
2019-02-17 19:39:46
I received the unit on 2/19. It was well packaged. As stated the lever is missing. I opened the device by just removing the four screws on the bottom. Then the top cover lifts up easily. The warranty seal was already broken.
The insides looked in good condition. However, two studs where the drive mechanism is screwed onto where broken off. Maybe the floppy fell down at some point?
Before I turned it on, I thought I check the power supply a bit. It supplies 5 and 12V. According to the internet the 5V line delivers 1A and the 12V line 1,2A. At no load, both voltages are just below nominal. When the 5V line is loaded with a 5 ohm resistor, the voltage drops to 4.5V. Only 600mA was supplied in this case. Probably the line resistances were also very high in comparison. I loaded the 12V line with a 10 ohm resistor. The voltage dropped only very little. The transformer made a buzzing sound.
At the end I reconnected the motherboard and switched it on. The power LED was on. Otherwise I can’t say much about it. The transformer was also audible. Apparently the part already needs a lot of current even when idle. I should do a current measurement in operation later.
Then I disassembled the 1571 completely. Only 4 screws at the power supply and four screws at the drive mechanism have to be removed. I glued the broken studs. But one of them cracked a little bit when I screwed it back on. Before that I made notes about the installed electrolytic capacitors. For a later recapping:
1571 Power Supply Board: PCB ASSY P/N 325188-01 REV A
C1 4,7μF 63V
C4 4.7μF 63V
C7 4700μF 40V
C8 4700μF 16V
1571 Mainboard
C21 10μF 25V
C28 47μF 10V
C29 10μF 25V
C31 1μF 16V
I have to find some replacement for the lever. Otherwise there is now way to turn the shaft of the closing mechanism from the outside:
Shaft: 4mm with a 1mm notch:
The has a max. outer diameter of 8mm
Next steps
I need to build a Commodore Serial cable. According to a tip from the internet, you can do this with a piece of CAT-5 cable and two 6-pin DIN connectors.
By the way, here are the other DIN connectors:
Serial: 6-pin DIN
Power Supply: 7-pin
Video: 8-pin DIN 262° Horseshoe (optional 5 pin). Attention don’t use the 270° version
I would also need some floppy disks. Let’s see what’s available on eBay. I don’t have anything here myself.
I am already curious if I can get the drive working…