The Commodore 64 was central to many a young boys childhood, especially those older than 30! Still, the community around the computer is alive and vibrant with both ideas and new solutions for using the old computer. The old 5.25" floppies we used with them on the other hand are nearing their expected lifespan, they simply were not meant to live this long so in order to keep loading our software and even back the old disks up to newer solutions were needed.

Enter the Pi1541, a piece of software that runs on a Raspberry Pi 3 - offering the complete emulation of the original drive with a compatibility rate of around 99% with improvements made over several years by its original author, Steve White. He distributes the software and a suggested way of wiring it up by hand, but as I enjoy making PCBs I've made a few attempts at creating one for it. In fact, this is my third version of the Pi1541 - simply because it is a bit of kit that I enjoy using. The other two, C64 Pi1541 and C64 Pi1541-II are also available here as shared projects. All of them perform the same task, but offer different price points and design aesthetics. The third one, C64 Pi1541-III, have been designed around a larger 1.3" OLED display and is controlled via a rotary encoder.

The C64 Pi1541-III is composed of a set of 5 PCBs:

• C64 Pi1541-III Module
• C64 Pi1541-III Panel
• C64 Pi1541-III Faceplate (FB1)
• C64 Pi1541-III Faceplate (FB2)
• C64 Pi1541-III Faceplate (FP1)

For parts lists as well as other information needed to build the C64 Pi1541-III, please visit the projects GitHub-repository. While it may seem like an intimidating thing to put together at first, it should be easy to put together as long as you take your time with it. While not especially entertaining in nature, I've put together a video that covers each step of the build.