If you're like me, you're thinking that you'd like to own a Commodore 1581 Disk Drive, but the crazy high prices have kept you away from realizing your dream. Well, here is your chance to build your very own Commodore 1581 replica disk drive.

This is my 1581 Enhanced board. The PCB itself is based on the original board design, and as such, is compatible with the original case. Placement of the ports and switches are in the original locations. I wanted to make this board for the community in a way that anyone wanting a 1581 with a bit of skill (or friends with the skills required to assemble this) could have one of these drives for a fraction of the cost of an original drive.

The board itself supports standard Amiga modified floppy drives, and with the Toms adapter board ( https://gitlab.com/toms01/1581-pc-drive-adapter ), all you need for a floppy drive is virtually ANY 1.44 IBM compatible floppy drive mech. The PCB supports single or dual drive ROMS, so you can for example have just the original DOS rom, or you can have JiffyDOS and the original rom (switchable from a jumper on the board).

I've also enhanced the board such that you no longer need to use an original Commodore 1541-II/1581 power supply. Once built, you can power this board with ANY power supply between 7.5 and 25VDC. Either powering methods have been maintained on the board, and are selectable with a single jumper setting. This means, if you want to power it with any power supply you have laying around within those parameters, you can. Or, you can power the drive with a factory power supply. Only one method can be active at any time, so no damage can occur. I implore you however to observe the polarity markings on the PCB when hooking power up to the Alternate power circuit. Always best to double check before applying power.

I'm also not restricting the use of this board. So you can purchase PCB's for yourself, or you can purchase a truck-load and sell them in your shop or on eBay. Do what you like with the boards. All I ask is if you're selling them, please link back to https://corei64.com . I am not however giving the Gerbers away, because providing them through PCBWay ensures you're going to get a quality product, and the small percentage I get from purchases of this board from PCBWay helps fund my ongoing efforts to provide other cool projects to our community.

Your support is always greatly appreciated.

I've created a Github for this project where you'll find photos, descriptive documents, BOM, everything you need to get this project going for yourself. Pick a PCB color, place your order and get building. If you have any questions, reach out to me through my shop, or on social media. I'm not hard to find.

Enjoy!

NOTE: This board has now been superceded by the v2.5 LED edition board.