Commodore 64 Floppy Disk Drive - 1541

(Commodore International - 1982)

Tape drives were excruciatingly slow, and didn't have a very large capacity. So Commodore released the 1541 Floppy Drive which could hold up to a whopping 170k of data on a single disk and could access the data at blistering speeds up to 300bps... six times faster!

Once prices had dropped to around $200, we got our first 1541 5-1/4" floppy drive for our Commodore 64 and loading a program in seconds was one of the most amazing things we had ever witnessed. Up until that point we had purchased all of our games on cartridges since they loaded so much faster than from our Datasette cassette drive. The 1541 disk drive was almost as fast as a cartridge perception wise.

You could notch your single sided 5-1/4" disks to utilize both sides of the disk, doubling your 170k of storage to 340k of storage on a single disk... that was almost mind boggling at the time.

There was a passthrough port on the back of the unit so that you could use other peripherals like printers while having the 1541 attached to your Commodore 64.

Besides the astronomical price, the only drawback is the huge size of the device... It was the size of the actual computer. Even so, it was a must have item for any Commodore user.

Basic system specifications for the Commodore 64, 1541 drive are listed below.

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