1581S - A beautiful, 100% compatible replica of Commodore's 1581 floppy disk drive

Up first: My 1581S works great now and I love it - and the support by BitBinders was not only flawless, but generous beyond any reasonable warranty. I cannot recommend Craig Smith and his "little" retro business enough.

Here is the overview for the impatient:

+ ready-to-go floppy disk drive, no assembly required
+ JiffyDOS on board! Probably the fastest physical drive in existence for the breadbox (note that for full speed, your C64 needs a JiffyDOS ROM as well)
+ very clean and carefully put together interior
+ solid, sturdy custom made case in the original shape - and *exactly* the right shade of beige!
+ generous support regardless of the impatient customer already having broken the warranty seal

- The 3D print of the case does show in some places. Most of that can be fixed with half an hour of careful sanding, though (400 grit, wet - and take the drive out of the case before!)
- my particular droid had a defective motivator - I mean, *drive* and *voltage converter.*

That being said, it took a week of remote trouble shooting, two different variants of the one same replacement part and a small repair to put it right, which was not too difficult to do.
When I first connected the drive, it stayed dark and silent. Not wanting to ship it back and forth across the Atlantic (again), I opened it up and checked for errors as far as I could. When I contacted BitBinders with details and photos of my findings, Craig Smith reacted without delay and supported me fully in my own repair in addition to offering a full re-fund or having the drive shipped back for an exchange. Because I was too impatient for that, I chose to see how much I could fix myself, and Craig put enough trust in my abilities that he did not try to convince me otherwise - which saved me several weeks of shipping time, and I really appreciate that.
When the fault narrowed down to the step down buck converter (for the 5V from 9-12V input), he offered to mail one, but seeing that it was much faster to just buy one myself at home in Germany, I declined. In response, he offered me a $50 re-fund for doing the repair myself (for a $1 part!), which - again - I politely declined because I could see that he was giving me all the support he possibly could, and that was all I wanted. And I did get it work after a few days of back and forth, so I am happy as a boy on Christmas eve with a brand new toy.

So in the hope that I can save someone else the trouble I had, here is what I found out about *my* 1581S: The step down converter was busted, and I do not trust the model that was built into the drive, because when I replaced it with the exact same model, that one delivered entirely unreliable voltages, which moved up and down with the input voltage - which is exactly what the converter is supposed to prevent. AND it dropped its 5V to *half* a volt when the drive was turned on. I tested this on two out of my pack on ten and then threw away the whole batch.
I replaced it with an MP1584EN, which works exactly as intended and keeps the voltage stable regardless of input voltage. I don't know why the original converter never seemed to cause any trouble in other drives before, but maybe there are some weird side effects of the 50Hz 240V AC that I have in Germany that simply do not show in the US. Who knows?
What I *do* know is that most retro enthusiasts know their (basic) way around a soldering iron, and that it is difficult NOT to when you enjoy decades old electronics, and that the community provides great support to each other - which is exactly what happened here, so I don't mind this hiccup altogether. Just putting my experience out there in the hope that it might save others some trouble in the future.

I am really happy with the product and service that BitBinders provided to me. Sometimes, s*** just happens - and then, all that counts is that people try to fix it as best they can. And Craig did absolutely everything in his power and was so generous in his offers that it would have been embarrassing for me to accept them😉.
So while I cannot give the drive itself 5 out of 5: would I buy it again?

Yes, absolutely. I still have some MP1584ENs lying around.

Maybe I will... 😁

After searching and waiting for a 1581 drive to come up for sale, I decided upon a replica. Not being confident enough to build one myself, I found several options but BitBinders was head and shoulders above the rest. And so I ordered a1581S.

This arrived quickly and safely to the U.K., and included some disks to get me going, plus a test sheet to verify the drive. The drive works flawlessly and I can't wait to start making some compilation disks to reduce my reliance on my 5 1/4" disk mountain.

Absolutely amazing quality, and Craig was happy to answer my queries about the internals. I really am chuffed with my new 1581 and for a Yorkshireman, that's rare approval !

I love my 1581s, such a well crafted and authentic reproduction. I ordered it to use with my C128. I liked it so much I ordered a second for my C64.

My VIC-20 is now happy with a new Drive. Arrived in a good packaged box, works as expected very good. Great work!

I had a bit of a wild ride to get my 1581S (which I love). First, I was stung by the UPS' outrageous "surprise" processing fees for a shipment to Canada (as well as their inability to find my condo building in the middle of the city). Happily, BitBinders is now using Canada Post for shipping their drives up here. More personally for me, BitBinders was kind enough to allow me to refuse the shipment from UPS, and they hand-delivered a replacement for me at the World of Commodore expo in Toronto.

Unfortunately, I had problems with the replacement drive. It would work for a short time, and then my C128 would stop recognizing it until I power-cycled the computer and the drive a few times. The customer support at BitBinders was excellent. They responded quickly via email. They led me through several troubleshooting steps, but at the end we were unsuccessful in getting the drive to work consistently. BitBinders paid the returning shipping and gave me the option of a full refund or a new 1581S.

Luckily, I took the second option. BitBinders was now using Canada Post; so there were no shipping surprises. Yes, if you hold the drive under your nose to inspect it, you can tell it's 3D-printed, but for general use you don't notice any of that. It is a beautiful drive, certainly the finest example of 3D-printing I have ever seen. It looks like a real Commodore 1581 when it's sitting there on your desk. I have been putting the new drive through its paces, and it works very well. My main goal was to transfer d81 disk images to real disks. This works nicely, and it's funny to watch as my pi1541 takes forever to read 80 track, and the 1581S writes them super-quick to real media. (The pi1541 doesn't support burst mode, while the 1581S does.) I've tested 1581 disk partitioning and CP/M mode as well; it all works.

I would definitely have given 5 stars if the first drive I received had worked as flawlessly. I imagine my case was a one-off, but I have to report what I experienced . What I can say is that BitBinders stood behind their product and did everything they could to make sure that I was a satisfied customer.