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

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.

I received the disk drive in a well packaged box and got it hooked up to my C64 and it works great. No I wish I had bought two! Well built, look great and runs really nice.

I’ve very recently taken delivery of a great looking 1581S drive. The unit arrived safely in France after its trip from the US and was well packed so it was in good order.

A great product is defined by the quality of the service and responsiveness provided by the creator. Craig is first class in this respect. I had a couple of very minor set-up issues and within the same day (Sunday as well) Craig replied to my email with a great answer to the set-up question I had. Not only that but I also learned that there will soon be a set-up / user guide to make the product even better.

If you’re in the market for an external drive for your MEGA65 then look no further.

Transport yourself back to 1987 and grab that new 1581 that just came out!

You can do this without charging up your flux capacitor time machine, just place an order at Bitbinders for a new 1581 disk drive recreation. I got mine and it works great. The 3D printed case does not look printed. Unless you look close, the imperfections are not noticeable. Mine had some scratches on the top, probably from stacking these drive cases in inventory or during testing. The drive performs flawlessly. The only difference from the 1581 is the mostly new components and the badge of a B Bitbinders rather than the C= chicken lips Commodore. Genuine 1581s are wonderful, but working devices are expensive and in 40 years, the Bitbinders edition has a greater chance of being in working order.

Bitbinders gives you a generous 60 day window to not like and return the product, but that is one service I will never use. If you are a commodore fan, and want to have a disk party, this should be your centerpiece !