Customer Reviews
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 !
Wow! What a creative review! I'm sorry that there are any scratches on your drive top. We'll make double our pre-shipment inspection to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Still testing it to see if it's 100% stable or not. So far, it's working great. Only minor issue IF I had to nit pick was the wording on the front was mis-spelled... It was supposed to say
Drive but it says Driv6 or something like that. I saw the glitch in the video and had hoped it was fixed by the time mine was shipped but it wasn't.
A minor thing. Just happy there is someone out there who is willing to assemble these for me. I have a 1581 but I was frustrated to see it didn't have the ability to use HD floppies. I have 700 5.25" double sided floppies for the 1541 series of drives... but very few Double Density 3.5" inch disks. BUT, I have over 1,500 HD floppies many still in the box...
My main purpose for buying this was to get my BBS working that I made back in the day. And since the "Entertainment BBS" ran for 2 years before I shut it down in Sept 1992... I wanted to spin it up... BUT, I was having trouble reading the old Double Density Disks.
So far, this drive is handling HD floppies perfectly! ALSO, my SnapShot V3 works with BOTH 1581/1581S's...
I don't know how to use or enable the Jiffy Dos but will have to see which is my cartridges supports that. I have also kept over the decades... 50-60 PC floppy drives just in case in the future I needed them.
As an IT I have collected a LOT of stuff over the years... I'm happy I kept so many floppies because if this floppy drive ever goes, I am hoping I can just swap in one of the Samsung I think it is models I kept. :)
So far, I am quite happy with the 1581S. I was a tad upset at the cost of shipping across the border BUT, that's not BitBenders fault. On top of the drive I had to pay $157 CAD. $90 was the border fees and the rest was taxes. Which is OK... not their fault... I just always invoice shocked everytime I order something from the USA. LOL!
If I had the money, I would buy more of these! Sadly, this to me anyways, is a luxury item. I don't make a lot of money, BUT, I REALLY wanted one of these!
Packaging: BitBenders knows how to package stuff. So, you can be assured it's packaged wonderfully! My box came in the mail in great condition... drive inside was nicely wrapped up all snug in bubble wrap :)
THANK YOU BitBenders!
I know a LOT... but I do not know how to solder and assemble stuff like this myself... I have watched the videos... but, it's outside my level of professionalism :)
Have a great day everyone!
David Perry
Perry Computer Services (Canada).
Thanks for the great review! The really tiny 'DRIVE' label is very difficult to print, but I'll see if I can improve it a bit. Also, I have recently heard about the shocking 'Agent Fees' that UPS charges on shipments to Canada and have since removed that shipping option for Canadians. US Postal Service and Canada Post do not charge such ridiculous fees. Sorry that I didn't know that earlier.
BitBinder 1581S Floppy Disk Drive (Replica) arrived in the mail today. It's hard to find a good used 1581 drive, so I bought this replica drive for my MEGA65. I hooked it up, switched the drive selector switch to #9, booted my C64 V5.1 RC2 CORE and It works. Haven't tried it with the MEGA65 CORE yet. First impression of the drive. It does its job. The case is nicely 3D printed. I can't believe that I'm using Floppies after so many years and enjoying them. Nice job BitBinder. Thanks... 👍👍👍👍👍 Minor note - When I set JiffyDOS on the C64 Core the screen went Black and I had to reboot. I was able to use the drive with that setting off so no big issue as it will be figured out... 👉Thanks to dddaaannn JiffyDOS is working. I had to Buy the JiffyDOS ROM Images (For the C64 CORE) from RETRO Inovations. Build the jd-c64.bin file and copy jd-c64.bin and jd-c1541.bin files to the /c64 folder of the SD card 👍
Faithful to the original, though in "problematic" areas you can still see it's 3D printed, but overall look and feel is just amazing! Quick, helpful and very friendly communication with customer support. The only drawback remains the price, especially for non-US customers where you have to add expensive shipping costs and import taxes... But on the other hand - you have to pay for the quality. ;-) So the final verdict: definitely recommended! Thank you BitBinders for great job done and your contribution to Commodore community.