1541-ii: She Doesn't Sing to Me No Mores

[intric8]

As I've mentioned in a couple other places recently, I've been playing Briley Witch Chronicles 2 for the past couple of weeks. The game is a very large CRT file, which needs to be run off a modern storage solution of some sort. I play it either with an Ultimate II+ cartridge or, more recently, my Ultimate64 computer, which had a tremendous firmware update around Christmas 2023.

Anyway, I'm about 10 hours into the game. From what the creator of the game Sarah Jane Avory has told me privately, it takes about 16 hours to play if you know exactly what to do. Since the game is so linear - it's really all about the story, which I'll talk about later - my investment in the game at this point has been quite substantial and steady. I've only really had to retrace my steps briefly once.

Since I'm using the Ultimate ii+ cartridge to load the game file, it is recommended to save the game onto an external floppy drive like a 1541, for example. The game provides the ability to save to drive 8 or drive 9 (but the game it too large to be loaded off either). So I load the CRT file, which doesn't use an ID, and then I save off to a 1541-ii drive set to drive 9. It's been a very fun and enjoyable experience, and the saving process is actually quite fast. I played the original BWC part 1 the same way.

Anyway, last night I loaded up the game and went to load my Saves file - it has 4 slots. For several moments the drive's activity LED lit up and the it made some noises I'm not used to hearing at this point. Eventually, the read failed. My heart wa in my throat! Have my 10 hours of gameplay suddenly been destroyed? Bad disk? WTF?!

I dropped to basic and did a directory listing for the disk. FAILED!
I snatched another disk I'd used recently and... it also failed to do a directory.

I then took my disk over to my C128D and ... it worked! Phew! Thank goodness.

I turned around and looked across the room at the 1541-ii.

After a few more tests I am grateful that I have a hardware policy of "two of everything". I pulled my other NOS 1541-ii out of storage and reloaded BWC2. Then I attempted to load my save file. YES.

Sadly, we should have a moment of silence for one of my two 1541-ii drives. She's been a great and steady friend over the years - my go-to preferred 5.25" Commodore drive. Hopefully, whatever is ailing her isn't serious.

RIP (hopefully, not permanently)

[Zippy Zapp]

That is a bummer. Having had drives fail in the past I know the feeling. I will say this, though, that it is probably fixable if it is not a failed head. That is easy to check for with a multi-meter. Most anything else is fixable. Since you have a group there in Seattle area hopefully someone can fix this up for ya if it isn't the dreaded failed heads that go open.

If it is a Newtronics drive, which most 1541C, 1541-II and 1541 with twist down drive are, those heads go open for some reason. The popular theory is that they were improperly sealed and they corrode inside but who knows.