Note Type
General NotesNote
The Commodore 1541 (also known as the CBM 1541 and VIC-1541) is a floppy disk drive which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore's most popular home computer. The best-known floppy disk drive for the C64, the 1541 is a single-sided 170-kilobyte drive for 5¼" disks. The 1541 directly followed the Commodore 1540 (meant for the VIC-20).
The disk drive uses group coded recording (GCR) and contains a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, doubling as a disk controller and on-board disk operating system processor. The number of sectors per track varies from 17 to 21 (an early implementation of zone bit recording with 4 constant angular velocity zones). The drive's built-in disk operating system is CBM DOS 2.6.
Manufacturer Commodore Business Machines
Type Floppy disk drive
Release date 1982; 43 years ago
Introductory price US$399 (equivalent to $1,300 in 2024)
Discontinued 1993
Media 5¼" DD floppy disk
Operating system CBM DOS 2.6
CPU MOS 6502 @ 1 MHz
Memory 2 KB RAM, 16 KB ROM
Storage 170 KB
Connectivity Commodore proprietary serial IEEE-488 0.4 KB/s
Power 100, 120, 220, or 240 V 50/60 Hz 25 W (30 W max)
Backward compatibility Commodore 64, VIC-20
Predecessor Commodore 1540
Successor Commodore 1570 & 1571
Related Commodore 2031, 4040 & 1551Note Type
Object Specific InformationNote
This item powers on but does read or write disks.
