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I've read multiple documents on aligning floppy disk drives recently, and it just gets more and more annoyingly complex the deeper you go!

At this stage it's apparent that because of how far out my 1541s are, I'm going to need an analog alignment disk and a scope to correctly reset my drives. So my question is, does anyone here own an analog alignment disk or should I order one from Accurite?

Don't own one but apparently there is a way of adjusting the drive using an ordinary disk by trail and error,
Start at one end of the adjustment and keep trying after each small adjustment on the head till it reads and formats properly , If I can find the link to the article on Lemon I will post it for you.

Here's one from my own Blog. For a full-height Tandon TM100-2A though. Maybe not the model of interest.

In my experience alignment is the last thing to go out. If a drive doesn't work it's often something else...dirty heads,...wrong speed....sticky rails. Be sure to check those things first.

The reason I'm suspecting alignment is that the 1541s are notorious for going out over time, especially after a long hard run - which is exactly what my working one had directly before it developed this new not-reading issue

To test my hypothesis I pulled the Newtronics mech from another 1541 I have which has a power supply problem and swapped it into the drive which had been working. Briefly, it could read/write correctly too - but it soon failed a load sequence then refused to load again.

Might be time to get down and dirty with the DMM though, just in case... otherwise, it'll be time to break out the alignment tools.

Carcenomy wrote:The reason I'm suspecting alignment is that the 1541s are notorious for going out over time, especially after a long hard run

Maybe it'll go back into alignment if it gets a good long rest then..

I've tried the rest thing, it doesn't work

If anyone IS looking for an alignment disk, seems that Accurite still make them. I checked to make sure they're still there and still have some since the website looks like it was coded in Microsoft Notepad, and yes, they still are and stock is still available. 224/2A is the common one for Tandons and 1541s. http://www.accurite.com/AAD.html