Some years ago I bought a 1581 kit off eBay. The remaining bits after Commodore cannibalized 1581 drives to get floppy's for their Amiga computers. I acquired two Chinon FB-354 drives, but could not get the drive to work. After some years on the shelf I took some time to finally get it up and running. A friend printed me a new eject button for one of the drives, as it was missing it's button. Then I placed an order for a ZoomFloppy and a JiffyDOS ROM for the drive at Retro Innovations. The ZoomFloppy works great in Windows 10 after getting updated software and drivers. But I could not write disk images. The drive would not work in the C64 either. Giving drive not ready errors. Preparing a new disk did not produce the sounds it should, and the drive stopped spinning way to fast. So on to the troubleshooting.
C:\Program Files\opencbm>imgcopy.exe vandalismnews65.d81 10
[Warning] invalid imagetype for this drive type
[Warning] invalid imagetype for this drive type
[Fatal] invalid imagetype for this drive type
Running in verbose mode shows the drive is misdetected as a D80 drive. Possble due to the JiffyDOS ROM. Trying again with the parameter -d 1581 worked better.
C:\Program Files\opencbm>imgcopy.exe -v -v -v -d 1581 vandalismnews65.d81 10
[Debug] transfer mode is 0
[Debug] decided to use transfer mode 1
[Debug] imagetype D81 from file extension
[Debug] imagetype D81 from drive type
[Debug] block count: 3200
[Fatal] drive 10 (CBM-1581): 74,DRIVE NOT READY,40,00
After a quick Google I tried another disk, which I was almost certain should be good. NOS 3.5" MFD 135 TPI, Double Sided, Double Density, Japanese Media which my boss gave me. Got further, but still no cigar.
C:\Program Files\opencbm>imgcopy.exe -v -v -v -d 1581 vandalismnews65.d81 10
[Debug] transfer mode is 0
[Debug] decided to use transfer mode 1
[Debug] imagetype D81 from file extension
[Debug] imagetype D81 from drive type
[Debug] block count: 3200
[Fatal] drive 10 (CBM-1581): 27,READ ERROR,40,00
Strange. Google gave little results. So I pulled the drive apart and ran it naked. I noticed the drive head never moved. I cleaned the heads with isopropyl alcohol and jerked the rod and head movement mechanism. The grease was soft, but apparently the mechanism was stuck. I power cycled the floppy drive and tried again. And it worked!
100% 3200/3200[Info] finished imagecopy.
3200 blocks copied.