In his latest video, GadgetUK tackles a particularly rough Commodore 1541-II repair. From the outside, the drive already looks incomplete—missing a lever and barely making a sound when powered on. But opening the case reveals just how bad things are. Debris, corrosion, and signs of liquid damage are everywhere. The internals look like they’ve survived a flood and a barn fire.
As GadgetUK disassembles the drive, he finds multiple damaged resistors, rusted screws, and evidence that moisture made its way onto the logic board. Some components have rotted away. Others are barely holding on. Still, he’s determined to try. He scrubs the board with vinegar, uses an ultrasonic cleaner, and replaces corroded resistors and capacitors.
After cleaning, the board powers on—but the drive still doesn’t work. The culprit? A badly corroded power socket. A bit of contact cleaner brings it back to life. Suddenly, things start looking up for this Commodore 1541-II repair.
Without a lever to hold disks in place, GadgetUK improvises a manual fix using his hand. He cleans the heads with IPA and plastic polish, and just like that, the drive successfully loads a test program. He even recovers a moldy disk by gently cleaning its surface with soapy water and a cotton bud—proving the heads are working after all.
The restoration isn’t finished yet. He plans to replace more damaged components, glue and reinforce cracked plastic clips with heat-shrink tubing, and even design a servo-driven mechanism to replace the missing lever. The idea? A button-activated, Arduino-controlled motor that latches and unlatches the disk. Ambitious? Yes. Overkill? Maybe. But this is why GadgetUK’s viewers keep coming back.
If you’re curious how a floppy drive that looked beyond saving is slowly brought back from the brink—with both humor and technical know-how—this video is worth every minute.
