Creative Micro Designed published an article on this in Commodore World
Magazine issue #25. You can purchase Commodore World back issues from
these places:

Centsible Software: http://www.centsible.com
http://www.centsible.com/Mag2.shtml

CMDrKey: http://cmdrkey.com/
http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/cworld/back/index.htm

Additionally you may conisder simply purchasing a *new* 1581 drive from
Centsible Software ("9/22/02 New 1581 Drives are in stock-call
1-269-471-1089").

An even better alternative is to get a CMD FD-2000 direct from Maurice
Randall. FD-2000 can use standard 1581 800 KByte floppies, MS-DOS 720
KByte and 1.4 MByte floppies and CMD proprietary format 1.6 MByte
floppies.
http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/prodinfo/fd2000.html

Other places you may find 1581 drives/mechs:
http://www.mergetel.com/~blitz/Secure/shop.html
http://ebay.com
http://home.spro.net/ccc/c64hw.htm

Lastly, I've never tried this but I speculate that an Amiga 800 KByte
mech may work with the 1581 controller. Some hacking may be required to
fit things together mechanically and you're on your own!

Good luck to ya :)

--- "jimpurcell2001 <jpurcell@...>" <jpurcell@...> wrote:
> Has anyone ever managed to succesfully put the hardware from a pc
> floppy into a 1581 drive. My drive just died, actually it's just
> morally ill, it will do a directory occasionally. I'm pretty sure
> that
> the mechanism is the problem. Although I used to be an electronics
> tech drives are so cheap I have never borhterd to try to fix them,
> can't see so well any longer either. It would save me the fiddling if
> somone had already put a standarf floppy mechanism in a 1581

=====
C-64 and Apple II website - http://8bit.at/go6502

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