Well, it all started a few days ago, when I took some time to play around with the GEOS files provided by cbmfiles.com . To build you own GEOS disks, you need a 2nd drive to get the job done. And for GEOS a 2nd drive is also mandatory.
So I got myself another 1541 drive on ebay and it arrived two days ago. Since then, I've tried everything to get the damn thing back to work again: it can read files, but writing data to disk or formatting it results in a "21 read error", with the drive led blinking. After reading an article by Ray Carlsen, the guy with the very good artivles on how to fix certain problems with your commodore hardware, I decided to test the 1541 circuit board on my working floppy to find out wether it was the head / mechanics or the circuit. Well, the circuit worked all right with the other drive. So it must be the mechanics. Hmm... what now?
Last chance: there is a program called "1541-tester.prg". It's a BASIC porgram that runs several tests on your drive, including certain alignment and power options I've never herade before. I ran the program, all the tests in it and just followed the "defualt path" of answering "y(es)" everytime the program asked for a positive reuslt of the test. Well, what can I say? The thing *works* !!
I don't know what the porgram did, I even don't know where I got it from. But it did a perfect job on that old 1541! Maybe the drive just appreciated being treated so carefully just to get it back to work, maybe the 8bit gods had a mercy with me, I dunno - but it *works* !!!

just wanted you to know ...