The
Commodore 1541 floppy
Disk Drive (Single-sided Double-density
5 1/4" disk) was the essential component of any proud Commodore owner. Predecessor to the
1571 (Double-sided double-density 5 1/4" drive) and the
1581 (Double-sided double-density 3 1/2" drive).
What made these drives unique in the home computing world of the 1980's was the fact that since Commodore's line of home computers did not have a native Disk Operating System on board due to memory limits, the DOS was installed on the firmware of the drives.
Connected to the Commodore via a 6-pin DIN serial connector, one had to type commands to load off the drive like so:
LOAD "JUMPMAN",8,1
LOAD = LOAD to memory; "JUMPMAN" = name of program to LOAD; ,8 = the first disk-drive on the serial chain (,9 being the second disk-drive); ,1 = LOAD as Machine Language