I've recently acquired a 1541 floppy drive and about +-90 floppies (from some school) but I cant get it to work. When I try to load a floppy it stays on "SEARCHING FOR" with no drive sound or red LED. It does however does the power on check and reset check if the C64 is powered on after. What is the problem and how can I fix it?
You are going to need to open the drive and look around. Could be possible wires loose, burnt componets or mice made a home in it. At the least, take good high quality well lit pics of it so maybe we can tell you if it's any of those things. Possible the fuse is burnt out, but if it was I'm not sure you'd see the lights on it. Could just be the motor being burnt out. Anyways, pics help.
IIRC, that's usually a logic problem or I/O controller. A continually spinning drive without LEDs was a power issue - regulator or PSU. The service manual is pretty handy.
