Page "Commodore 1581" Paragraph 5

Unlike the case of the 1541 and 1571, the low-level disk format used by the 1581 is similar enough to the MS-DOS format as the 1581 is built around a WD1770 FM / MFM floppy controller chip.

PC Floppy controllers ( ISA or onboard, but not USB floppy drives ) are able to deal with the 1581 format without need for any special tricks.

Thus, utilities to format, read, and write 1581-format disks in standard PC floppy drives under Linux or Microsoft Windows exist.

This controller chip, however, was the seat of some early problems with 1581 drives when the first production runs were recalled due to a high failure rate ; the problem was quickly corrected.

Later versions of the 1581 drive had a smaller, more streamlined looking external power supply provided with them.