Congratulations! You now own a Commodore and a 1541 Disk Drive. You've got a great combination. Unfortunately, you've also got the VIC-1541 User's Manual and you may be finding it tough to dig out the information you need. That's what this Survival Guide is here for. Here you can find the information you need, in plain English, to make the most of your system.

You might want to glance through the entire Guide, just to get an idea of what's here and where it is. Don't feel that you have to learn everything at once! The Guide's broken down into easy-to-swallow pieces. You say all you want to do is load and run your new game disk Giant Space Marshmallows Attack Harrisburg!? Fine. Look in the First Steps 'Ready-made disks'. You want to save the nifty little program you just ran off? That's First Steps - 'Your Own Disk'. The stupid little red light is blinking and you don't have any idea why? Look in Second Steps -'The error channel or That Stupid Red Light is on AGAIN". It's all here. Relax.

Another purpose for the guide was to correct a few little mistakes in the User's Manual. I'll give references to the User's Manual so you'll be able to make comparisons.

There's a section here on the 'Wedge' program you got with your disk drive. I'll give you some reasons why you'll want to use it, as well as a more comprehensive list of commands.

You can also find some general information on files. I've included a section on very general troubleshooting and a bibliography of helpful books and articles.

Last but certainly not least is the at-a-glance reference listings on the inside of the cover. You can use the listings found there to jag your memory of just what to type to Format, or Initialize or Read the Error Channel.

Have fun!