It may, in fact, be possible - with custom ROMs - to use the 1541 for other formats. But it's telling that no one, so far as I know, has ever managed to create software to 'tween the various 5-1/4" floppy formats, using the 1541 transport & hardware.

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:43 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote: >> A fellow has made up a nice adapter to read and write Commodore disks on >> a PC via USB using a 1541 drive. >> >> The thing that jumped out at me is that this is a 5 1/4" drive that >> reads and writes via USB. Anyone want to comment on whether the >> floppies it accesses would be useful other than on the C64? >> Could one do say 360K floppies via this hardware for other than the >> Commodore? At least part of the work is done to do more than just >> archival like Catweasel, et. al. do, in that it can also write. > The X*1541 cables (this would be an xum1541) still talk to the drives at a > relatively high level, since the 1541/71/81 family are all intelligent > peripherals. So: > > For the 1541, which is strictly Commodore GCR, no. > > For the 1571, which can do a variety of MFM formats, maybe, but I'm not > aware that OpenCBM supports that. On the other hand, since it's MFM, you > could easily just use something else. > > -- > ------------------------------------ personal: > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * > ckaiser at floodgap.com > -- Diamonds are forever. > ------------------------------------------------------ >