Date   : Sun, 24 Aug 1997 16:30:06 +0100
From   : Paul Theobald <PT@...>
Subject: Re: BBC Micro Disk Drives and PC disk drives

>----------
>From:      Andrew De Quincey[SMTP:adq@...]
>Sent:      Sunday, 24 August, 1997 3:52 PM
>To:        bbc-micro@...
>Subject:   [BBC-Micro] Re: BBC Micro Disk Drives and PC disk drives
>
>> Andrew de Quincey wrote:
>> > 
>> > Hi, I'm trying to connect a disk drive to a BBC B micro I have just
>> > recieved. I've blown an EPROM with Acorn's DNFS (DFS v 1.20), and I'm
>> > trying to use an old PC 5 1/4" disk drive (360k I think) with it.
>> > 
>> > I've connected the drive, but when I do *CAT on a disk, the drive
>> > spins up, and just sits there... not moving it's heads or anything....
>> 
>> Sounds like you attached the connector the wrong way!
>> or perhaps a drive selector link to select the drive number is
>> incorrect?
>
>Nope, checked that.. putting the cable the other way round causes the drive
>to
>spin continually.. and it's definitely set to drive 0 (DS0 jumper on the
>drive)
>
>
>Oh dear, this problem appears to be intermittent...
>I just turned the machine on (without changing anything)... and suddenly it
>was working... The drive heads moved, and it was able to catalogue an old BBC
>disk I had lying around.... however, it couldn't actually read any files off
>it.. maybe the format was slightly incorrect..
>
>then.. I turned it off, and on again and now it doesn't work again...
>I've tried changing the cable I'm using, and opening the machine up, and
>pressing on various chips (in case of a broken link)

You could also try checking that the other end of the cable is firmly
plugged into the socket within the disc drive itself.  I've had similar
intermittent problems in the past, and it's always been because the
cable had worked itself loose inside the drive.