Date   : Wed, 13 Feb 2002 15:05:13 -0800
From   : Angus Duggan <angus.duggan@...>
Subject: BBC Micro repairs

John Woodgate writes:
>I have two BBC micros and a double 5.25 double-sided disc-drive.
>Unfortunately, something is wrong and I cannot read any discs, which I
>need to do to retrieve important information. The computers and the
>drive seem to work but every disc gives an error message.

Try cleaning the disc drive heads; you can either get and try a cleaning
disc, or take the drive out of its casing and use tape head cleaner fluid on
the heads, with a cotton bud.

If the discs give certain errors, and you have an 8271-based controller, then
my HDFS filing system (from ftp.tardis.ed.ac.uk/users/ajcd/BBC) has an option
to set the number of re-tries for failed commands. I have used this in the
past to retrieve data from degrading discs.

a.
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