Date   : Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:45:57 +0100 (BST)
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: floppy discs

On Jul 13 2005, 23:15, Colin wrote:
> Ok, bear with me here as this is getting a little too technical for
me and I
> perhaps have a too simplistic view of disks and disk drives..
> I'm going by a PC floppy which you shove in, format it to clear any
gunk on
> it and have a disk you can use (regardless of what was on it before).
> I got this pile of disks and I want to scrub everything off them and
use
> them for the BBC Micro.

Well, the process is much the same for the Beeb as it would be for a
PC. One difference is that the formats normally used by a PC are
different from any used by the Beeb.  The HD disks are for a different
type of drive; they're not really useful on a Beeb.  The DD disks are
fine, but will need reformatted.  Unfortunately, the formatting program
isn't built in to the Beeb.  It would normally be on a utility disk,
such as the Welcome disk, but there are also a number of sideways ROMs
that include a formatter.  Apart from certain third-party DFS ROMs, the
obvious ROM that includes a formatter is Disc Doctor.

It's possible you have something like that.  What does *HELP show?

If you can get a formatter, either on disk or ROM, then you need to
know if the drive is 40-track or 80-track.  One way to find out is to
try formatting or verifying 80 tracks.  If it's a 40-track drive, it
will start to make a lot of noise shortly after the 40th track :-)  Not
terribly good for the drive, but it shouldn't do much harm just once.


-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York