Date   : Sat, 16 Jul 2005 08:52:25 +0100
From   : Mike Tomlinson <mike@...>
Subject: Re: floppy discs

In article <002901c5898f$02c7bbe0$e63f4e51@...>, Colin
<cwhill@...> writes

>When it runs, it lists all the numbers from 0-79 (although the sound changes
>when it passes 40).

This indicates that your drive is a 40-track unit.  When you run the
formatter program, enter "40" as the number of tracks to format.  Don't
exceed this or you risk damaging the drive.

>As I said, the disks are DD DS 48TPI pre-formatted according to the label
>and have previously been used on a PC with Windows 3.1

They should work fine on a BBC once reformatted.

>Would this make a difference

no

> or would this program "scrub" all previous
>formatting?

yes

>After formatting I have typed *DISK and *VERIFY and get the error 18.

You're trying to run a program called "VERIFY" from disc, as there isn't
one in ROM, and as the attempt to format has failed, you get error 18
(Sector not found). Try entering "40" as the number of tracks to format
as per above.

Can you also lose the top-posting and snip your quotes, please?