Date   : Tue, 01 Nov 2005 20:53:13 -0000
From   : "John" <blip@...>
Subject: BBC MASTER and disk drives

Peeps

Trying to get these Masters from Croydon School tested.

I now have four Masters available for pickup. 

One of the Masters I refurbished for my own use and has a new
Battery pack I ordered - so this I will charge £10 for.

In the spirit of the group, there will be no charge for picking
up the others - I suppose one Master per person is fair, unless 
someone wants to take some 'up North' or elsewhere for other members.

I would deeply appreciate a fully working 5.25" drive 40/80 double sided
drive if anyone would swap - I have a pile of drives here of similar
spec
but no time to test and some of the errors have puzzled me. Have cleaned
one drive and I am using ADFS but repeatedly getting 'broken directory'?

This was all recovered as 'should be working'. Cameron, I have something
for
you if you see this and get in touch.

I'll be honest group, I've just started an OU course and it's taken me 
three weeks just to test if Masters these have co-pros or not (-not,
unfortunately-)

I think there are some useful toys here, dual drives and the like and
they
are going to waste for want of someone competent.

In short, my wish list is (and the Masters are NOT conditional on this)

a) A 5.25" 40/80 switchable drive, double sided, so that I can migrate
my disks to 3.5" before they fall apart completely.

b) A reason why my 128k Beeb plus now reports 64k - might it be because
all
this testing on the spare beebs has dislodged a chip?

c) Someone to check over the drives using the kit I have and venture
comment
on
why the little tinkers throw up so many different errors (this may be a
combination
of the drive and the DFSs)

d) Someone to collect a Master and take it to a good home (ditto drives
if
you can
get one fully working for me!)

e) Someone to tell me if my cub is working (the six pins all short out,
the
monitor light is on, but no picture is home - tried it on three
different
Masters. No static felt on screen)
- should the lead be screened - should I get a short from the DIN
shells??

f) Someone who knows their way around GOMMC to help me set it up - I ran
through all of John's checks (yes I did read your manual, John, as I
said)
and gave up in frustration. Perhaps John it might be better to return
this
for an upgrade from 1.0x? Is that possible? Cost effective? Otherwise
it=92s
the best part of a weeks salary sitting there doing nothing.

Sorry about the War and Peace, Ian, I'm happy to take any of these
threads
offline: blip at blipit dot com. 

Thanks to everyone, especially Ian and Andy for their kind offers of
software etc, for all your support and in making this a great discussion
forum.

Regards

John T.