Date   : Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:54:31 +0100
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: 3.5

I think I was lucky, these are Sony MPF520 drives and there are jumpers to
set the drive number next to the power connector.  So I just had to change it
from 1 to 0.

The important thing to remember is that on these drives the ribbon cable
connector is the WRONG WAY UP.  The "notch" in the connector makes you 
think that pin 1 is on the right of the connector, as usual, but in fact it is
on the left.  I discovered this because I saw a notch on the PCB on a
different drive which meant that pin 1 was on the left.

So I had to make up a special cable with the connector on the disc drive
end the wrong way up.

Worked a treat on a Master, the BBC B 8271 didn't like it though.  And I
couldn't get HD discs to work but I think that's been covered before.

Best wishes,


Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: Littlefield Aaron
To:  'Ian Wolstenholme' <BBCMailingList@...>
Sent:  Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:17:14 +0100
Subject: RE: [BBC-Micro] 3.5" drives & 8271

Hi Ian,

Did you have to modify your Sony drives to get them to work on the Beeb? Can
you give me a run down of what set up you have?

Regards

Aaron


-----Original Message-----
From: Majordomo List Manager [mailto:majordomo@...] On Behalf Of
Ian Wolstenholme
Sent: 04 September 2006 19:03
To: bbc-micro@...
Subject: [BBC-Micro] 3.5" drives & 8271

I've recently started looking at using 3.5" drives more seriously,
prompted partly by the recent discussions on the list and also by
a nagging fear that one day all my 5.25" drives and discs will be
useless and it will probably happen very suddenly without much
of an opportunity to rescue the data!

I've got a couple of Sony MPF520 1.44MB HD drives going, and
they work a treat on the Master in DFS and ADFS.

The problem is that I have just tried one of them on the Model
B with 8271 DFS and whilst it will read existing discs OK, I
can't get any formatters to work properly.  The BBC B Welcome
Disc formatter goes through the motions but when you catalogue
the disc afterwards, the title is full of "eee"s (like you get if you
abort a format before it writes the catalogue) and the catalogue
is full of "blank" entries.

I've tried it with DFS 1.20, 1.21 and with the keyboard links in
all 4 settings.

Has anybody else had this problem?

Best wishes,



Ian


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