Date   : Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:21:45 +0100
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Master boot-up help

Anders Carlsson wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Today I received a BBC Master 128 with a faulty power supply. I have
> replaced it with another one, and now it boots up. I don't know if
> the battery is still good. Will I determine this by making changes
> to the configuration and see if they remain after recycling power?

If you don't have a multimeter, yes. Or just replace them anyway...

> 1) There is quite a lot of whizz from the internal speaker, much
> more than on both my Model B and Compact. Perhaps this is normal?

I'm seen that with a lot of Acorn hardware... I suspect it's capacitors 
somewhere starting to fail, but I've never bothered to get to the bottom of it 
(I tend to just unplug the speaker, because I never use my systems for 
anything audio-related)

> 2) After a lot of trial and error, reading various manuals downloaded
> from "The BBC Lives!" and other sites, I have found out how to reset
> CMOS and change default language to Basic.

There's probably a good case for a "Master Survival Guide" on the web - it 
always takes me a while to find the right pages in the manuals to do with the 
CMOS...

> Unfortunately, the PC that I have successfully written 3.5" ADFS disks
> from does not seem to be as capable of writing 5.25" DFS disks

Definitely possible. I've seen at least one PC that'll handle 3.5" media at 
various sector sizes where it wouldn't do the same for 5.25" (regardless of 
density).

If you can boot DOS, Dave's testfdc program will test both 3.5" and 5.25" 
drives at various sector sizes and densities:

   http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img50676/testfdc.zip

cheers

Jules