Date   : Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:17:30 +0000
From   : mike@... (Mike Tomlinson)
Subject: Master boot-up help

In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0710272055040.3748@...>, Anders Carlsson
<anders.carlsson@...> writes

>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?

Yes, and by issuing *TIME or PRINT TIME$ after powering off for a few
minutes to see if the date and time are retained.  usually, when the
CMOS battery is on its way out, the time is the first thing to go.

>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. However, upon power on it
>sits there, probably waiting for the floppy drive to boot so I have
>to press CTRL-F-BREAK to go directly into Basic.

Ok (see later)

>3) The floppy drive is an Akhter 40/80 drive. When I insert a disk, it
>fainly spins up, but goes silent when I close the door. I have tried to
>boot with DFS in order to issue a FORM40 or FORM80 command. Should it
>be addressed as drive 0 or 1?

0.  As it's an 80-track drive, it's probably double-sided, so in DFS the
other side is drive 2.

> No matter what I try, the drive does not
>seem to respond. Both the floppy cable and the power cable are connected.
>What is this a sign of?

Check the data cable has not been pulled off the back of the drive.
Check for bent pins on the connector.
Check that DFS is *INSERTed and the default filesystem (*config file 9).
Check the "Acorn DFS" banner appears on boot.

>4) Can I make the BBC bypass the floppy drive, and drop directly into
>Basic without the forced break as above?

Yes.

> I have tried a number of settings
>to *CONFIGURE without much success:
>
>*CONFIGURE LANG 12
>*CONFIGURE FILE 13 (or 9 for DFS)
>*CONFIGURE NOBOOT / BOOT
>*CONFIGURE NODIR

*configure lang 12
*configure file 9
*configure noboot
*configure nodir
*configure fdrive 5
*configure nomount

followed by a ctrl-break, should get you going.  Also check that *ROMS
does not show any ROMs as "unplugged" - in which case, *INSERT them.

M.

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