Date   : Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:45:44 +0200
From   : anders.carlsson@... (Anders Carlsson)
Subject: Disk fault 0C at 00/00

Hello list,

I'm sorry if the following question is in a FAQ somewhere, but I don't
know the answer and any references on the Internet didn't help me.

Up until recently, my collection of Acorn computers looked like this:

1x BBC Model B w/o FDC and thus no DFS, UK power connector
1x BBC Master 128 w/ 1770 and DFS/ADFS + UFD 5.25" 40/80 drive
1x BBC Master Compact w/ 3.5" drive
1x Acorn Electron w/o any peripherals

You may think it is not much, but I live in Sweden, the country where
Acorn computers are almost as rare as the hen's tooth!

Some keys on the Master 128 keyboard did not work, and I came to the
conclusion that I need to desolder the keyswitches and so on to clean
them and hope they'd work. I'm too lazy to take on this operation.

A few weeks ago, I bought another Model B with DFS 0.90, which appears
to be fully working. I haven't opened it up, but I assume it has a 8271
FDC. In order to save some space and free up some money, I sold the
other Model B and the Master 128 to a local friend.

After a long row of problems, I finally found an old IBM, 75 MHz Pentium
with a flexible FDC that lets me write 5.25" floppies to single or double
density. Due to the processor speed, so far I have only run Omnidisk from
MS-DOS and tried to format floppy disks. I managed to format a 80 track
DFS disk that the program also recognizes.

Ok, here comes the technical question. I inserted the floppy in the UFD
drive and tried *CAT. The drive spins up, but the BBC only responds
"DISK FAULT 0C AT 00/00". Sometimes I get it to report disk fault 0B.

In which manual can I obtain a list of disk errors and what they mean?
Of course I adjusted the 40/80 switch to the correct position. The drive
worked with the Master 128 before I sold it. Would there be something
bad with the computer?

Perhaps DFS 0.90 is a poor choice and is not compatible with the UFD
drive? I own  an EPROM burner, so I could get another DFS version if
that is a matter. Will most all of the DFS versions work with a 8271
FDC? A version that has a *FORM command in ROM would be preferred. :-)
I know there is a type-in listing to format floppy disks, but I yet
haven't typed it in (or rather, converted it to an UEF and load from
tape).

I hope all this are trivial errors that I will be able to fix within
a little time. I was *SO* happy to find the old PC that seems capable
to read/write floppy disks.

I should also add that I don't own any pre-formatted 5.25" BBC disks,
but bought two games on eBay this week that should arrive shortly. If
those will load without modifications, perhaps something about the
formatting on the PC is to blame after all.

Best regards

-- 
Anders Carlsson, Sweden