Hmm.. was there ever an 8" floppy drive for the BBC?

[Pernod]

Could some kind soul please extract the contents of D1000.IMG and D1000B.IMG from http://gtoal.com/bbc/ ?

Just rename them to .ssd and mount in BeebEm, then use Edit->Export Files from Disc.

The DNFS30 ROM image is the standard DNFS.

[gtoal]

I guess I could do that, but I have several hundred images to unpack and was waiting until I could find a command line program that I could script to do them all at once rather than each one manually through a GUI :-/

The 8in DFS code in that drive image takes the standard rom and patches it and writes out a new image. If I remember right, it disables the net part of the rom. I can't remember if it changes the filing system number or not to allow regular DFS to work at the same time - it's been a long time...

G

[davidb]

I extracted the files from D1000.IMG but couldn't manage to do the same from D1000B.IMG. What kind of format is that using?

[BeebMaster]

D1000B.IMG is a corrupt DFS disc image containing one file. The catalogue and map at the first two sectors have been overwritten with zeroes, then a BASIC file starts at sector 2 which is attached.

D1000B,ffb.zip

(1.42 KiB) Downloaded 64 times

[Coeus]

I guess I could do that, but I have several hundred images to unpack and was waiting until I could find a command line program that I could script to do them all at once rather than each one manually through a GUI /

Check out SWH's beeb perl script: https://www.spuddy.org/Beeb/mmb_utils.html

[gtoal]

I extracted the files from D1000.IMG but couldn't manage to do the same from D1000B.IMG. What kind of format is that using?

Thanks DavidB and BeebMaster! So looks like everything is there that the folks who wanted to build an 8in drive need

Here are the basic sources needed to build a DFS rom (with tube support of course) and a formatter.

http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/B.NEWPROC.txt
http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/B.NMIPROC.txt
http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/BUILD.txt
http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/Form77s.txt
http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/GRABBER.txt
http://gtoal.com/bbc/D1000/SENDER.txt


We only implemented the 8in support for fun back then, I don't think we ever had a practical use for it. As far as I remember the only 8in floppy we ever wrote contained the same files as that 5.25 image with the DFS and formatter

G

[gtoal]

I guess I could do that, but I have several hundred images to unpack and was waiting until I could find a command line program that I could script to do them all at once rather than each one manually through a GUI /

Check out SWH's beeb perl script: https://www.spuddy.org/Beeb/mmb_utils.html

That did the trick. A few images were corrupt but I found a lot that was useful. Will sort it out and post later.

G

[BeebMaster]

It's interesting to learn about the history of the BBC micro disc interface. Until now I'd never really given any thought to the capacity difference between 8" and 5.25" discs, I think I'd always thought that an 8" BBC micro floppy disc, if one had ever existed, would just be 80T 200K in DFS like a 5.25" disc.

I think the fact that there was never a 77-track 8" DFS ROM or formatter officially released tells us that there weren't any 8" floppy drives envisaged for general use.

However if we compare and contrast the 1982 and 1985 editions of the service manual: the disc upgrade instructions in the 1982 version don't mention 5.25/8" at all, the only references to disc size are elsewhere, eg. in the link survey. By 1985 for some reason there are separate upgrade instruction sections for 5.25" interface and 8" interface - although the 8 inch one purely says do the 5.25" upgrade and then alter 3 links.

[AndyF]

Could some kind soul please extract the contents of D1000.IMG and D1000B.IMG from http://gtoal.com/bbc/ ?

Judging by the text strings I see in the image, that is likely our 8 inch formatter and modified DFS.

(I'm not in a position to extract files from a disk image yet)

thanks

Graham

D1000 looks OK. D1000B appears blank (confirmed via examination with hexedit directly from Windoze)

View from BeebEm:

d1000_content.png (4.49 KiB) Viewed 2418 times

View from DiscExplorer:

Extract them to what format ? What did you need the "raw file+inf file" type ? I'm assuming that is what you wanted as otherwise the .img would be fine as that is a complete disc. Not sure how to use it, I glanced at a couple of the programs on it:

d1000_extracted.zip

(29.39 KiB) Downloaded 49 times

[vanpeebles]

Slightly random story, but when I did my school work experience at Durham County Hall in the mid 90s, they still had systems using 8" floppies, at depots and a museum.

[Diminished]

Alex van Someren mentioned in his talk at ABUG on Saturday that the Beeb was indeed first designed to use 8" drives (and rightly or wrongly I inferred that the original intent was exclusively for 8" drives, although this obviously ended up not transpiring).

Of course this doesn't answer the question of whether very many people actually used it in this configuration.

[regregex]

For what it's worth, 8 inch drive assemblies may well have been sold commercially for the Beeb.

Tucked away in The Micro User is an ad that Opus Supplies ran very briefly, perhaps only for a month, selling single and dual density drives, the latter having a formatted capacity up to 1.2 MB.

No telling if the product would actually hook up to a BBC as sold, though it's a good guess that it did. It might explain some oddities in the Opus DDOS firmware such as accepting 35 or 77 tracks (or any number up to 80) in *FORMAT, although I'm assuming that command's not going to be compatible with the faster spin speed of the 8" drive.

[baz4096]

I'm pretty sure my secondary school had an 8" drive on a Econet file server, although I could mis-remembering.
It was no longer used by the time I started there, but it was still in the stack of beige. I definitely remember being amazed by the size of the disks, being used to 5 1/4" or cassette.

[jbredcar]

Did anyone ever manage to get an 8” drive running with a Beeb please?

Many thanks

[arg]

I'm pretty sure my secondary school had an 8" drive on a Econet file server, although I could mis-remembering.
It was no longer used by the time I started there, but it was still in the stack of beige. I definitely remember being amazed by the size of the disks, being used to 5 1/4" or cassette.

Are you sure that it wasn’t a 380Z? 380Z was certainly available with 8” drives, and I think we supported schools with old 8”-equipped 380Z to use them with the SJ econet card and fileserver software. Such a combo made a rather more useful fileserver than the more common 5” 380Z which were single density, 40-track (so 200K per disc, 400K if you were lucky enough to have two drives).


Above subject to my memory being accurate; I’m hoping to extract some 380Z fileserver source from my floppies which should confirm or deny.


I never saw 8” used on BBCs for Econet fileserver; there was certainly no official support and I think it would have been hard work to get simultaneous operation of the 8” floppy support, the tube, and Econet.

[paulb]

Did anyone ever manage to get an 8” drive running with a Beeb please?

Here you go:

"Acorn backs big floppies", Acorn User, December 1983.