! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 12:18 pm

Yes people, a normal PC floppy does work

! Just get a ribbon out your crap PC, undo the twist, and hey presto

!

If you can't be bothered untwisting, just get one with two drives on it, and use the middle one! Make sure the board end of the cable has all the holes showing, as some have one filed in!

!!

Get power from your old PC, or take your beeb to bits (better taking the crap PC to bits

!)

In DFS, it shows as *DRIVE 1 & 3!

In ADFS, remember to use *MOUNT 1 (it took me a wee while to remember that!

!)

This is only if you have an 1770DC, 8271DC's have problems

.

I will try to get it to read as drive02, but no jumpers on the top side of the drive i had open, must be on the bottom somewhere.

Happy formatting, ow i was using DD discs, one hole for protecting.

Absolutely buzzing, yours CM

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:04 pm

Very nice work

Shall give that a try sometime.

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:57 pm

Nice1, least some1 appreciates all my swearing at weekends

!

Also:-

OmniFlop2.01c makes ADFS 160k, 320k &600k on a PC that the beeb likes!

OmniFlop will not format DFS discs (At moment, told JasonWatton), but will read them back (in 6mins) all data is good!

It will write to the DFS disc if its been formatted in a beeb!

I will wait to format the DFS 80T D/S discs in the PC, let it do all the hard boring work! (v2.01d needs new driver, still does above, but no DFSformat).

Yours CM

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 11:10 am

Heres how to get Drive 0 & 2! (Also 1 & 3!!)

This works a treat, so can now *FORM 80 0 2 1 3 !! also anything ie copy/backup, etc.

For the drives, only need 5vDC, being red wire from PC, and black one next to it for Neg

! No need for 12v, yellow!

Have fun

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:42 am

The pic from another site that shows!

Code: Select all

http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/8518/3halftwist25fn.jpg

Yea ha Col.

ps ALWAYS use DD disc's, usually blue in colour with one hole.
pic here, but one on left is red

: need one's on left

or, read about HD discs in this great write up be MartinB here:
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 884#p12691

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:09 am

Excellent, nice illustrative piccy

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:38 pm

And here's the power from your beeb!

PS only need red for 3 1/2" drive/s being 5v. 12v must be for 5 1/4" and HardDisc.

see here for USB1.1/2 5v!! http://www.stairwaytohell.com/sthforums ... php?t=1587

Col.

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:19 pm

I'll come back to this page and the scart lead one you started when I get my kit up and running. Thanks for the posts.

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 2:48 pm

No problem at all mate

. I bet u can't wait to get it all to work now!

Its just a pity OmniFlop2.01+ does'nt format to DFS

(but OmniDisk does Drive2!

)

Never mind, all ADFS ones work

, but i don't like that much!

(never got into it), blooming DIRS, no R.files in cat, and blooming PAGE@&1F00! or &1D00 if *UNPLUG 14/13!

EDIT@@** see also http://www.stairwaytohell.com/sthforums ... .php?t=724 **@@
to see topic "!!! 51/4" beeb & 31/2" PC drive !!!"

aferenbach · Post by **aferenbach** » Tue May 30, 2006 1:58 pm

hi there

I was thinking of rigging up a 3.5 PC drive for an old BBC Model B with a 8271 controlloer (not the 1770 one) and I had read on Sprow's website that DFS 1.2 has a few problems with a 3.5 drive - I was wondering if Watford DFS 1.44 would be better suited to deal with a 3.5 drive?

Anyone know?

Andrew

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Tue May 30, 2006 4:42 pm

ME wrote:This is only if you have an 1770DC, 8271DC's have problems

its the 8271DCs problem, hence why ADFS does not run on it either. Try the Sprow modified Acorn DFS1.20 on an Eprom, should maybe work, but i have no 8271 machines to try 4u

naz2000007 · Post by **naz2000007** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:41 pm

I have just got an old 3.5 floppy, not used for over 5 years. connected to bbc master and bbc b with 1770 but no joy.

typed *drive 1 and *form80 1 annd got green led working.

screen said formatting 00 but then returned error message. 'disc error 18'.

I'm using high density pc floppies.

Either the drive is faulty or HD floppies cant be used or have I missed something?

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:23 am

ME wrote:i was using DD discs, one hole for protecting.

never tryed the HD discs,

You could try putting something over the 'other hole' and re-try, i read somewhere they only work for a week or so

Cybershark · Post by **Cybershark** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 3:54 pm

heh, nice.

a friend chucked a 'broken' Atari-ST my way back in the day. turns out all was up with it was an internal fuse

buttt i got no software with it so i instead used it as a 3.5" drive with power supply for my Beeb

man... the hours i spent cracking tape protection to transfer all that tape soft over... and then to find it all on here a few years later - bleh

aferenbach · Post by **aferenbach** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:25 pm

Hi All

I was mucking around with 3.5 drives on my Master 128 and they worked fine, then i went and blew up the 128's power supply.

I switched to using my bbc B+ 128k and even though it has 1770 DFS and the 1770 controller it seems to only "get on" with the 3.5 cumana drive that used to belong to an amiga. is there any reason why it would be funny with 1.44 3.5" drives?

i read on beebmaster's website that he modified 3.5 drives to make them permanently work at DD rather than HD - how is this done? is this the key?

Is there a difference in the "flavour" of the disc controller between the B+ and the Master 128?

regregex · Post by **regregex** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:46 pm

Can't say I've seen a system be particular about the drive. But there is a definite issue with the discs themselves. My experience on the computers I've used is:-

DD data + pre-HD drive + HD disc => problems on one machine, apparently the drive erased one side as it wrote the other. OK on another computer.
DD data + HD drive + HD disc with tape over the hole => almost works, but full of errors a few minutes later.
DD data + HD drive + HD disc without tape => as above, or no response whatsoever.
DD data + HD drive + DD disc => works OK

If you're using HD discs you'd have gone from case (1) to case (3). Have you any 'blue' floppies?

(At least this isn't the BBC Micro Mailing List - you'd get someone barking at you with *double* *density* *drives* *ARE* *high* *density* *drives*, ad nauseam.)

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Fri May 25, 2007 3:56 pm

CMcDougall wrote:
And here's the power from your beeb!

PS only need yellow and orange for 3 1/2" drive/s being 5v. 12v must be for 5 1/4" and HardDisc.

PPS dont get them mixed up with the PC colours!!!
CM

I'm thinking of adding a 3.5 this weekend, just curious about the power connections and your piccies gone. Any chance of putting the pic back up

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Fri May 25, 2007 4:20 pm

fixed with new pic

some usefull info here:
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 680#p78956
to put a beeb drive onto a PC so can read old 5/14" discs

paulj · Post by **paulj** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 8:51 pm

CMcDougall wrote:This is only if you have an 1770DC, 8271DC's have problems .

I have been using a 3.5 pc drive on an 8271 beeb for over a year now. It is not as straight forward as using an 1770 beeb or master which you can just plug in the drive and go.

I used the DNFS patch written by J.G.Harston
http://www.mdfs.net/System/Rom/Filing/F ... ixDNFS.txt

With the *FX255,207,0 command documented by Robert Sprowston
http://www.sprow.co.uk/bbc/howto.htm#35indisc

I have tried this on three beebs and needed both the patched DNFS and the *FX command to get it to work, although one beeb did work with just the patched DNFS.

Regards,
Paul.

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:36 pm

Earlier at work I indulged in a bit of 'wombling' by removing the power supply & floppy drive from an old Pentium 3 machine that was being thrown out at work (More money than sense? Yes, they have .....) so that I can attempt this project. It's the sheer pleasure of tinkering, y'know?

Also, for many years now I've had this comically HUGE old apple disk drive kicking around - God only knows where it came from, I honestly have no idea!

So what's the link? Well, it appears that the apple DD's stonkingly massive housing is exactly the right size & shape to fit a PC power supply into, thus:

& is just long enough to fit a PC floppy drive at the other end here:

I like the idea of having a self contained unit like this, so my question is whether having the PSU & disk drive quite close to one another like this would cause problems with disk reading & writing? Is the idea perhaps slightly too ridiculous?

I'm getting ahead of myself of course as my B is a bare bones tape interface only setup, but it won't always be that way.

As always, I'd really appreciate your advice!

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 8:27 am

I don't see why it wouldn't work, unless that power supply chucks out an amazing amount of waves which would probably break some EU directive or other !

A lot of drives supplied for use with the Electron with the AP4 interface etc. all have cases like the one you show and with in built power supplies as the ELK's didn't have auxiliary power like the Beebs.

Albeit the power supplies were no where near as powerful as the one you'll have in there ! I really think this will work a treat.

But wait..... What about trying to source a much smaller PSU that would allow a 5.25 to be housed in there as well ? You could have a 3.5/5.25 combo then with a handy switch to change which is drive 0 (as Afernbach demonstrated in another thread). Or is there really not the room to squeeze in a 5.25 as well (as I suspect there isn't, which is a shame).

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 7:33 pm

Or is there really not the room to squeeze in a 5.25 as well (as I suspect there isn't, which is a shame).

I don't think it would house both, & besides the only 5 1/4" drive I have (aside from the gubbins that I took out of this apple unit) is a commodore one that I'd rather not destroy & probably wouldn't work anyway!

Thanks for your advice on this - I wasn't sure if I'd be likely to have interference problems caused by the magnetic field of the transformer, but I'm more confident that it won't be a problem now.

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:45 pm

Well I finally got off my lazy arse & started on this today. It's a proper chore to be buggering about with a power supply at the weekend after spending foruty hours a week building the bloody things, but anyway....

I haven't even changed the sheets!

Hokey cokey then - I've hooked the DD up to the PC power supply after removing all the unneeded wiring & routing 'auto on' to ground, & connected the floppy drive up to the BBC with an unmodified ordinary PC ribbon cable.

With an old Amiga disk in the drive, I typed:

*MOUNT 1

Which activated the drive motor but did not cause the LED to spark up. Pressing the Escape key caused the motor to stop. The exact same happenings were repeated by typing

*MOUNT 2
*MOUNT 3
*MOUNT 4
*CHAIN""

...Which I'm assuming it shouldn't do? Shouldn't it only switch the drive on with only one of those commands?
I'm a little lost here as I've never used a BBC in conjunction with a disk drive, & have little or no understanding of any computer outside of them being games machines!

Anyone care to help a thicky out?

EDIT: This beeb has a 1770.
(RE-EDIT: :In actual fact, it does not

- More on this later! )

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:24 pm

I think Amiga drives are a little different than normal PC ones that have been mentioned in this thread.

Andy Davis (Alchresearch) has managed to make one work with a Beeb, he can probably give more advice and also he has a web page about it;

http://s192798389.websitehome.co.uk/alc ... diskdrive/

You may be able to gain some in site there.

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:28 pm

The drive is from a PC, it just happens that the first non "slice of bread" sized disk that I could lay my hands on was an Amiga one, Just to see if it powered up okay, like.
Ta much though, I'll take a look at the link as I do have an Amiga drive handy (Only at the expense of a working 'miggy though)

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:32 pm

Sorry, miss-read your post. What you've done seems about right, but why are you using *MOUNT, are you trying to use ADFS ?

If in DFS just type *CAT and see what it does. Should whir a bit and the light up and then give an error as it's not a beeb disk.

Also if this doesn't work right away, then select different drives using

*DRIVE 0
*DRIVE 1

etc. and try the *CAT thing again.

Are you on a beeb or Master ?

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:42 pm

I used "*MOUNT 1" etc. as I'm a virgin with regards to using disks with a BBC, & have absolutely no understanding of the required syntax whatsoever! I wasn't trying to use either DFS or ADFS as I have no knowledge of what either of these things actually are, which must seem absurd to tjhose of you in the know....

BBC Computer 32K

Acorn DFS

BASIC

>*DRIVE 0
>*CAT

Escape
>*DRIVE 1
>*CAT

Disk fault 18 at 00/00
>_

I'll wager that I'm the first person glad to see that particular error message!

It appears to be working spot on & recognizes the drive now at least - cheers Sorvad.

(Incidentally, unlike my other BBC, Speccy & C64, this one seems to put out a perfect RF signal & doesn't give a display of white streaks, but I guess thats irrelevant in this thread!)

Huzzah!!!

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:44 am

You'll now need to format the disk, if your lucky you'll have the format command on that machine (but not all do). If you've got a 1770 then I think your DFS will have the command. Just type *HELP DFS to see available DFS commands.

Peter Wood · Post by **Peter Wood** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:03 am

Punching in *HELP DFS tells me that I'm using DFS 1.20 which doesn't appear to have the format command. It lists:

ACCESS
BACKUP
COMPACT
COPY
DELETE
DESTROY
DIR
DRIVE
ENABLE
INFO
LIB
RENAME
TITTLE
WIPE

OS 1.20

I've fiddled around with a few commands using both a 'Miggy disk & a PC one (of the type with a hole either side) but always get the error message:

Disk fault 18 at 00/00

I'll look into finding an online manual for dfs 1.2 & get the Omniflop software set up on my PC this morning to see if I can figure out how to operate this thing.

Cheers for the help so far!

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:28 am

Yes, until you format the disk you'll get that error.

If you can't get OmniFlop going then this is where the fun starts if you've not got access to a beeb that can format the DFS disks. You need at least one 5.25 formatted disk that you can write to. Then you can copy the formatting command for DFS that is included on the Welcome disk (included in BeebEM) onto to it using Jon Welch's DFS Explorer program.

Load up the formatter into your Beeb, "Hot swap" the disk drives (should be OK, I think they're buffered, but I hold no responsibility for any damage) and then run it to format the disk in the 3.5" drive.

An alternative if you don't want to hot swap is to transfer the formatting program over a serial link from the PC to the Beeb, run it to format a disk and then once this is done you can copy the formatting program to that disk so you never have to do that again.

You'll need a PC to Beeb serial cable to do that though.

Another alternative is for some kind soul to send you a 3.5" disk with the formatter program on.

But with any luck you'll get omniiflop working, it's not that hard. Just need to install the driver on windows. which will maon about it though about not being licensed etc.

stardot.org.uk

! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !

! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !

yo

Drive 0 & 2 (&34!)

Pic!

Power me up scotty!

hi bud

DFS Versions and 3.5 drives

Re: ! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !

3.5 not working

Re: ! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !

trouble with 1770 DFS on a BBC B+

Re: Power me up scotty!

Re: ! ! 3 1/2" PC Drive/s on a beeb ! !