julian@sideways.gen.nz (Julian Wright) (03/20/91)
A while ago I purchased a bare 3.5" floppy drive to attach to my external
disc interface (the D A computers one). The interface worked fine with
my BBC 5.25" drive, but when I attached the 3.5" drive (a TEAC FD 235F)
all it would do is respond with "Drive Empty", even when a disc was
present. I eventually solved this problem by changing a link over inside
the drive.
My Dad, seeing the success I had had, decided to go a similar route, and
to date has similar problems to the ones I had. He is using a locally
produced interface, which _MY_ 3.5" drive works fine with, and a TEAC
FD235 HF drive - looks identical, but is the 1.44Mb model (mine is the
720Kb model). Dad's drive does not have the link that mine has, that I
had to alter to get my drive to work (RY).
Dad has tried his drive on an IBM compatable, and it checks out OK. He
has also tried another drive, a Toshiba, with similar problems.
But the really strange thing is that sometimes the drive will read a disc
for a while, and then suddenly decide to stop... you can be in the middle
of cataloging disc "System" when there is a pause followed by "Please
insert disc "System"... subsequent attempts to catalogue the disc may or
may not be successful. Also, the FileCore regularly crashes with an
Address Exception followed by a "Filecore in Use" error - and this is the
first disc to be catalogued since a cold reset!
What on earth is going on here? Has anyone else had problems adding their
own second drives to the Arc? How can a disc drive cause the Filecore to
crash so regularly - on the first disc, in the _middle_ of a read?
I haven't even begun to list the problems we have had attempting to make
these drives _write_ anything...
Cheers, Julian.