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.