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Hello everyone,

My first post on here. I would be very grateful if someone could help me out with a problem I've got with my setup.

Many years ago (1999?), I bought a Master 128 from a work colleague. It all worked fine, at the time, but I never had the time to do much with it, so it was put into storage (the work colleague removed the battery before he sold it to me).
Now, some some strange reason I seem to have plenty of time on my hands, so I dug out my old Master 128, and to my surprise, it appears to be working fine.

I've bought a RGB to SCART cable from RetroComputerShack, and a Cumana double disk drive from eBay. The idea is to see if I could transfer my old floppies I used on back in college to a modern format (after checking for mould on the floppies, of course). I didn't have a BBC Micro myself, back in those days. The stuff I'd like to transfer is only only my old college course work (BASIC programs), and screengrabs from Teletext (the college had a teletext adaptor, which we had access to during lunchtimes, or 'Activity Periods'). So, nothing critical, but it would be nice to have them back, all the same.

Unfortunately, after plugging in the Cumana drive, and switching on the Master, and going through the config setting (remember - no battery), the drives refuse to work. The dries came with two floppies: a Welcome disk and a Games disk, and although the drive whirrs away, there's no sound of the heads accessing the disk, and nothing on the screen, until I press BREAK.

So far, I've only used the disks supplied with the drive, and I've reseated the floppy drive connection on the Master (with the machine and drive witche off, of course).

I've tried the drive with both the ADFS and DFS ROMs in the Master, with no success. I'm hoping there's some sort of setting I've overlooked. Otherwise, either my Master is duff, the disks, are duff, or the drive is duff, or all three are duff!

I've listed the various ROMs and settings below, for your reference. Please help! Thanks in advance.

My BBC Master 128 settings

*HELP

OS 3.20
MOS

TERMNAL 1.20

VIEW B3.0

EDIT 4

ViewSheet B1.0

DFS 2.25
DFS

SRAM 1.04
SRAM

*ROMS
F TERMINAL 01
E VIEW 04
D Acorn ADFS 50 unplugged
C BASIC 04
B Edit 01
A ViewSheet 02
9 DFS 79
8 to 0 - all listed as '?'

*CO.
Configuration Status
Baud 1
No Boot
Shift Caps
Data 0
Delay 0
Directory
Internal Tube
FDrive 0
File 9
Floppy
Ignore 0
Lang 12
Mode 128
No Tube
Quiet
Print 0
Repeat 0
Scroll
TV 0,1

A few things to check:

Are you sure you've got the ribbon cable plugged in the right way round?
Check that none of the pins on the ribbon connector are bent.
Check that the jumpers on the drive are set correctly for Drive 0.

what did the discs that came with drive have written on them, ie DFS80 or ADFS? then can get an idea which work...

also a pic of drive / cable would see if all is correct.

don't think cable to M128 would go in wrong way as it usually has a notch so red cable side goes to the /\ on underside of M128.

SUCCESS!

Thank you all for your help. I've discovered what the problem was, and I'm kicking myself for it! Having said that, the drive did not come with a manual.

I re-checked the floppy drive connector. It was in the correct way round (it does, indeed, have a notch on it). The pins on the Master end of the connector are all intact.

I was looking at the drive to see about opening up the drive to examine the jumpers, when I noticed the 40 / 80 track switches. From my experience, they're usually on the front, so I (wrongly) assumed the Cumuna had some sort of 'auto-select' function. So, I switched them to 40 tracks, and, HEY PRESTO! It works. Phew!

So, thanks again, to Ken for pointing me the right direction (sort of).

I will now try one of my old floppies (checking for mould, of course). After that, can anyone advise me on the best way to transfer my files? I've seen these Gotek drives, but is it possible to connect one of those AND the floppy drive simultaneously?

Julz wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 19, 2020 5:57 pm

After that, can anyone advise me on the best way to transfer my files? I've seen these Gotek drives, but is it possible to connect one of those AND the floppy drive simultaneously?

I'll leave others to answer how best to transfer files (or image a disk), but yes, you can have both Gotek and floppy together, one needs to be set as drive 0/2 and the other as 1/3.