Hi guys, sometimes when I boot the 8512, drive B is invisible to the system and exhibits no activity. Any ideas?
Does it make a difference if you start with a disc in the second drive? CP/M detects a second drive by accessing the drive status - the drive is absent if it is not write protected and not ready. Putting a disc in should make it report as ready.
(The usual situations where this shows up are 5.25" drives, where the write protect sensor is blocked for a read-only disc, open for read-write, so an empty drive reports read/write; and 3.5" drives with a disc partly in the drive, so that the write protect sensor is covered but the disc does not rotate).
Well, it certainly makes a difference on my PCW - if I don't insert a disk into B: when I boot, the drive is just not there, and putting a disk in later does not help. I just put a disk into the drive as a matter of course, ever since I had the B: drive.
And that's with the drive being an external 360k 5.25" drive. I also have a 3.5" B: that can be attached as an alternative, and that does NOT seem to have the same behaviour, but this drive has been wired to be ALWAYS ready to get around other problems with 3.5" drives.
Geoff
Thanks guys, I'll play with that theory a little bit.