It's not normal. The drive shouldn't spin until a disc is inserted and the door closed, and then only until the index hole in the disc is located and then the drive stops spinning, until the computer makes an attempt to access the drive.
The drive isn't intelligent enough to decide for itself what format the inserted disc is, 40T/80T, DFS/ADFS/DOS etc. so it is very unusual if it continues spinning when a disc formatted to 40T has been inserted, but the switch is set to 80T.
The motor running as soon as the drive is powered on may be a fault with the data ribbon cable. With dual drives you often find that both drives spin when one of the drives is being accessed, but only the selected drive is being read. An empty drive will spin and the light will come on usually when a command is issued, so it sounds like the ribbon cable is telling the drive that the BBC has issued a command.
I suppose refusing to detect the "wrong format" disc could be a problem with the double-stepper mechanism connected to the 40/80T switch somehow. Sometimes the switches have a middle position which can be selected by accident. I don't know what happens if it's set to neither 40 nor 80 tracks, probably it would depend on how the switch was wired up.
Does the drive light come on during any of this? Does the head move at all?
Does it still happen if the ribbon cable isn't plugged into anything?
The drive isn't intelligent enough to decide for itself what format the inserted disc is, 40T/80T, DFS/ADFS/DOS etc. so it is very unusual if it continues spinning when a disc formatted to 40T has been inserted, but the switch is set to 80T.
The motor running as soon as the drive is powered on may be a fault with the data ribbon cable. With dual drives you often find that both drives spin when one of the drives is being accessed, but only the selected drive is being read. An empty drive will spin and the light will come on usually when a command is issued, so it sounds like the ribbon cable is telling the drive that the BBC has issued a command.
I suppose refusing to detect the "wrong format" disc could be a problem with the double-stepper mechanism connected to the 40/80T switch somehow. Sometimes the switches have a middle position which can be selected by accident. I don't know what happens if it's set to neither 40 nor 80 tracks, probably it would depend on how the switch was wired up.
Does the drive light come on during any of this? Does the head move at all?
Does it still happen if the ribbon cable isn't plugged into anything?
Statistics: Posted by BeebMaster — Sat Sep 07, 2024 9:59 pm