Watford ELECTRONICS DISC DRIVE Operating Instructions - page 2
The new Mitsubishi drives have a rotary door latch. To insert a
disc, first ensure that the latch is in the position shown on the
diagram overleaf. Push the disc carefully into the drive, label
upwards and nearest you, until the disc stops. Rotate the lever about
90 degrees clockwise to lock the disc in place. Perform the above in
reverse to remove the disc.
With Epson drives, you lock the disc in place by again pushing the
disc in until it clicks home, and pressing the button in the top left
hand corner of the drive. To release the disc, press the button
again, and the disc will be ejected.
The Mitsubishi drives have a switch mounted on the rear to change
the drives from 80 to 40 tracks, allowing them to read 40 track discs
from other drives. This feature is necessary if you have fitted an
Acorn DFS to your machine. The Watford DFS will do the same trick
under software control.
NB: Some Mitsubishi disc drives have these switches on their front
facia.
To use discs with any drive, they must first be initialised or
FORMATTED. Most disc operating systems contain some form of routine
to format discs. On the BBC computer, the standard Acorn Disc Filing
System (DFS) does not contain a formatter and you must first obtain a
suitable program for doing this. Watford Electronics can supply just
such a program on disc. If, however, you own a Watford DFS then you
will have no need for this program since it has a formatting routine
built into it. Please refer to the DFS manual for instructions on how
to format.
The drives we supply have a high access speed for the data. The
BBC computer is capable of using a wide range of drives, including
the old full height units. To optimise the performance of a Beeb with
a set of drives, there are some link options on the keyboard. See
diagram.