===================================================================== HARDWARE5©" DOES IT ===================================================================== AMSTRAD THREE INCH DISCS have been costing me more than I care to admit lately, having been used to the floppy 5©" variety at well below half the price I had been considering upgrading my PCW 8256 to twin drives almost as soon as its wrappers were off. WHY TWO DRIVES? Apart from the obvious difference in disc space - 706K compared with 173K per side on a 3" - you don't have to turn the disc over to access 'the other side'. (But you can only insert the disc one way round.) With some commercial software you really do need two drives to get the most from the package. Frequent disc swapping can be a real chore, but with the program in drive B: there is enough space for even the largest of programs to fit with ease. With the price of the silicon M: drives increasing to around #35 for 256K the 5©" drive offering 706K suddenly becomes even more attractive. JUST DRIVES I surveyed the market and came up with two suppliers that could supply an Amstrad PCW compatible 5©" disc drive at a reasonable price (around #100). The only difference between the two suppliers was that one was about #20 cheaper than the other, for the same machine. Once the decision to buy had been made, it didn't take too much time to decide on the supplier. I chose JUST DRIVES of 16 Ember Lane, Esher, Surrey. For my #89.50 I had a smart new Mitsubishi drive, fully compatible with Joyce, with its own PSU (power supply). I could have had one without the PSU cheaper still! SCREW DRIVER A ribbon cable fitted with a suitable plug is supplied all ready to connect into the inside of the PCW. Just unscrew the six screws holding the back of the PCW and feed the new drive's cable and plug through the slot in the case marked 'printer'. Now connect the drive's ribbon cable plug into the socket behind the existing A: drive. (It's attached to a short length of grey ribbon cable.) That's all there is to it. While the back is off it would be an ideal time to fit the additional chips that make up the 256K silicon disc SHOW ME There is only one quirk: You must have a disc inserted in B: when you boot up otherwise the second drive isn't recognised. Using CP/M's SHOW utility: show b: [drive] the following details are returned: B: Drive Characteristics 5,712: 128 Byte Record Capacity 714: Kilo Byte Drive Capacity 256: 32 Byte Directory Entries 256: Checked Directory Entries 128: Records / Directory Entry 16: Records/ Block 36: Sectors Per Track 1: Reserved Tracks 512: Bytes / Physical Record Because SHOW isn't a resident CP/M utility, you must have it loaded on one of the physical or the silicon disc drive M: before issuing a SHOW command. If you haven't tried this utility before try it on drive A: and compare the output. (SHOW a: [drive]) You will need to test out the drive. Use disckit to format your discs, it now recognises your second drive as well and offers the appropriate choices. Try PIPping files between A:, B: and M: drives. With LocoScript you will find that the B: drive will automatically be recognised as well. FREE DRIVE I had a boxful of 5©" discs in my desk left behind when I sold my last computer system. (Do you remember the TI99/4 Home Computer?) That system used SSSD and gave a mere 90K of formatted storage per side. I formatted these disks with both LocoScript and Disckit and managed to have the full DSDD storage space available. I reckon the disc drive will have paid for itself with my first purchase of 25 discs - costing about #15 - giving me the equivalent of about 50 CF2 discs that would have set me back about #110. I no longer need to think twice about saving disc space or considering if it is really necessary to back-up that disc. At .50p per disc I can afford to be generous! TAKE CARE! These floppy discs aren't anywhere near as sturdy as their 3" counterparts. When posting them you have to make sure they are well supported otherwise the Postman may get into the habit of neatly folding the package in half, disc and all, before dropping it through the letterbox. One sure way of conjuring up a ' Disc Error - Missing Address Mark' So I will have to be very much more careful with my 5©" discs than I have allowed myself to be with the 3" ones, or I'm sure to be in trouble. MFU TO YOU TOO Now I've taken the plunge and finally added the extra drive I'll be taking a look at Moonstone's MULTI FORMAT UTILITY soon. This utility will open the doors to most CP/M formats, BBC and IBM PC-DOS and compatibles as well. With MFU you can analyse an unknown disc format, read, write, format and even run suitable CP/M programs that are on it. This must be the best news for Amstrad users that want to bridge the CP/M compatibility gap. Watch this space.