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Creating the System Disks - Method 1

Method 1: Writing the disks on a PC

To use this you must have compatible sized disk drives. Note also that all the drives you are using must be 80-track double-sided ones. (So a 360kb-only drive on the PC will not do. If you are using 5.25" disks, then the PC drive must be a 1.2Mb one. Note: This is the drive not the disks. Do not use HD disks.)

If you have these, then you may as well try using this method of creating the system disks, as it is far simpler and quicker than any of the others. Some PCs can be made to write the Master 512 format disks. Others, it seems, cannot. I know of no way of finding out except by making the attempt! So have a go! If it succeeds, then you have your system disks. If it fails, then you will simply have to use one of the other methods.

You can download the Method 1 Package from this site. By far the largest part of this package consists of disk images of the four system disks, each one saved as a single file.

In addition to the image files, you need software that can cause the PC to write them to floppy disks. There are a couple of simple and easy-to-use programs included in the package (one for 640kb and one for 800kb), but if you want something more flexible, or perhaps if the enclosed programs do not work on your PC, then you could use something more sophisticated such as OmniDisk (for DOS or Windows up to and including Me) or OmniFlop (for Windows NT, 2000 or XP).

In detail

The procedure to follow is this:

			Download the package and unzip the files.
			Using the BBC Computer in native mode (i.e. as a normal BBC Computer with the 512 co-processor turned off) format a disk in ADFS Large format using the ADFS disk formatter AFORM. (You must have ADFS on the BBC to be able to use the 512 at all.)
			Insert this disk into the PC and, using WRIMG640 or one of the other image writing programs mentioned above, write the file M512_1.IMG to the disk. This is now your DOS-Plus boot disk. (See below for notes about how to use the enclosed image writers.)
			Enable the co-processor on the Master 512 and, using the boot disk you have just created, boot up DOS-Plus. (Enable it with *CONFIGURE TUBE on a genuine Master with internal co-pro; just switch it on for an external one on a Model B/B+. Then with the disk in the first drive, just press <Ctrl-Break>.)
			Enter DISK to start the DOS-Plus disk management program. Use the program to format three more disks, this time in 800kb Acorn DOS format. (The program is menu driven and very easy to follow. The 800kb format is the second one on the list of formats available.)
			Back to the PC, and this time using WRIMG800 (or one of the other programs), write the files M512_2.IMG, M512_3.IMG and M512_4.IMG - one to each of these three disks you have just formatted. These are system disks 2, 3 and 4 (obviously!)
			Label the disks!

Using the enclosed disk image writers

The Method 1 Package includes two very simple DOS-based programs to write disk images for Master 512 format disks on a PC. These are called WRIMG640.COM (for 640kb disks) and WRIMG800.COM (for 800kb disks). They will not work on all PCs, but they are very easy to test out.

You can try using these from within Windows, using an MS-DOS command prompt box, or indeed from "Start | Run...", and you may succeed. However the programs seem most reliable when the machine is booted into a genuine DOS environment, and certainly they do not run well from within Windows XP. See below about booting to DOS if necessary.

At the DOS prompt, with everything in accessible directories, just enter:

WRIMG640 <filename> /A

to write <filename> to a (formatted) 640kb disk in Drive A:. Use "/B" instead of "/A" to write to Drive B: and use WRIMG800 to write to an 800kb disk.

Note that WRIMG640.COM does not work well on disks formatted as 640kb with the Master 512's DISK program (and the resulting disks are slower anyway). Always format 640kb disks in ADFS using AFORM on the native BBC Computer.

Booting to a DOS prompt from Windows (in particular, XP)

In early versions of Windows (up to Windows 98) it is very easy to boot to a command prompt - just select it from the Shut-down menu.

From Windows Me (or from 95 or 98 if you prefer to do it this way) you can boot from a Start-up disk. If you have lost the disk that was created when Windows was installed (or you never made one!) you can create one from a tab in "Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs".

However, if your PC is running Windows XP, then it can be fiddly booting it into a DOS environment in a useful way. If you "Create an MS-DOS startup disk" (from the "Format" box for the disk, accessed from Windows Explorer or My Computer) then what you actually get is a cut-down version of the Windows Me start-up disk with none of the utilities included. You can boot from this, but the resulting system can only recognise disks with an FAT file structure. Most Windows XP computers have their hard disks formatted to use the newer NTFS file structure. So what often happens is that after booting the machine from the start-up disk you have made, you then find that the hard disk is totally inaccessible.

To get round this you can add a few utilities to the start-up disk so that you can access the disk images and the image writing programs from a RAM disk or a CD-ROM drive. For some reason the utilities necessary to do so are not included with Windows XP (though several totally archaic utilities are there!) I have thus included them, along with the disk image writers, in the Method 1 Package.

Proceed as follows:

			Copy the disk images and disk writing programs to floppy disks or (perhaps better) a CD-R. (Use a fresh one, because a continuation CD-R is unlikely to be read properly by the floppy-based drivers.) Each image will easily fit on a 1.44Mb or 1.2Mb disk.
			Insert another floppy disk in Drive A:, select "Format" for the disk (from My Computer or Windows Explorer), select "Create an MS-DOS startup disk", and perform the format.
			The package contains a directory called "XPXTRAS". Copy all the files in this to the root directory of the disk you have just made (overwriting the original "CONFIG.SYS" and "AUTOEXEC.BAT").
			Reboot the computer using this disk. (You will have to make sure the CMOS is set to boot from the floppy before the hard disk, of course.) The computer will boot up to a DOS prompt, with a 4Mb RAM disk (which will probably appear as Drive C:), and the CD-ROM enabled (as Drive D:).
			Copy the images and programs to the RAM disk from the disks or CD-R you copied them to earlier. (You could work direct from the CD-R, though my feeling is that it is safer to copy them to the RAM disk.)
			Using this RAM disk (or CD drive) as your current drive, proceed as above to write the images.

Downloadable Resources

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