Amstrad CPC 6128 Help

[a]

I recently bought a second hand CPC 6128 with a box of discs but can't seem to get any of the discs to load.

If I insert a disc into the drive and type "cat", "Bad command" is displayed.

If I insert a disc into the drive and type "|cpm", "Failed to load boot sector" is displayed.

I've done several searches on the internet and tryed several things but none of them seem to work. Am I doing something wrong? Is the computer/disk drive at fault.

Any ideas?

[Jacobi]

I´ve encountered that same problem, and only thing i´ve come to is that the "magnetic substance" in the floppies has begun to oxidise Some of my floppies are partially readable, some wont work at all, and couple of them work 100%. Time is our enemy i guess...

[MattC]

I would imagine it's the floppy disk drive belt - I don't think there's a single 6128 still working with the original belt. They either get hard and brittle or soft and squidgy and need replacing. Needless to say the chances of successfully reading a disk with a belt in this condition are slim!

The good news is, they're not too hard to replace (just a bit fiddly) and you can use an elastic band of the correct size which works OK (although a proper drive belt is the best solution).

Kind Regards,

Matt

[Mitsos]

Hi there !

Bad command, probably means ... bad belt drive...!

You can find instructions for belt drive fitting at PCW king site, I think you can also get a few from there.!

See
www.pcwking.freeserve.co.uk/index.html

Regards