Commodore PET 8296 & 8250 LP Drive Testing

[StowComputers]

Hi all,



I bought 3x 8296 PET's (non-working) and 4x 8250 drives (untested) off ebay about 4 years ago, and only recently found some time to look at them. I have managed to repair all 3 PET's, and I'm cracking on with the next stage; looking the 8250 drives.

I have connected the drive to the PET using an old IEEE cable and the 8250 powers up nicely with the indicator lights following the correct power on sequence. I have popped a fresh unformatted DS floppy in the drive and googled for a few commands to do some formatting & testing but not seen any signs of access or communication yet.

C64 and tapes were my thing, so I don't have too much experience with commodore disk drives. I'm either not putting exactly the right commands in, or the cable (not in great shape) may be to blame, or simply be a faulty 8250. So my question is, exactly what command should I be typing to format a disk and run some basic tests?

Thanks in advance....

 

[for()]

BASIC 4 DOS commands are an option only. All common DOS 2 commands work as well, so you can do all things the same way you do it on your C64.
Using BASIC 4, type header"newdisk",iab,d0 to format a disk in drive 0 default unit 8 with index ab. Try other units as well, maybe your drive is 9,10,11. append a onu9 to the command to achieve this.
To load a program, type dload"prg or dL"prg - to save it dsave"prg or dS"prg
Drive 1 unit 9 would be dL"prg",d1onu9.
To list the directory type caT or diR -- or of course catalog / directory. The two commands dot the same.
Type ?ds$ to get the disk status / error message.

Besides the cable, one or several bus drivers MC3446 could be bad, either in the CBM 8296 or in the CBM 8250.

 

[StowComputers]

Thanks for the reply,

header"newdisk",iab,d0 // That worked, and formatted a disk god that's slow!

I managed to save a simple program and load it back, so it works, fantastic.

?ds$ //Gives me this before formatting, saving or loading programs to a disk.
73,cbm dos v2.7,00,00,0

and after formatting, saving a program and loading one gives me this...
00, ok,00,00,0

Some of the results on google for commands, didn't seem clear on spacing or case used; or at least that's my excuse! Hopefully all is well, Thanks very much! I can probably sell some of these once I have tested them all.

 

[Desperado]

Hi @StowComputers which type of floppy have you used?
Thanks so much!