173. ROM problems
     ~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a fairly typical tale, and illustrates how careful you have to be in
solving strange compatibility problems, and how careful you have to be in
fitting upgrades. Ray Chand upgraded his BBC B with a Watford solderless ROM
Socket Board, (very similar to the ATPL Sidewise board). First, the
connections on the underside of the board contacted the top of the metal
crystal sticking up near the rear of the BBC main board. PVC tape didn't help
too much, as the sharp connections soon punctured it. I suggested using a
double-sided sticky pad on the top of the crystal, with the protective strip
left on the upper surface. Secondly, the leads to the S21 link pins stuck up
too high, preventing the ROM board from seating properly; no choice here but
to bend them out of the way. Finally, when the OS ROM was transferred to the
ROM board, it prevented the keyboard from seating properly; spacing washers
under the keyboard can help here. I have had similar problems with various
makes of ROM boards on certain versions of the BBC - component heights and
layouts do vary between production sub-contractors and between board version
numbers.

After overcoming the physical problems, Ray found that several discs,
including Mini-Office II wouldn't behave unless either Wordwise-Plus or
SpellMaster was removed. The reason is that SpellMaster 'grabs' one page of
memory, when it detects WordWise or View - ie PAGE goes up by &100 (256)
bytes. The solution was to type *WORKOFF followed by <Break> to disable
SpellMaster. An ATS ROM was causing similar problems for much the same
reason. All was then well until he swapped the Acorn 1.20 DFS ROM for a
Watford 1.42 DFS. *WORKOFF produced an error message, and so did *CWORKOFF,
(you can prefix Computer Concepts' commands with a C, and Beebug's with a B,
to avoid clashes with other ROMs). This still didn't work, but putting the
DFS ROM in a lower priority socket to SpellMaster did cure the problem. It
appears that the Watford DFS *WORK command was clashing, though it strictly
speaking shouldn't have done. The lesson to be learned from this tale must be
that patience and a methodical approach will usually overcome such problems
in the end, and that it is worth persisting.