[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Problems with 720K drive

riiali@kannel.lut.fi (Pekka Riiali) (10/30/89)

I have probems to install an additional 3,5 inch 720K disk drive to IBM
compatible PC. My computer is Tandon XT with 5,25 inch 360K disk drive (A)
and 20M hard disk (C). Operating system is MS-DOS 3.2 and new drive is
Epson SMD-300.

After I was put the new drive to its place and checked cables I added to
config.sys file line DRIVPARM=/D:1 /F:2 which should configure new drive as
drive B and 720K. I rebooted my PC and tried to read a formatted diskette in
driv B, but then camed only following error message "write protection error"
and the same text from drive A. Only drive C was OK.

Then booted again from drive A with MS-DOS 3.3 and the line in config.sys file
was DEVICE=DRIVER.SYS /D:1. This time I got a diectory list from drive A, but
when I tried to write to A the machine wrote to diskette in drive B, but it
didn't understand drive B.

I would be pleased if anybody can tell is wrong with these configurations or
is the drive broken or something.

Pekka Riiali
riiali@kannel.lut.fi

bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) (10/31/89)

When I was considering a 720K drive there were postings about a weird
bug in DRIVPARM.  Basically, the options need to be prefaced with three
ctrl-A characters, for some unknown reason.  I tried that right off, and
the following line works fine for me:

drivparm=^A^A^A/d:1 /f:2 /h:2

where `^A' is the single character ctrl-A, or 0x01.  I never tried the
documented form, so I don't even know what problems might have occurred.

How anybody ever thought to insert ctrl-A's is beyond me...