wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (07/04/89)
I would be interested in experinces that anybody has had installing a hard disk in the Tandy 1400LT portable computer. At the current blow-out price less our 15% educational discount makes the price a nearly irresistable $850US plus tax. I finally broke down and bought one. So far, I've been pleased with the 1400. It isn't the last word in laptop technology, but it certainly delivers what it promises. I do, however, desire to have a hard disk, as the 330 meg Priam drive in our model 80 has a tendency to spoil a person to floppy. Now, I don't expedt the likes a that 330 meg drive in a laptop but something better than 720Kbytes would be nice. :-) Radio Shaft sells a 20 meg drive that has a list price of of $1095 (~$930 with discount); that seems like a kinda lofty price, if ya know what I mean. I'd like to know if anybody has some experience with 3rd party disks for the 1400LT. I suspect that they use something like one of the little Connor Peripherals drives with an embedded SCSI controller, as do Toshiba et al. I haven't disassembled teh machine yet to see what is in there. There is a ~15 second pregnant pause at boot-up which would seem to belie the fact that the BIOS is checking to see if a hard disk is there. Also, has anybody determined the pin-out for the external floppy connector? I thought I'd make a cable for a spare Teac 55 that I have sitting around. I suppose an enterprising person might even be able to write a device driver to do something like access an external SCSI device, but htat seems like more bother than its worth. Thanks for any hints, Bill wtm@impulse.UUCP or wtm@neoucom.UUCP