williamo@hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Saughnessy) (08/02/88)
I have put both 720kb and 1.44mb 3.5" floppies on an XT. I would recommend that your freind in Lincoln, Ne. stick with the 720kb drives. He should use MS-DOS 3.2 or greater and will need to read the DOS manual on DRIVER.SYS. 1.44 is doable on an XT, but with great difficulty. He might want to buy the 1.44 drive; it will work at 720kb and is only $20.00 more expensive ie. $149 vs $129. Who knows someday somebody might make it easy to achieve 1.44mb on the XT. Hardware recommendations are: the Toshiba 3.5" 1.44mb drive and the Jaemco XT-AT floppy controller card for $49. This card is specified to work at 360, 720 and 1.2mb and is probably your best chance of getting 1.44 to work on the XT. There are no guarantees for the above since every system seems to have slightly different Bios's. Good Luck. Bill O'Shaughnessy
troy@island.uu.net (Troy Taylor) (08/10/88)
In article <5930010@hpcupt1.HP.COM> williamo@hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Saughnessy) writes: >I have put both 720kb and 1.44mb 3.5" floppies on an XT. I would >recommend that your freind in Lincoln, Ne. stick with the 720kb >drives. He should use MS-DOS 3.2 or greater and will need to read >the DOS manual on DRIVER.SYS. 1.44 is doable on an XT, but with >great difficulty. I have found great success in using a Sony/Toshiba 1.44M drive in XT machines using a drive interface board purchased at a local clone supplier in my area. The board is called an XT1.44 and has the capability of interfacing with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, and 1.44M drives. The drive connected is selected by a jumper block on the drive card. Contact: Compustar 1600 Wyatt Drive Suite #10 Santa Clara, CA 95054 408-988-3992 Attn: Fred The board costs about $50 and should prove quite valuable considering the cost and functionality. I beleive that DOS 3.2 or higher must be used in order to give the proper format parameters. Ask the dealer for those details.
wsd@whuts.UUCP (DINSMORE) (08/11/88)
# In article <315@island.uu.net> troy@island.uu.net (Troy Taylor) writes: # > # >I have found great success in using a Sony/Toshiba 1.44M drive in XT # >machines using a drive interface board purchased at a local clone # >supplier in my area. The board is called an XT1.44 and has the capability # >of interfacing with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, and 1.44M drives. The drive connected # >is selected by a jumper block on the drive card. # > Using a 1.44M drive on an XT really sounds interesting but I have been reluctant to try it. Does anyone know for sure, no guessing, if a 1.44M drive on an XT will read a 1.2M disk formatted on an AT machine? More specifically, I would like to use an XT machine to read a 1.2M, 5.25 inch disk formatted on an AT machine. Does a 5.25 inch drive exist for the XT that will do this? Thanks in advance for any and all info. -- | Wayne S. Dinsmore Make it in Massachusetts, | AT&T Bell Labs (ihnp4,att,moss)!whuts!wsd Spend it in New Hampshire. | 20 Shattuck Road Room 4A-118 | Andover,Mass 01810
kokody2@hammer.me.toronto.edu () (08/16/88)
In article <4640@whuts.UUCP> wsd@whuts.UUCP (Wayne S. Dinsmore) writes:
# Using a 1.44M drive on an XT really sounds interesting but I have been
# reluctant to try it. Does anyone know for sure, no guessing, if a 1.44M
# drive on an XT will read a 1.2M disk formatted on an AT machine? More
# specifically, I would like to use an XT machine to read a 1.2M, 5.25 inch
# disk formatted on an AT machine. Does a 5.25 inch drive exist for the XT
# that will do this? Thanks in advance for any and all info.
Wayne, the 1.2 Mbyte drives are for 5.25 inch floppies while the 1.44 Mbyte
drives are for 3.5 inch floppies. Therefore there will be difficulties in
reading each other's disks |-). From what I understand, a 1.2 Mbyte drive can
be installed on an XT. I believe the difficulty comes in when one installs
the 1.2 Mbyte drive as drive A. Undoubtedly somebody here on the net here
has come up with a solution to this and I will drop the subject.
My brother had recently bought an Epson 1.44 Mbyte 3.5" drive for his XT
clone and it has performed beautifully. He had originally purchased a
Panasonic 1.44 Mbyte drive and could not get it to work in 1.44 Mbyte
mode on the XT clone. Is this a quirk of the Panasonic drive or is it
a fault of the interface card. The same interface card worked fine with
the epson drive. Any help/comments on this would be appreciated.
Thanks, Gerry Kokodyniak
--
Gerry Kokodyniak, Ph.D. Student, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, U. of Toronto
Structural Integrity Fatigue and Fracture Research Laboratory (416) 978-6853
USENET: kokody2@me.utoronto.edu BITNET: kokody2@ME.UTORONTO
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