barbour@boulder.Colorado.EDU (BARBOUR JIM) (02/20/90)
We have a lab of HP 150s used to teach MicroComputer architecture. The lab is currently runing MS-DOS 3.1. Recently, we tried to upgrade the lab to MS-DOS 3.2 and found a problem. MS-DOS 3.2 was unable to detect when we switched disks in our HP 9121 floppy disk drives. This led to corrupted FATs and data blocks. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem? We would very much like to upgrade to MS-DOS 3.2 because -- so we are told -- we could then write 3.5' floppies which would be compatable with the rest of the PC world. Thanks, Jim Barbour (jwbarbour@clipr.Colorado.EDU)
nyenhuis@pur-ee.UUCP (John Nyenhuis) (02/26/90)
In article <17171@boulder.Colorado.EDU> barbour@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (BARBOUR JIM) writes: >We have a lab of HP 150s used to teach MicroComputer architecture. >The lab is currently runing MS-DOS 3.1. > >Recently, we tried to upgrade the lab to MS-DOS 3.2 and found a problem. >MS-DOS 3.2 was unable to detect when we switched disks in our >HP 9121 floppy disk drives. This led to corrupted FATs and data blocks. > >Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem? We would very >much like to upgrade to MS-DOS 3.2 because -- so we are told -- we could then >write 3.5' floppies which would be compatable with the rest of the PC world. > >Thanks, > >Jim Barbour (jwbarbour@clipr.Colorado.EDU) I too have encountered problems when switching disks under DOS 3.2. I think the problem just occurred with the 9121D disc drive. I am currently using a 9122D double sided drive and that seems to work ok. With DOS 3.2 it is possible to do an IBM format on the 9122, which is a double sided drive. Information written to this disc with the HP 150 can then be read on an the 3 1/2" disc drive on an IBM compatable computer. With the 9121 single sided drive, the situation is more complex. It is of course impossible to read a double sided disc with this drive. A bit of good news is that it is possible to read and write the single side discs on an IBM pc/clone, provided that one has the proper device driver. A while back I took a RAM disc device driver form PC magazine and modified it to read and write single sided HP 150 discs in out PS/2 30 (8086). In this driver, I used the IBM Bios to read and write sectors. The only place I encountered a problem was in loading program files. The easy workaround is to copy program files from the HP 150 singled sided disc to the PC and then run it. The device driver is free (it's probably illegal to sell it since so much of the code came from PC magazine). If anyone is interested, let me know. Good luck. John John Nyenhuis Purdue University School of Electrical Engineering West Lafayette IN 47907 (317)494-3524 nyenhuis@ee.ecn.purdue.edu