gklimes@gmuvax2.gmu.edu (George Klimes) (02/09/90)
I have two problems. I was given a Teac 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive for
Christmas. I've been trying since then to get this to work on my
ORIGINAL (25-4070) Tandy 3000HL. The on-board controller had long
been disabled since I have a Western Digital WD1002-WA2 Hard/Floppy
controller (which alas doesn't handle 3.5" drives). I removed the WD
controller and installed a Longshine floppy controller that supports
all floppy types. It handled drive A (the 360K one) fine. But the
3.5" drive (B) was a no-go. I found that my BIOS (01.00.00) wouldn't
handle it. I thought it could since my SETUP program (01.03.00) had
both 720K and 1.44MB drives as choices). I was given the wrong disk.
Anyway, I just got the current ROM chips (01.03.02) from Tandy. Again,
no dice. Both drives are set for drive-select 1 and I'm using a floppy
cable with the twist in it (standard cable). I'm using MS-DOS 3.3 (NOT
Tandy's though).
A call to Fort Worth showed that there is no later setup disk (you'd
think that there'd be a 01.03.02 disk). And a Tandy Computer Center
manager said that Tandy DOS 3.3 has a setup program on it. DRIVPARM
does not work either. I've also tried a 720K 3.5" drive. No dice.
Is there a resistor block on the 360K drive that must be removed?
Note, when I used SETUP to say that drive A was a 1.44 and that there
was no drive B or hard disk (remember, the hard/floppy controller was
removed), and then removed the 360K one and put the 1.44 on the end
of the floppy cable, the system gave me the same error message on boot
up (after the successful memory check) which said something like
"Invalid installation info - use SETUP program". This time though I
also got (after hitting F1 to continue) "NO BOOT DISK AVAILABLE" even
though the 1.44 was attached as drive A.
Any hints, suggestions, or whatever?
SECOND PROBLEM: That 720K drive I mentioned? It is intended for a 1000SX.
Unfortunately it too does not work in the 1000SX (which is running an
early version of Tandy's 3.2 [no DRIVPARM command exists]). Drive select
is set for 1. Tandy sells a 720K for this, and every Tandy person I
talked to said that it should just go right in. I want to use this drive
a drive A and trash the current 360K one (I've got a 20 Meg ST225) in the
other slot. But it doesn't even work as drive B... And the BIOS is the
most current (the only BIOS made for the machine I'm told).
Again... any suggestions??? The drive is a Fujitsu (Copal)...
Thanks.
--- George Klimes