scheer@cell.mot.COM (Jon Scheer) (02/01/90)
[ My appologies to people on sci.electronics if this message isn't appropriate for that group. ] Hi folks, Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't things supposed to be better with a '286 AT than with an XT ?? :-) Here's the story... I pieced together an XT over a year ago. I got the system up and running. It was stable. The drives were configured as so : A: - 5.25" 360K floppy. B: - Tape streamer. C: - 20 meg hard drive. D: - Another 5.25" 360K floppy. E: - Switch selectable : - 5.25" 720K floppy, or - 3.5" 720K floppy. I had a 4 drive XT floppy controller (2 internal & 2 external). Floppies A: and B: were 'physical' floppies (ie, they came up as A: and B:). D: and E: were 'logical' floppies (ie, I had to put the command 'Device=Driver.Sys (appropriate parmeters)' in Config.Sys. In the course of setting up the system I discovered that I could only run the 720K drives under PC-Dos 3.2. I could not get them to work under MS-Dos 3.2. I don't remember if I tried PC-Dos 3.1. At the time, I didn't have MS-Dos 3.3, so I don't know if they would have worked with that. So, given that I ran under PC-Dos 3.2 everything worked just fine. That setup never gave me any problems. Now, about 4 month ago I upgraded the motherboard to a 12MHz '286, using Phoenix Bios 3.10 01 (or 3.01 10 or something like that). The first thing I discovered was that I needed a new hard drive controller. Ok, I got a new one of those. Everything seemed to work except the floppies. They were acting up. Using the XT 4 drive controller, I could use A: and B: (as the 360K and tape streamer). I could use D: as a 360K, but E: would give me a 'General Failure' error everytime I tried to access it. After calling and calling I finally got ahold of someone at Phoenix Technologies. After going through several people there I finally talked to someone who told me why I was having problems with drive E: He said that : "AT's can only have 1 logical floppy. XT's can have 2 [more? I don't remember if he said '2' or '2 or more']. I can run 4 floppies if I had a card that would run them as physical floppies (A: - D:, with the hard drive as E:)." Ok. That cleared up that problem, even though I think it's looney that you can't have 2 logical drives on an AT (grumble grumble...) I ended up getting a Hard Drive/Floppy Drive controller card that would give me 2 internal floppies (360K, 720K, 1.2Meg or 1.44Meg). Read on... *** Next problem. I couldn't (and still can't) get my 3.5" drive (or 720K 5.25" drive) working on my AT. If I boot up with the 3.5" hooked up as B: (in place of the tape streamer), it appears as if the AT 'finds' the drive upon boot up. I define 'find' as: The drive Led goes on and you can hear/feel the heads step (presumably the machine is stepping the heads to see how many tracks are really there). I have tried booting with a formatted disk in the drive, an unformatted disk in the drive, no disk in the drive. I have changed the CMOS setup to 'No drive', 5.25 360K, 5.25 1.2Meg, 3.5 720K, 3.5 1.44Meg. I have done all combinations of 'disk/nodisk' and 'setup'. I get the same results everytime : - If I boot with the 3.5" drive connected as B:, the Led on the drive goes on (properly) when the machine boots, and you can hear the heads stepping. - After the machine boots, if I put a formatted disk into the 3.5" drive and do a directory, the drive is accessed but I get a "Sector not found" (or "Read failure", I think) error message. - If I put a blank disk in and try to format the disk, it attempts to format Track 0, Head 0, then times-out and gives me a "Media bad" error message. I also put the statement "DrivParm /D:1 /F:2" into my Config.Sys and ran through the above steps. No change. Same problems. +++ Here's a kicker. If I boot up with a 360K 5.25" drive connected as B:, then disconnect the 360K and put the 3.5" drive in as B: (ie, move the 34 pin connector), I can *read* 720K disks, but if I format a disk, it only formats to 40 tracks (360K). +++ Another thing. Two other friends upgraded their motherboards at the same time I did. One has the same motherboard and the same HD/FF controller card. He is only running 360K 5.25" drives. One of these days I will take my drive over and try it on his system. But the other friend has a different motherboard and different HD/FD controller, but is experiencing the same problem of not having a 3.5" drive recognized upon bootup. He has to do the same "swap after booting" trick that I do. *** Sooooo..... Here are my questions : 1. Has anyone else experienced these problems? I've tried obvious (and some not so obvious :-) things, but the problems still remain. The cables are fine, the drives are fine, etc. 2. Could it be that I need MSDos 3.3 ? (This will soon be verified; I'm 'borrowing' a copy to see if that clears up anything. Something tells me that I've tried it before, though.) 3. Is there a PCDos 3.3? 4. If I tell the system (via the CMOS Setup) that there are no (or 1) floppies, why does the system go out and access the floppies anyway? What good is it to tell the system what you've got if it ignores the setup and tries things itself? BTW, I ended up getting another case, power supply, etc so I could get my XT working again with the 3.5" drive. Now I have a Sneakernet system for getting things to 3.5" 720K floppies... *** Thank you for taking time to read this. I imagine that there are other people who are experiencing similar problems. Hopefully these problems will be resolved. BTW, I would prefer an email response over posting; I don't always get a chance to read this group. Thanks :-) If there's enough interest in the replies or enough responses, I'll summarize and repost. If I get the problems resolved, I'll post a message in nice, large fonts (:-) so no one will have to go through this same awful mess. ;-) advTHANKSance. Jon 1/31/90 ...{uunet | mcdchg}!amtfocus!outback!wombat <-- Home ...{uunet | mcdchg | gatech | att}!motcid!scheer <-- Work amtfocus!outback!wombat@UUNET.UU.NET or F1JON@ISUMVS.BITNET <-- Bitnet amtfocus!outback!wombat@chg.mcd.mot.com <-- Internet "I believe the phrase rhymes with 'Clucking bell'..." - Black Adder 4