clayj@microsoft.UUCP (Clay JACKSON) (01/05/90)
Help! I'm having some problems installing a Mountain (external) tape drive on my Tandy 5000 (a MicroChannel, PS/2 Mod 80 clone) and have just about reached the end of available support from Tandy and Mountain (although I must admit that the folks at Mountain have been WONDERFUL to deal with. I would DEFINITELY recommend their products, even tho I've had some problems). The specific problem (now) is a conflict that occurs at POST (Power On Self Test) time. The tape drive hangs (via a special cable) off the floppy controller, and, according to Mountain, should be transparent to any and all signals used by the floppys. However, when I power the system up, if the tape drive is connected (doesn't even have to be powered on), POST complains with an error 167 (invalid diskette information) AND the tape drive gets enabled and starts moving the tape like mad. I thought at first that the problem was in the drive select jumpers on the tape drive; but there ARE NO drive select jumpers (at least that are visible when I remove the case) AND NONE of the Drive Select lines are carried out to the tape drive. My calls to Tandy have (so far, a supervisor is "looking") not yielded much beyond "We don't support that configuration". I'm pretty sure that if I can find out EXACTLY what POST is doing I can defeat it. Does anyone out there (maybe from Tandy, Mountain or Phoenix (the ROM was done by Phoenix)) know what the POST is looking at, or have any other light to shed on this? Thanks! Clay Jackson Disclaimer: This is my personal system. My employer would certainly not have such a strange configuration, and the certainly don't put any value on the opinions I express here.