a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (12/28/89)
I have a 2500 with a 2286 bridge board. Since I exchange my
MS-DOS work with machines having 360K floppy disk drives, I've
tried replacing the 1.2-megabyte drive that came with the bridge
board with a 360K drive (Teac FD-55BR). I first just swapped
drives without making any other adjustments. To test the new
drive, I inserted a 360K disk and typed DIR; it seemed to work
fine. I then removed the disk, inserted another one, and tried
another DIR. I got the first disk's directory again; the system
didn't seem to realize that I had changed disks.
Next I tried changing the disk type in the setup menu (control-
alt-escape) from 1.2 megabytes to 360K. This caused the system to
lock up as soon as I tried accessing the floppy drive. I have also
tried the following lines (one at a time) in CONFIG.SYS:
device=driver.sys /d:0 /f:0
device=driver.sys /d:0 /c /f:0
drivparm=/d:0 /f:0
drivparm=/d:0 /c /f:0
with the setup menu set to both 360K and 1.2 megabytes. In each
case, the system would lock up as soon as I tried to access the
floppy disk drive, sometimes after displaying a byte or two of
garbage on the screen.
Last night I took the drive over to a friend's place and
tried it in his AT clone. It worked perfectly.
Has anyone else tried attaching a 360K floppy drive to an
A2286? Has anyone gotten it to work? If so, HOW?
advTHANKSance...
Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
"How would you like to take a long walk off a knuckle sandwich?"
-- Diane to an obnoxious customer in Cheerssneakers@heimat.UUCP (Dan "Sneakers" Schein) (12/31/89)
In Message, <860@mindlink.UUCP>, a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) writes: > I have a 2500 with a 2286 bridge board. Since I exchange my >MS-DOS work with machines having 360K floppy disk drives, I've >tried replacing the 1.2-megabyte drive that came with the bridge >board with a 360K drive (Teac FD-55BR). I first just swapped Ive replaced my 1.2 meg with a 360K drive also. It works just fine except the system will complain unless I set both drive A and B to 360K drive(s). Be aware I only have 1 drive connected. If I try access drive B, the system hangs. Other than changing the physical drive and setting the CMOS I didn't have to change anything else and the only bugs are those mentioned above. Sneakers -- ___ Dan "Sneakers" Schein //// BERKS AMIGA BBS Sneakers Computing //// You've tried the rest, now try 2455 McKinley Ave. ___ //// the BEST! 80 Megs of 100% AMIGA West Lawn, PA 19609 \\\\//// 24 hrs @ 215/678-7691 \\\/// sneakers%heimat@commodore.com (or) uunet!cbmvax!heimat!sneakers
a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (01/01/90)
In article <10360.AA10360@heimat> sneakers@heimat.UUCP (Dan "Sneakers" Schein) writes: > Ive replaced my 1.2 meg with a 360K drive also. It works just > fine except the system will complain unless I set both drive A > and B to 360K drive(s). Be aware I only have 1 drive connected. > If I try access drive B, the system hangs. Other than changing > the physical drive and setting the CMOS I didn't have to change > anything else and the only bugs are those mentioned above. Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately it didn't help me a bit; my system still hangs. I've spent a lot of time fiddling with this thing now, and I am one unhappy camper. I've even begun thinking the unthinkable: dumping the bridge board and getting a real AT clone. I don't want to do this. Aside from this problem and the gimpy display when animations are shown (I could always get a VGA board, I guess), the bridge board does work really well. Can anyone else please help me? Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP "My Amiga _is_ a PC! It says 'Personal Computer' right on the box!"
tron1@tronsbox.UUCP (HIM) (01/03/90)
> Subj: Re: 360K drive on an AT bridge board
Why cant you just use the A: 1.2 to read/write 360K , It works fine for me...
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****************************************************************************sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (01/04/90)
a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) writes: > I have a 2500 with a 2286 bridge board. Since I exchange my >MS-DOS work with machines having 360K floppy disk drives, I've >tried replacing the 1.2-megabyte drive that came with the bridge >board with a 360K drive (Teac FD-55BR). Sorry I can't help you with the change over, but I do have a question: Why do you need to replace the 1.2 meg drive? The 1.2 meg drives are perfectly capable of reading and writing 360K disks, at least they are on all our clones here at work. I have heard of some 360K drives having problems reading disks formatted to 360k by a 1.2 meg drive; if this is the case you can preformat the disks on your 360k drives on your MSDOS machine and should still be able to write to them on the 1.2 meg drive. Or is there something weird about the 1.2 meg drive that comes with the Amiga? -- John Sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps. Accessable thru Starlink (Louisville KY) sparks@corpane.UUCP <><><><><><><><><><><> D.I.S.K. ph:502/968-5401 thru -5406 If we weren't supposed to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three to a can.
a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (01/04/90)
Several people have asked me why I want to replace my 1.2-meg
drive with a 360K drive when a 1.2-meg drive can read and write 360K
diskettes. Since the 1.2-meg drive has 80 tracks as opposed to the
360K drive's 40, each track must be narrower. If you use a 1.2-meg
drive to overwrite data written by a 360K drive, there's a chance
that you might not erase the entire track, but only the center
portion. This would not be a problem if you re-read the data with
a 1.2-megabyte drive, but the 360K drive's wider head might see the
original data on either edge of the new, and get read errors.
Some people claim to have no problems; others claim they do.
It seems to me that many factors are involved, such as the structure
of the heads on the drives (both 360K and 1.2-meg), the alignment
of the drives, etc. I am using the bridge board to develop and
maintain a commercial software package; I don't want to risk the
company's product by using combinations of equipment which might
be flaky. Currently I write only to bulk-erased disks which I've
formatted with the /4 option; this has given me no problems, but
I want to be able to update any 360K disk at will.
Some people tell me they've had trouble hooking up Teac drives
(not just 360K 5 1/4-inch drives) to assorted machines, including
AT clones. I'm currently trying to get my hands on some different
makes of 360K drives, which I'll try in place of the Teac. With
luck, another drive will work. In any event, I'll post my findings.
Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
"I'm cursed with hair from HELL!" -- Night Courta218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (01/21/90)
A while ago I posted a message describing my troubles getting
a 360K drive to work with my AT bridge board. I have since found
what's making it fail (if not why) and come up with a work-around.
For those of you who are just joining us, I wanted to replace
the 1.2-megabyte drive that came with the bridge board with a 360K
drive, since I exchange data with machines having 360K drives and
don't want to take a chance of causing errors when the 1.2-megabyte
drive's narrower head tries to write over the wide tracks written
by a 360K drive. The 360K drive gave me various problems, usually
not recognizing disk changes and sometimes locking up the bridge
board completely. Nothing I tried would make it work.
It turns out that the problem is caused by the 30-megabyte
hard card (Seagate ST-138R) which I had added for the exclusive
use of the bridge board (the autoboot partition on the Amiga's
hard disk was far too slow for serious software development).
If I booted from a floppy disk, or removed the hard card and booted
from the autoboot partition on the Amiga side, the 360K drive works
just fine. However, I have come across a work-around even when
booting from the hard card. If, the first time I try to access the
360K drive after booting, there is no disk in the drive, I'll get
the standard "drive not ready" message from MS-DOS. If I then
insert a disk and have it retry, everything works OK. I can live
with this; it's certainly preferable to giving up my hard card.
Another minor problem I've had with the hard card is that the
time doesn't come up properly when I boot. The minutes and seconds
are always set to zero, so the system always thinks I'm booting on
the hour. For instance, if I re-boot the bridge board at 2:35, the
clock is set to 2:00:00. If I pull out the bridge board, the time
comes up correctly.
If anyone else has tried a hard card on an AT bridge board I'd
appreciate hearing your experiences. (Of course, I'd appreciate it
even more if someone could tell me why all this is happening in the
first place. :-)
Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.