philb@techbook.com (Phil Biehl) (05/10/91)
I just got a cheap Irwin Model 245A 40 Mbyte tape drive for my AST 286. I
already have two floppies neither of which I do not want to lose to the tape.
My question is: how does one add more drives to a AT? Add another controller
card? Replace my existing card with one that can handle three or more? Give
up? My AT seems to only recognize two drives (in CMOS RAM) so how do I get
it to see a third? Do I need to?
Does anyone have a hardware installation manual for the Irwin drive?
Thanks muchly
Phil Biehl
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Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbookspabres13@pc.usl.edu (Joubert John V.) (05/10/91)
In article <1991May10.033425.11031@techbook.com> philb@techbook.com (Phil Biehl) writes: >I just got a cheap Irwin Model 245A 40 Mbyte tape drive for my AST 286. I >already have two floppies neither of which I do not want to lose to the tape. > >My question is: how does one add more drives to a AT? Add another controller >card? Replace my existing card with one that can handle three or more? Give >up? My AT seems to only recognize two drives (in CMOS RAM) so how do I get >it to see a third? Do I need to? Phil, You need to get a hold of a controller card from Irwin, or your favorite dealer. I got mine from Valcom in Houston, TX (ask for Grace). I told her pretty much what you did, and she sent me the proper card. This card works by plugging into a card slot (allways state the obvious!), and then taking the floppy cable from your controller & plugging into the tape controller card, then the card has a cable that plugs into the floppy drive, and another cable that plugs into the tape machine. Like this: ------------------------- | HD/FD controller | | | | (-----) Floppy cable | | ||||| | ----|||||--++++++ ++++++- ||||| ||||| ||||| ----|||||------------------| | ||||| Tape controller | | (-----) | | | | (-----) (---------) | | ||||| ||||||||| | | ||||| ||||||||| | ----|||||---++|||||||||++++- ||||| ||||||||| to ||||| to ||||||||| floppy||| Irwin||||||| drives||| tape|||||||| ||||| drive||||||| ||||| ||||||||| This allows you to have both floppies and still use a tape drive. The adapter costed $120.00. Hope this helps! -- John Joubert | /\ | /\ | _ Internet: pabres13@pc.usl.edu | \|<>|>|> \|<>|>|><`|`| GENIE: J.JOUBERT |--/|-------/|------------ | \/ \/