hrbaan@cs.ruu.nl (Hayo Baan) (11/30/90)
Hi there, I am having a HUGE (yes, HUGE) problem using 4dos on my '386. It all worked fine ..., until I installed OS/2 1.2 on my hard disk (with the dual boot feature offcourse). The problem is that when I change a floppy disk in one of the drives (A: = 1.44Mb, B: = 1.2Mb) 4dos doesn't recognise this, ie. if I dir it, all I get is the directory of the previous disk. This error goes even further : if I have NO disk inserted, I still get the same directory (allthough it reads the drive). But this is not all! If a insert a DD disk in the drive (and the previous was a HD disk) it reports a general failure!. For this, there is no other solution, then to reboot and to try again. At first I thought that it was because of 4dos, but the problem still occurs if I run COMMAND.COM as a secondary shell. Then I tried to start of from floppy (with 4dos installed), because I thought the boot sector of my HDD could have been harmed by OS/2, but the problem still occured. My configuration : 68Mb HDD one partition, with OS/2 and dos 4.01 installed. My question : what has gone wrong, and what is the solution. Note : I have had OS/2 and DOS 4.00 allready installed, and then the problem didn't occur (this was IBM-DOS 4.00, now I am using MS-DOS 4.01). Awaiting your responses, -- +------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+ | Hayo R. Baan | E-Mail : hrbaan@cs.ruu.nl | | Oudwijkerlaan 34 |-----------------------------------------------------| | 3581 TD UTRECHT | | | The Netherlands | A program is like a nose; | | | Sometimes it runs, sometimes it blows. | | Tel. 030-515586 | | +------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
dth@cs.brown.edu (Dzung T. Hoang) (12/01/90)
In article <4419@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl> hrbaan@cs.ruu.nl (Hayo Baan) writes: >Hi there, I am having a HUGE (yes, HUGE) problem using 4dos on my '386. >It all worked fine ..., until I installed OS/2 1.2 on my hard disk (with the >dual boot feature offcourse). The problem is that when I change a floppy >disk in one of the drives (A: = 1.44Mb, B: = 1.2Mb) 4dos doesn't recognise >this, ie. if I dir it, all I get is the directory of the previous disk. This >error goes even further : if I have NO disk inserted, I still get the same >directory (allthough it reads the drive). But this is not all! If a insert >a DD disk in the drive (and the previous was a HD disk) it reports a >general failure!. For this, there is no other solution, then to reboot and >to try again. > >My question : what has gone wrong, and what is the solution. > >Awaiting your responses, I ran into a similar problem when I acquired an external CMS drive with an 8-bit interface. The interface has cables that allow it to be connected between the floppy controller and the floppy drives. After I installed the interface, I began getting problems with the floppies, as described above. After a long inspection of the tape drive interface, I found that the line that has meaning RDY for XT's but different meaning for AT's and 386 (I forgot the name of the signal) is hardwired to either high or low (I forget details). I removed a trace leading to that signal and added a switch in place of the trace. So when I wanted to use the tape drive, I would close the switch, otherwise, I would leave it open. Actually, I could leave it open and the tape drive would still work. So the problem you are having may be due to this RDY line. Many floppy drives have jumpers to select between the XT and AT signals for this line. This could be what's causing the problems. Now that I think about it, I think the AT signal that replaces the XT RDY is the media change detect signal, which explains the above problems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dzung T. Hoang dth@cs.brown.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------------