G22QC@CUNYVM (01/01/91)
My friend wanted to use 3.5 disks, so he bought a 3.5" floppy drive
His computer is XT. After everything was set up, he couldn't get
his new drive working. Here is what he has and what he has done:
His computer is XT and has two floppy disk drives(A: and B:).
He has removed one of the two disk drives(All low density drives)
and put on that 3.5" disk drive. In his Config.sys file, it has
this line: Device=Driver.sys /D:1 /T:80 /S:18 /C /F:7
By the way, that 3.5" disk drive can be either LD or HD.
He has also tried something like this:
Drivparm=/D:1 /T:80 /S:18 /F:7
Thanks in advance.
-------
Eddie Wu
{* G22QC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU *}
*********santeew@cs.uoregon.edu (John Wes Santee) (01/02/91)
In article <90365.230354G22QC@CUNYVM.BITNET> G22QC@CUNYVM writes: >My friend wanted to use 3.5 disks, so he bought a 3.5" floppy drive >His computer is XT. After everything was set up, he couldn't get >his new drive working. Here is what he has and what he has done: >His computer is XT and has two floppy disk drives(A: and B:). >He has removed one of the two disk drives(All low density drives) >and put on that 3.5" disk drive. In his Config.sys file, it has >this line: Device=Driver.sys /D:1 /T:80 /S:18 /C /F:7 >By the way, that 3.5" disk drive can be either LD or HD. >He has also tried something like this: >Drivparm=/D:1 /T:80 /S:18 /F:7 >Thanks in advance. >------- > > Eddie Wu >{* G22QC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU *} > >********* Concerning your friend who has just purchased the 3.5" drive. If your friend is running a true XT, then he/she is looking at quite a bit more money to get the drive to work. There are basically two things wrong with your current configuration. 1) When XT's were FIRST made, 1.44m drives weren't around (I'm assuming that is what you installed), thus the BIOS in XT's do not support calls from 1.44m drives (the BIOS will think it is a 360k drive). 2) The transfer rate of 3.5" drives is 500k/sec. If your friend has a standard XT floppy controller, then the drive wont work at all because XT controllers will not transfer at that speed. If either one of these problems is in your way then you are out of luck until you buy new parts to be able to support it. A new floppy controller runs about $65, and a new BIOS is about the same (don't quote me). If you have the correct floppy controller, then there is a piece of software that I use on my system (XT based 1.44m drive) that lets you get away with "outsmarting" the XT BIOS by intercepting the call and making the computer "think" it can support 1.44m. The program is called BASTECH and I had to buy it direct from Toshiba, the company that made my drive. Hope that helps... Wes Santee | "It all seems so stupid, santeew@asterix.cs.uoregon.edu | it makes me want to give up. | But why should I give up, -Martin | when it all seems so stupid." Gore P.S. BASTECH runs about $15 which beats buying a new BIOS. However, there are no compatiblity guarantees.... -- Wes Santee | "It all seems so stupid, santeew@asterix.cs.uoregon.edu | it makes me want to give up. | But why should I give up, -Martin | when it all seems so stupid." Gore
reichert@dino.ulowell.edu (Bastard) (01/08/91)
In article <1991Jan2.052119.14061@cs.uoregon.edu> santeew@cs.uoregon.edu (John Wes Santee) writes: >In article <90365.230354G22QC@CUNYVM.BITNET> G22QC@CUNYVM writes: >>My friend wanted to use 3.5 disks, so he bought a 3.5" floppy drive >>His computer is XT. After everything was set up, he couldn't get >>his new drive working. Here is what he has and what he has done: >> >> (many woes about trying an alternate device driver) >>********* > >Concerning your friend who has just purchased the 3.5" drive. > >If your friend is running a true XT, then he/she is looking at quite a bit >more money to get the drive to work. There are basically two things wrong >with your current configuration. > > (warnings about hardware/software problems) I myself have successfully installed a 3.5" on an turbo XT. In your warning made an invalid assumption: this person may only be interested in using the low-density (720k) format of the drive. The only glitch I ran into in dealing with the installation was that I was some non-IBM clone of MS-DOS 3.xx, and could not get a device set up with the correct parameters. Once I got my hands on a true-blue IBM version of 3.3, it worked out quite well - with a kludge: I wanted the 3.5" drive as drive A. Unfortunately, because of the way MS-DOS installs its device drivers, I had to set up the driver as an additional drive. What I ended up with as logical devices: A: could read the 3.5" as 720K, but could only write as 360k B: a 360k 5" disk C: my primary 32M hard drive partition D: the leftover 18M E: could read/write the 3.5" disk at 720k. It looks strange, I admit, but it allowed me to boot off of a 720k floppy. I could have used subst to rename E: to A:, but I had some uses for the doubly- named drive: I could pull off some weird copy schemes by convincing the system that I was using two separate drives, I eliminated the prompt normally associated with 'copy a:file a:file2' by being able to use a: and e:, which allowed for more autonomy in a batch file. driver to bastard@dragon.cpe.ulowell.cpu Brian (you Bastard) Reichert USnail: 85 Gershom Ave. #2 Lowell, MA 01854 "Intel architecture: the left hand path"