Tandy 1500HD hard drive replacement woes...
Conceited Jerk
I just picked up a used Tandy 1500HD laptop which was supposedly in
"non-working" condition. I received the unit and immediately plugged
'er in, and she fired up! The only problem was that the HD didn't
work. No problem, I thought, as I've got SEVERAL 2.5" IDE hard drives
kickin' around...
Problem is, the machine would not recognize ANY of the HDs I tried!
It would (and still can!) recognize the original non-working Conner
CP-2024 (20 meg) HD that was in it, but none of the others!
Any idea what gives? My only theory is that the controller in the
laptop (is it some sort of bastardized Smartdrive controller?) can
only recognize certain brands of HDs used by Tandy...
Each of the drives I tried were recognized by another laptop I have,
and I even went so far as to low-level format one of the drives under
Dos3.3's Hsect command, then fdisking it (as per the deskmate manual's
instruction, I figured "when all else fails, RTFM!"), but to no avail!
The HDs I tried were:
Western Digital Caviar Lite 170 (170 meg)
Conner CP2044PK (42 meg)
IBM DVAA-2810 (810 meg...kinda obvious why this didn't work!)
Toshiba MK1724FCV (250 MB)
There were a few more (including another 40 meg conner and an 80 meg
Fujitsu) but these were the ones closest to me at the time of this
writing ;)
Anyone know what (If anything) I'm doing wrong? The machine runs great
as a (Y2K compliant!) floppy based system, but it gets annoying rather
quickly when I have to constantly swap disks to look up an address!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
TCJ
--- The Conceited Jerk ---
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No, but I have every right to be!
Look for me on ICQ# 31229765
Or on MSN (as concei...@netscape.net)
Or don't. I don't care ;P
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Neil Morrison
The IBMs all used IRQ5, but the 1000 used IRQ2. If there is a rom on the HD
controller, it may be custom for the 1500.
This is all just guesswork as the whether the 1500 is similar.
Try phoning your local Rad Shack repair centre (Intertan in Canada), and
speak to the computer tech. Some of them have been around long enough to
remember this stuff.
Also, check on the web page for tech info - sometimes the answer is there.
--
Regards,
Neil
"Conceited Jerk" <kotat...@mb.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3c542a90.3101394@news1.uncensored-news.com...
Conceited Jerk
<neil...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>FWIW, I know on the T1000 series the HD controller used a weird IRQ line.
>The IBMs all used IRQ5, but the 1000 used IRQ2. If there is a rom on the HD
>controller, it may be custom for the 1500.
>This is all just guesswork as the whether the 1500 is similar.
>Try phoning your local Rad Shack repair centre (Intertan in Canada), and
>speak to the computer tech. Some of them have been around long enough to
>remember this stuff.
>Also, check on the web page for tech info - sometimes the answer is there.
Alrighty, then, I will do so, assuming the repair centre still exists
here in Winnipeg...I seem to recall talk of closing it a few years
ago, but I never really paid attention...wish me luck!
Thanks for the info, Neil!
David Firth
counterpart. For example, I had an 1100FD which was contemporary with the
1500HD. The 1100FD was a modified Panasonic CF-150B. When I needed a floppy
drive replacement, I was able to get one from a Panasonic distributor with
the help of a Panasonic tech. If Tandy is not able to find the info, you might
consider looking for a "twin" design.
--
Dave Firth. Still thinking different: Newton 2100.
Posted with Ink Spot for Newton.
Aron Eisenpress
>
>I remember the 1500HD, but do not remember whether it had a non-Tandy
>counterpart. For example, I had an 1100FD which was contemporary with the
>1500HD. The 1100FD was a modified Panasonic CF-150B. When I needed a floppy
>drive replacement, I was able to get one from a Panasonic distributor with
>the help of a Panasonic tech. If Tandy is not able to find the info, you might
>consider looking for a "twin" design.
with that model, but if it's like the CF-270 and later models, you need to
run the setup program (which you can find at support.tandy.com) to recognize
the hard drive. In addition, the BIOS does not have a "user" drive type,
and the setup program will set the BIOS drive type based on the size of
the drive you put in, but only for sizes that it knows about - if you
put in a larger drive it will set the size to the largest drive that
originally came with the laptop. You can use the Disk Manager overlay
or similar software to support a larger drive, but first run the setup
program so that the BIOS drive type will have a consistent value.
Hope that helps!
--Aron
Bill Marcum
Conceited Jerk wrote in message
<3c542a90...@news1.uncensored-news.com>...
>
>The HDs I tried were:
>
>Western Digital Caviar Lite 170 (170 meg)
>Conner CP2044PK (42 meg)
>IBM DVAA-2810 (810 meg...kinda obvious why this didn't work!)
>Toshiba MK1724FCV (250 MB)
>
1500HD probably has an IDE interface. The bad news is, it's
probably an 8-bit IDE. Drives of that type are hard to find these
days, and I don't think there were ever any bigger than 40 MB.
Look for Seagate drives with the suffix "X" or "AX", like
ST125AX.
Aron Eisenpress
Interesting idea... I wouldn't have thought of 8-bit IDE on a laptop,
but that sounds like it may be the case. The Conner CP-2024 that he
mentioned is in fact an XTA/ATA drive according to TheRef
(http://www.aquascape.com/theref). (The ST125AX wouldn't fit...
this takes 2.5" form-factor drives.)
I don't know if the XTA interface tolerates drives with different
physical geometries, but there is a 2.5" 20mb XTA/ATA drive available
for $20 at http://www.primelec.com/grid.html (it's a PrarieTek 120).
I've bought from these folks without problems.
--Aron
Conceited Jerk
<AF...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> wrote:
>I don't know if the XTA interface tolerates drives with different
>physical geometries, but there is a 2.5" 20mb XTA/ATA drive available
>for $20 at http://www.primelec.com/grid.html (it's a PrarieTek 120).
>I've bought from these folks without problems.
Aron, I worship you!
I'm gonna try to scrape together the $20. Hopefully I can make it
work...or else I'll STILL have a cool floppy-based laptop :)
Arlo James Barnes
Ben Yates
> I have a similar situation - working 1500HD, no working drive. It seems Radioshack still has a catalog number for a 40MB XTA drive (support.radioshack.com/productinfo/DocumentResults.asp?sku_id=25-1046&Name=XT IDE SmartDrives&Reuse=Y) but who knows if that means you can actually buy the drive from Radioshack.
Arlo James Barnes
> Hopefully you used the Wayback Machine to post this back to January 2002, in case it didn't work out for Conceited Jerk...
Sparc IPX
For the record, it *didn't* work out for me. The 1500HD sat in my
basement for years. Ended up tossing it this past July whilst cleaning
out the basement.
-CJ
--
spar...@sdf.lonestar.org
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