Tandy 1000ex floppy drive problem
DSM1787
double-density 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. We bought this computer back
in 1989, and used it for five years no trouble with the floppy drives.
As a fun little project, I decided to pull the thing out of storage
and set it up again. The first thing I wanted to do was put some
decent programs on there, so I went to use the floppy drives
and...neither the 5 1/4 drive on the side of the machine or the
external 3 1/4 could read anything(I got a "Not Ready" Error). In
addition, the computer was recognizing them both as being half of
their size (720 becomes 360). I tried editing the config.sys file with
the device command and now the system recognizes them both as their
actual size. I figured there was something wrong with the 3 1/4 DD
external, so I swapped it for a 3 1/4 HD and made the appropriate
changes to config.sys. Now I still can't read anything- i get the "No
response (Not Ready condition)" error, and if I try to format the
disks, it says every one of them is write-protected (even if its not).
Help computer...
Stephen Bendzick
The 3.5" HD drive may have a slightly different pinout than the Tandy
drives. The "write protect" line might be one of the differences.
Therefore, the computer might "think" the drive is telling it the disk
is write protected when it is not. Furthermore, according to the
information available from Radio Shack online tech support (
http://support.radioshack.com/productinfo/DocumentResults.asp?sku_id=25-1050&Name=Tandy%20Desktops&Reuse=N
), the EX shipped with MS-DOS version 2.11. This DOS version didn't
support 3.5" HD (1.44 MB) floppy disks, so the EX hardware and BIOS
probably didn't either. You should go back to the 3.5" DD drive.
The 5.25" internal drive on the 1000 EX was a 360K DD (40 track) drive.
The external 3.5" drive was 720K (see the "Settings" document at the
above URL). If you're just trying to get things working, you might
start by disconnecting the external floppy drive and focus on getting
the 5.25" internal drive to work. I noticed that the "Board Layout"
diagram at the Radio Shack site shows a battery on the main board.
Surely it has died by now. This was either keeping the time or saving
some settings in a CMOS RAM. You may need to replace the battery and
run a setup utility to reconfigure the BIOS. The utility would have
come on a disk with the computer. The 1000 HX had an EEPROM which held
settings, and a disk utility called SETUPHX was used to set it, but I
don't know about the 1000 EX--I see no reference to setup in the online
Radio Shack docs for the EX. I suspect the EX did have an EEPROM or
CMOS RAM, since the board diagram doesn't show any DIP switches, which
most XT class machines (like the EX) use for these settings. But the
Tandy 1000 SX (which I know well), while it does have four DIP switches,
doesn't have any to specify the drive types, so this may not be an
issue.
You also might want to get a head cleaning disk kit (if you can find
one) and clean the heads of your floppy drives. They may have a film
(of oxide or dirt) over them from years of storage. The kit consists of
a fiber cleaning disk and pure isopropyl alcohol as the head cleaning
fluid. Then try to read a know good disk (one that can be read in
another drive with no errors, ever). I've found that 3.5" HD (1.44MB)
floppy disks tend to start going bad in storage after about ten years.
5.25" DD (360KB) disks will probably last longer, maybe fifteen or even
twenty years, but you're still near the limit for the original Tandy
1000 EX disks. Hopefully, you made copies not too long before storing
the machine.
Stephen
DSM1787
Actually, this system is running dos 3.3 right now, which from what
I've read is supposed to be one of the best systems for the 1000's.
Paul David
had anything to offer the Tandy 1000s. 3.3 had a few batch file
improvements over 3.2 (call, etc.).
Stephen Bendzick
> > Stephen
>
> Actually, this system is running dos 3.3 right now, which from what
> I've read is supposed to be one of the best systems for the 1000's.
The Tandy 1000 SX came with DOS 3.20. DOS 3.3 should be fine. But that
was not my point. My point was that according to Tandy, the system came
with DOS 2.11, so I wouldn't expect the hardware and BIOS to support
drives of larger capacity than DOS 2.11 supported. Hence my expectation
that the EX can't handle a 1.44 MB 3.5" HD drive, at least not without a
BIOS upgrade. (Tandy didn't make BIOS upgrades for the 1000s, AFAIK, so
that would have to be a third party upgrade. I don't even know if any
third party BIOS upgrades for any of the Tandy 1000 line existed.)
I'd still discourage connecting a 3.5" HD drive to the Tandy 1000 EX, at
least until you can get the internal 5.25" DD (360K) drive, or an
external 3.5" DD (720K) drive, to work.
Stephen
Mike Y
ran that on my original 1000 since 5.0 came out. Once you moved away from
a 'Tandy' variant of the DOS, you lost support for some of the Tandy
hardware
like ECGA in Basic but that's minor. DOS 5.0 was a joy compared to anything
3.x. Games and stuff that had ECGA support built in would still run fine
with
DOS 5.0
I could never get 6.x to work on my 1000. But 5.0 ran fine from floppy and
from hard drive.
Mike
Paul David
floppy drives. In fact it only came with a 5 1/4" drive (360K); I added
a 720K drive later. I did indeed keep up with the progress of DOS and I
am almost positive that NO version of MSDOS above 3.3 had anything to
offer a Tandy 1000! I made lots of menus with batch files and found out
that they would not work with 3.2. I'm sure there is a place on the
internet somewhere to find out what each version had to offer; but with
640K didn't have much of a place to go.
sirdant...@charter.net (DSM1787) wrote in
news:e4175206.04071...@posting.google.com:
Jeffrey Hayes
wrote:
>The Tandy 1000SL which is a later version than the EX did not support HD
>floppy drives. In fact it only came with a 5 1/4" drive (360K); I added
>a 720K drive later. I did indeed keep up with the progress of DOS and I
>am almost positive that NO version of MSDOS above 3.3 had anything to
>offer a Tandy 1000! I made lots of menus with batch files and found out
>that they would not work with 3.2. I'm sure there is a place on the
>internet somewhere to find out what each version had to offer; but with
>640K didn't have much of a place to go.
The 1000RLX "B" versions and the 1000RSX came with DOS 5, but those
were AT-class 286 and 386 machines with more than 640k.
As for what you get with newer versions, Interlnk/Intersvr, Dosshell,
Config.sys menus, and online help come to mind. But I think you are
right - the greater RAM use outweighs all that.
Jeff Hayes
tv...@sbcglobal.net
http://tvdog.shacknet.nu
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Stephen Bendzick
>
> I was just going to recommend you run MS-DOS 5.0 on the older 1000s. I've
> ran that on my original 1000 since 5.0 came out. Once you moved away from
> a 'Tandy' variant of the DOS, you lost support for some of the Tandy
> hardware
> like ECGA in Basic but that's minor.
Yes, I have IBM DOS 5.0, I've run it on the 1000 SX, and it runs fine.
I prefer it for general use over the original MS-DOS 3.20, particularly
because of DOSKEY (and the IBM DOS SHELL). But I use the Tandy 1000
enhanced BASIC, which supports 3-voice sound and TGA (aka ECGA) enhanced
video modes, and I wasn't sure if that would work on DOS 5, so I was
inclined to use the original DOS with that BASIC. (They come on the
same disk). Now I know that it won't work with DOS 5, and that's /not/
minor to me. Plus, DOS 5.0 takes more memory than the original DOS 3.2,
which is a significant factor even with 640K RAM, which I have.
I don't have a hard drive in my original 1000 SX, so I can boot either
version just as easily, but if I was going to put in a hard drive, which
DOS to install on it would be a tough call. I think I'd go with the
Tandy MS-DOS 3.2, since that's original. It's not as though I keep the
Tandy 1000 as a productivity machine! I keep it because it's the Tandy
1000 (SX).
Then I'd probably put DOS 5.0 on a hard drive in the Tandy 1000 TX (the
other model I own). A nice rounding out.
> DOS 5.0 was a joy compared to anything
> 3.x.
I agree it was a major step up, and I enjoyed its improvements. I
wouldn't say DOS 3.x was a sorrow in comparison, but I don't think you
were suggesting that.
> Games and stuff that had ECGA support built in would still run fine
> with
> DOS 5.0
Yes, I've seen that first hand.
> I could never get 6.x to work on my 1000. But 5.0 ran fine from floppy and
> from hard drive.
I don't recall if I've gotten MS-DOS 6.2x to run on the 1000 SX. I
think maybe it hung on startup. I know that happened on the IBM PCjr
(or maybe that was even with IBM DOS 5.0?). (I hear that's because of a
BIOS bug in the PCjr.)
>
> Mike
Thanks for your input. I think the community will benefit from both our
viewpoints.
Stephen