1000TX 20 Meg Hard Disk Card
Brady
I recently dug my parents' old Tandy 1000TX out of the attic. I found
the MS-DOS/GW and Personal Desk Mate 2 disks and they seem to work
correctly. I can boot the computer off of the floppy and get into DOS
and Desk Mate.
Unfortunately, I am having problems with the hard drive. I believe they
purchased the "20 Meg Hard Disk Card" from Radio Shack when they
purchased the whole computer. I have an instruction booklet, but no
installation disk. I've seen online
(http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/1kfaq.html#II.D) that I should use
a program called hinstall.pdm. I'm afraid that program is on the
missing installation disk. Does anyone know where to locate this
program or an alternative way to initialize the disk?
One another note, is the hard drive the only way to boot without using
the DOS floppy?
Also, I'm a little afraid that the hard disk itself might be dead. I'm
not sure that it is spinning up when the computer turns on. Is there an
easy way to check before I get into a software hunt?
Thank you for your help.
DaveG
> Also, I'm a little afraid that the hard disk itself might be dead. I'm
> not sure that it is spinning up when the computer turns on. Is there an
> easy way to check before I get into a software hunt?
Other than the cooling fan in the PSU at the back, the only other whirring
noise you should be able to hear is the hard disk.
If you can't be sure it's on, take the cover off and listen as you switch
on. It should be obvious if it's spinning.
--
Dave
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder
Knut Roll-Lund
I'm an expert on this but...
They are usually quite loud. If it doesn't spin there might be several
reasons.
First of all I would check the power or use a known good powersource.
Secondly I have sometimes seen that the heads have stuck, probably
because of the lubrication has gone bad. One should probably then have a
clean room and open the drive, clean out the bad lubricant and apply
new... probably there are companies that do this (if the data is
important) like this http://www.ibas.com/
But not going this far, in some cases they have come unstuck by leaving
the computer on for some time (the heat melts the lubrication). The
powersupply must be able to take it then. Turning it on and of sometimes
help after it has been on for a while.
In other cases additional force is needed, I have knocked the drive
slightly sideways and in the worst case I actually used a pliers to turn
the exposed axle. This fault would not necessarily leave bad areas on
the disk, because the drive was parked, so the head was not in a
critical position. Anyway I would be fast in extracting any data, then
after a while run for example spinrite to fix any problems.
Sometimes, of course the motor is broken or get broken by overheating
when trying to turn the disks with stuck heads.
Please note that these old drives need to be "manually" parked with a
utility from dos before moving the machine (or the disks and heads will
be damaged). I don't know what would be the typical way to do this on a
T1K but I remember commands like "park" and "ship" also the pctools
application has such a function, and norton utilities.
Knut
Mike and Debbie
Just dug 2 TX's out for my littlest one yesterday...the one with the games
had stuck hard disk (stiction is the proper term i believe ) the hard-card
is mounted on an 8-bit card ... if with the case cover off you don't hear
the hard disk spinning ( whirring ) or trying to access ( sounds like a
modern drive going bad ) , check the hard card is properly seated in the 1st
or 2nd slot from the power supply...check the 4-wire power lead from the
drive to the card itself , and the ribbon cables, if all that looks
good...the drive may be bad or stuck. The proper way (per IBM or WD ? ) to
release a stuck (stiction) drive is to remove from case, hold at arms length
and swing it in very fast figure-eights , never actually had one release
like that, tho' ... usually a slightly more than gentle smack to the side of
the drive (top of the drive in a hard-card ) will release the drive, results
may vary and of course you probably should low-level format and run a good
drive-checking prog afterwards , or if it works do the same thing again in
6-7 years : ) .
Good luck !
mike
"Brady" <brady...@asabe.org> wrote in message
news:BiD2g.43871$EA3.38627@dukeread10...
Rick
>
> Hello,
>
> I recently dug my parents' old Tandy 1000TX out of the attic. I found
> the MS-DOS/GW and Personal Desk Mate 2 disks and they seem to work
> correctly. I can boot the computer off of the floppy and get into DOS
> and Desk Mate.
>
> Unfortunately, I am having problems with the hard drive. I believe they
> purchased the "20 Meg Hard Disk Card" from Radio Shack when they
> purchased the whole computer. I have an instruction booklet, but no
> installation disk. I've seen online
> (http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/1kfaq.html#II.D) that I should use
> a program called hinstall.pdm. I'm afraid that program is on the
> missing installation disk. Does anyone know where to locate this
> program or an alternative way to initialize the disk?
Actually it depends on what model Hard Card is in there. Using an MFM
hard card formatter on an IDE hard card can render it useless. What's
the model number on the hard card? If it's an MFM hard card (for a TX it
probably is) I'm pretty sure the program is HSECT on the DOS or
supplemental utilities disk instead.
Get replacement disks here:
ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/
Check the deskmate and system directories and read the .txt files there.
> One another note, is the hard drive the only way to boot without using
> the DOS floppy?
On a TX I believe so. This wasn't one of the models which booted from
DOS in a ROM.
> Also, I'm a little afraid that the hard disk itself might be dead. I'm
> not sure that it is spinning up when the computer turns on. Is there an
> easy way to check before I get into a software hunt?
>
> Thank you for your help.
Hard Card drives are notorious for developing "stiction" as they age -
the spindle bearings seize up. If the drive is silent and/or it can't be
accessed when booting you probably have a stiction problem. Things from
swinging the drive around in big circles to giving it a good whack in
the palm of your hand have been suggested as fixes for getting the drive
un-stuck. Proceed with caution - don't whack it harder than you have to.
Rick
dke...@hotmail.com
Knut Roll-Lund wrote:
> DaveG wrote:
> > Sometime on Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:22:56 -0500, Brady scribbled:
> >
> >
>
> Secondly I have sometimes seen that the heads have stuck, probably
> because of the lubrication has gone bad. One should probably then have a
> clean room and open the drive, clean out the bad lubricant and apply
> new... probably there are companies that do this (if the data is
> important) like this http://www.ibas.com/
Hi
The head stiction problem is not a lubrication problem. The heads do
not
rub on the disk when running, they fly. The problem was caused by
making the disk surface too smooth. When sitting, the air would get
squeezed out between the heads and the surface. The heads would
actually
bond to the surface. This is similar to how guage blocks stick together
(
for those machinest among us ).
If this is the problem the solution, told to me by a fellow from
Seagate, was
to remove the drive from its mounts, with the cables still connected.
When
the power is first turned on, give it a slap on the side ( radially )
where the
disk screws mount.
This was fixed on the newer designs by slightly roughing the surfaces,
by a controlled amount.
---snip---
>
> Knut
Knut Roll-Lund
Ok, I read about this lubricant stuff somewhere, maybe it was only a
reference to the bearings, not the disks or heads. I also had the
impression that it was the heads that had stuck so thanks for the
explanation. I actually never opened a drive to see, though I do have
several broken ones. These typically spin but isn't readable and won't
be low-level formatted.
I guess that drive I have that needed extra force, more than just the
slap, to unstick wasn't parked and the heads were somewhere in the
middle because there were bad areas that could not even be low-level
formatted back to shape.
I wouldn't know if it applies to the T1K but on the Olivetti M24 one
used debug to run an address, the rom on the MFM controller actually, to
low-level format MFM drives. The Spinrite program I have would also do
that, revive the drive by rewriting the low level format, it was pretty
intelligent because it wouldn't low level format RLE and IDE drives,
only MFM.
The MFM drives were very different from IDE drives in that it was very
normal to low-level format them, I think it was even a part of the
installation of a new drive or a drive to a new controller (to ensure
that the controller and the drive agreed on timing).
BTW I didn't know that there could be an IDE drive on the T1K, I was
assuming MFM. Was there IDE drives as small as 5MB? (the smallest IDE
drive I have is 20MB, I think).
Knut
Mike Y
> Ok, I read about this lubricant stuff somewhere, maybe it was only a
> reference to the bearings, not the disks or heads. I also had the
> impression that it was the heads that had stuck so thanks for the
> explanation. I actually never opened a drive to see, though I do have
> several broken ones. These typically spin but isn't readable and won't
> be low-level formatted.
>
> I guess that drive I have that needed extra force, more than just the
> slap, to unstick wasn't parked and the heads were somewhere in the
> middle because there were bad areas that could not even be low-level
> formatted back to shape.
>
> I wouldn't know if it applies to the T1K but on the Olivetti M24 one
> used debug to run an address, the rom on the MFM controller actually, to
> low-level format MFM drives. The Spinrite program I have would also do
> that, revive the drive by rewriting the low level format, it was pretty
> intelligent because it wouldn't low level format RLE and IDE drives,
> only MFM.
>
> The MFM drives were very different from IDE drives in that it was very
> normal to low-level format them, I think it was even a part of the
> installation of a new drive or a drive to a new controller (to ensure
> that the controller and the drive agreed on timing).
>
> BTW I didn't know that there could be an IDE drive on the T1K, I was
> assuming MFM. Was there IDE drives as small as 5MB? (the smallest IDE
> drive I have is 20MB, I think).
>
> Knut
Actually, I have 1/2Meg IDE drive. Well, it's a prototype. Solid state,
long story.
The issue with IDE being 'different' is just that when they went to IDE,
with
a controller matched to the drive, they could hide a multitude of sins.
Specifically, what is 'inside' the package is now controlled by the
interface,
and does it really matter as long as you can get to it?
In fact, MOST IDE drives in the early days were ESDI, but the interface
hid everything from you. Then they got this thing called ZBR which stood
for 'Zone Bit Recording' if I remember correctly. What that means is that
the drive had different densities on different tracks. And there's no way
there was 8 heads in there. The who drive was 'translated'. Again, does
it matter? No need for 'reduced write current' as it didn't matter. The
drive managed all that for you.
Now, the kicker is what does a 'format' do? Depends on the drive!
Bottom line is once the 'package' of a drive and controller became the
norm, the drive manufacturers were free to really start using the media,
instead of having to be compatible with a crippled interface spec.
As to the lubricant issue, there's a lot of 'urban legend' flying around
about
the stuff. The only drive that I actually know of with a lubricant problem
was the Fujitsu Eagles (big rack mount drives). But that doesn't mean
there aren't problems with other drives. Or with other issues that 'could'
be wrong in the drive. Like the Tandon hard drives that had the head
stop positioner so that the head could get 'beside' it and it would jam up
as the temp changed... (What a piece of ... Well, you know!)
Mike
R Flowers
>> reference to the bearings, not the disks or heads. I also had the
Me: I need some of that hard disk lube. Got any?
Pharmacist: Uh...
Me: I can't get my disk mounted without it!
-- R Flowers
Homer J Simpson
> Unfortunately, I am having problems with the hard drive. I believe they
> purchased the "20 Meg Hard Disk Card" from Radio Shack when they purchased
> the whole computer. I have an instruction booklet, but no installation
> disk.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tandy1000
has links to possible sources of software.