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Zenith Z-140 Won't Boot

R

Raven

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Mar 7, 2009
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I've a wonderful desktop Z-140 system from Zenith. It worked fine when I got it, but due to my inexperience with pre-5 DOS (at the point when I got this machine) I tried to write the 360K floppies using modern copies of windows and DOS 7 (but the correct drive type) and ended up making my copies of DOS 2.11 and 6.22 that worked on this machine nonfunctional.

I have since acquired a Panasonic Sr. Partner luggable 8088, and it has several disks that boot fine on it. I tired booting them on the Zenith, however, and it doesn't like them.

Ideas?
 
IIRC it hangs and the red light on the drive just keeps going even if I take the disk out. I don't recall if it says anything on the screen, but I don't believe so.
 
I've tried boot disks primitive enough not to have a config.sys or autoexec.bat on the Zenith from the Sr. Partner, like the official Sr. Partner one.
 
patscc said:
It might not be the floppies. Your drives might be gunked up and need a good cleaning.
patscc
Click to expand...

Though I'm quite used to using 5.25" drives/disks, I haven't had to clean one before. What's the process? Or do you just take the drive out and literally make sure there's no dustballs/etc..?
 
rails

rails

Pretty much. Clean the heads with something lint-free & video head cleaner, or rubbing alcohol, or at least something that doesn't contain water & attack plastics.
The rails tend to get gunked up with grease & grime, clean those, a plastics-safe degreaser, or in a pinch more rubbing alcohol. Are the drives 1/2 height, or full-height ?
I'm not even going to go into lubrication since that topic's been beaten to death, just search the forum.
patscc
 
I'm not certain what exactly the issue is here, but I'm pretty sure it's not drive dirt, as some of the disks that used to boot it wont boot my Sr. Partner either. If anyone has images for Z-DOS or Zenith's CP/M please get them to me, I'd appreciate it.
 
Raven said:
I'm not certain what exactly the issue is here, but I'm pretty sure it's not drive dirt, as some of the disks that used to boot it wont boot my Sr. Partner either. If anyone has images for Z-DOS or Zenith's CP/M please get them to me, I'd appreciate it.
Click to expand...

A flaky disk could have gunked-up the heads badly enough to ruin any other disks subsequently used in that drive. Give 'er a good cleaning, or try a different drive.

--T
 
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