Settings for floppy controller in XT clone

[kishy]

Kevin, try grabbing a copy of Anadisk and run it in SECTOR mode. See what it sees. Right now, we don't know if it's your drive configuration, the controller or the BIOS.

I don't really have a test environment able to support that ATM...while I do have an XT-IDE I don't have a drive currently set up with a decent version of DOS or any of that. I don't have ANY way of booting the system from a floppy currently, that's what this card would have hopefully accomplished.

Despite what the silkscreening may indicate, that Conner card is strictly for floppy-interface tape drives. The 2MB denotes the speed, rather than the capacity.

That's why those are so cheap on eBay... they don't work with regular floppy drives.

Interesting...it's almost like it tries to work though. Are floppy and tape technologies really similar enough that a floppy drive would seek media on boot if the card is for tape drives only?

It would be nice if they could be made to work, and it should be doable with a bit of know-how, since it is the same basic interface. However, as you found, there are some issues to address. Actually, I don't even recall the Conner/CTC cards being bootable, though it's been awhile since I've messed with one. (It stands to reason, though... not often you'd want to boot from a backup tape drive.)

As for the tape drives themselves, some of them would work on a regular floppy controller, but they were quite picky at best... they wouldn't work on just any controller. I still have one of the proper Conner drives to match OP's controller, but I never bothered trying it on anything else.

I think someone in the thread MikeS linked to earlier had said they could get it to begin booting DOS off a floppy connected to this type of card but it would lock up (forget what they said now, would need to read it again). Something about beginning to boot DOS and not completing it.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

Are floppy and tape technologies really similar enough that a floppy drive would seek media on boot if the card is for tape drives only?

Yeah, it's a really simplistic and specific interface... I mean, you can just look at the pinout of the 34-pin connector and see exactly how the whole thing works. But that also means that anything connected to that interface has to operate in pretty much the same way. Of course, there's still room for little variations, hence the incompatibilities of the tape drives/controllers, but the basic operation has to be the same.

 

[digger]

I read somewhere that the PCjr doesn't have DMA and I thought XT class machines did not either.. I learned something!

The original Tandy 1000 series (with the non-standard keyboard that is missing Scroll Lock) also does not have DMA on the motherboard, however if you install Tandy's memory upgrade card, then it includes the DMA chip.

And I didn't know that a DMA controller could even be added to a Tandy 1000 as an upgrade. So I learned something as well.