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Tandy 1000 Upgrades.

This is what I get sometimes, it's either this or the "File not found" error. This is with a Cyber Pinball disk (yes, I know it wouldn't work, it is shown because it and Apogee disks were the only ones not to give me a "File not found" or "General error" error) :

IMG_2784.jpg
 
If you do a DIR on that diskette on another machine does it show normally ?
If so then it could be a dirty head on the Tandy diskette drive.

I recall seeing weird stuff like this when doing DIR on some copy-protected bootable
game disks. Something about the diskette format that the DIR command couldn't
understand.
 
It reads it just fine on other computers. I'll get a drive head cleaner.

Hopefully that's all I need to do...
 
It is possible that your copy of Tandy MS-DOS may be corrupted, either due to data loss or due to a virus, thus causing the gibberish to be displayed on the directory listing. You can download disk images of a clean copy of Tandy DOS, although you'll probably have to swap the drives in the Tandy around so that the 3.5" drive is the A: drive, so you can try booting off it.

http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/system.html

Regular Microsoft MS-DOS or IBM PC DOS will also work fine, if you happen to have an old boot disk from another computer on hand.
 
I was using IBM PC DOS, and I have a backup of it somewhere.

I still want to try cleaning the drive head first, especially since it loads 5.25 inch floppies just fine.
 
Have you tried formatting it on the Tandy first, then writing files to it from the newer machine, then taking it back to the Tandy? I had to do this to quite a few machines, especially Atari's ST; mine read any floppy disk that was started there, but not a floppy that was formatted on anything else.

/edit Do you have a copy of the DOS that came with it? I have PC-DOS for Tandy somewhere, I think I can copy it for you. I'll check tomorrow when I get to 'work.'
 
I'll try that.

No, I don't have Tandy DOS. I've been using IBM PC DOS.

How do I format in DOS? The normal commands I usually use don't work.
 
Tupin said:
How do I format in DOS? The normal commands I usually use don't work.
Click to expand...

In Tandy DOS, just use FORMAT A: or FORMAT B: as necessary. Add /S to format a boot disk. You do not need to manually specify a 360K or 720K format.

If it tries to format a 3.5" disk as 360K instead of the correct 720K, you need to add the DRIVPARM command to your CONFIG.SYS file. This requires DOS 3.2 or higher, but you should be using at least Tandy DOS 3.3 -- which is what Radio Shack recommended you to be using anyway if you install a hard drive. Add the command DRIVPARM=/D:0 to CONFIG.SYS if the 3.5" drive is A: or DRIVPARM=/D:1 if the 3.5" drive is the B: drive.
 
An answer to the question of wether or not the XT-IDE will work in a Tandy 1000 is most likely it will. I have one in my 1000 TX and works great. have it hooked up to a small laptop drive right now an no problems at all.
 
Still gives me a "General Failure Error" when I try to format. I guess I need to clean it.

Longshot, but if I were to make a DOS boot disk in Windows, would it read and boot a more recent DOS version?
 
Not sure if the same commands will work, but here's a list from wikipedia:

format [options] drive
FORMAT drive: [/V[:label]] [/Q] [/F:size] [/B | /S] [/C]
FORMAT drive: [/V[:label]] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors] [/B | /S] [/C]
FORMAT drive: [/V[:label]] [/Q] [/1] [/4] [/B | /S] [/C]
FORMAT drive: [/Q] [/1] [/4] [/8] [/B | /S] [/C]
/V[:label] Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format.
/F:size Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (such
as 160, 180, 320, 360, 720, 1.2, 1.44, 2.88).
/B Allocates space on the formatted disk for system files.
/S Copies system files to the formatted disk.
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.
/1 Formats a single side of a floppy disk.
/4 Formats a 5.25-inch 360K floppy disk in a high-density drive.
/8 Formats eight sectors per track.
/C Tests clusters that are currently marked "bad."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DOS_commands

I saw that you are using IBM-dos so that's why I am not sure.
 
Tupin said:
Still gives me a "General Failure Error" when I try to format. I guess I need to clean it.

Longshot, but if I were to make a DOS boot disk in Windows, would it read and boot a more recent DOS version?
Click to expand...

Not a double post, just posting as Tupin is posting.

I have both 3.5 and 5.25 cleaning kits if you need them. Let me know if nothing else works. it could also be a bum floppy drive; gibberish data, not reading ot general error, might be indicitive of a bad drive.
 
The cleaning was going to be my next step. I don't know where I would find a 720kb floppy drive, can I just use a 1.44 MB one? I have one from an old Macintosh.
 
Tupin said:
The cleaning was going to be my next step. I don't know where I would find a 720kb floppy drive, can I just use a 1.44 MB one? I have one from an old Macintosh.
Click to expand...

You could use a PC 1.44MB one, but you will find the Mac floppy is not going to work, at least not easily. Apple supplies the power through the ribbon cable and many of their old floppy drives are also electronically ejected - i.e. no manual eject buttons. This also has additional signals on the ribbon cable.

Find a PC 1.44MB drive. It will work as 720KB in a DD controller.
__
Trevor
 
Tupin said:
Doesn't it need an edge connector type connection rather than pin type?
Click to expand...

The original Tandy 1000 can use standard floppy drives and any standard floppy drive cable. (The newer 1000 series machines integrated the power voltages with the drive connectors, requiring the use of specially modified floppy drives, but you don't have to worry about that.)

The only thing to watch out for is that instead of putting a twist in the cable between the A: and B: drive connectors, Tandy used the Drive Select jumpers on the floppy drives themselves to configure the A: and B: drive positions. So when installing new floppy drives, you can either set their DS jumpers to match the proper Tandy configuration, or you can just replace the floppy drive cable with a standard PC cable with the twist, and then you won't have to worry about messing around with the jumpers on the drives.
 
How do I change the jumpers?

Got the drive out. It's a Sony MP-F63W-72D. I'll clean the drive head, and try again.

Wait a second...This PCB on the edge comes right off. This looks like some sort of adapter to use a more modern floppy drive on a Tandy...

IMG_2785.jpg
 
the sony drive gets it's power from the date cable, not the molex cable, that little guy makes it so you can use the drive in a normal pc without modding a cable for the tandy, if the sony drive doesn't have a 4 pin mini plug on it, like the 3 of mine do.
 
Looks liek it. I would think based on what AI am looking at, you would need a power cable from go from that larger plug to the one the drive uses.

If the Sony drive you have uses the data cable for power, that drive might not work. See if you can find a plain vanilla floppy drive, your local thrift shops might have one in a five-dollar old machine.

If that card is for a specific floppy drive, then it might not work at all. I'll look around, see if I can dig up an I/O card with a floppy drive header on it (if you need one). 8-bit ISA, right? Not the full length ISA card card? I'll start looking.
 
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