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Does a 5 1/4 HD drive work on an XT?

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NicolasF

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2006
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Location
Argentina
I have a 5 1/4 HD floppy and it doesn't work in my XT, but I have tried a 3 1/2 HD and it works. Do I have to change any jumpers in the 5 1/4 drive to make it work?
 
You would have to change the jumpers on any drive to make it work.

The only thing that 5.25 vs. 3.5 means is that the mounting options in the case are different.
 
Funny enough I tried exactly this one hour ago, and I could not get it to work.
Haven't found any tweakable jumpers on that specific HD drive- I'll see if some other one I got has them
 
There have been numerous discussions in these forums about the problems associated wlth uzing DD media inna HD drive & vicey-versey. I'm about half fit-shased right now, so I don't feel like looking it up myself, but a search of this website should turn up sum'n useful.

--T
 
So... it seems like there is no way to make a High Density drive work on a PC-XT. :( I just have to find a working 5 1/4 Double Density...
 
if you have a 1986-dated BIOS, you can use 3.5" DD floppy disks (720kB) too! I haven't got a suitable drive so I haven't actually tested this.
 
dongfeng said:
I read that you can use a HD 5.25" drive in an XT, providing you use a suitable HD controller card.
Click to expand...

Yeah... but it's imposible to get one of those controllers here... it's easier to find a double density floppy :)
 
NicolasF said:
So... it seems like there is no way to make a High Density drive work on a PC-XT. :( I just have to find a working 5 1/4 Double Density...
Click to expand...
...or a 3.5" 720K DD drive. (The 1.44 drives seem to work ok, but only at double-density).

--T
 
Here's the story as I see it:

There are two factors: hardware and software

DOUBLE DENSITY

The standard IBM controller provided in an IBM XT only supports double density. That means 5.25"-360K and 3.5"-720k
If you have the 9May86 ROM BIOS in your XT, then it will happily read/write both drives.
If you have an earlier ROM BIOS, to read/write a 3.5"-720k, you need to add a suitable DRIVER.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS

HIGH DENSITY

First, you will need to have a floppy controller that supports high density (from a hardware perspective).
Most third party floppy controllers that I've seen contain a BIOS extention and a set of DIP switches.
If you have one of those, you just set the switches and off you go.

If your floppy controller isn't of that type, you should be okay if you have the 9May86 ROM BIOS.
If you have an earlier ROM BIOS, you need to add a suitable DRIVER.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS
 
According to various sources, DOS is involved as well, ie.

1983 MSDOS 2.0 (released with XT, hierarchical file system, hard drive support, 9 sectors per track floppies [eg. 360 KB])
???? MSDOS 2.01 (2.0 with international support)
1984 MSDOS 2.11 (bug fixes)
1984 MSDOS 3.0 (released with AT, includes 1.2 MB [5.25 inch] floppy support)
1984 MSDOS 3.1 (support for Microsoft Networks)
1986 MSDOS 3.2 (720 KB [3.5 inch] diskette support)
1988 MSDOS 3.3 (1.44 MB [3.5 inch] diskette support)
 
A bit off-topic maybe, but in my search for a 360KB Floppy drive, somebody offered me a Safronic DS-60A drive- but he is unsure if this is HD or DD.
Google does not give me anything- would someone here know this?
 
modem7 said:
Some also needed a special driver to be loaded in CONFIG.SYS - a driver supplied with the card.
Click to expand...

Both that and using driver.sys is a bit nasty if you want to use that drive as bootdrive
 
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