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Problem with IBM XT formatting floppies

Joined
Oct 17, 2007
Messages
12
I have been having issues with copying data from my XP computer using a 1.2mb Teac FD 55GFR, to a floppy that was formatted in my IBM XT unit. The formatting parameters I used for my 360kb floppy are
format a:/8 and it formats and reads fine in the XT, but my XP machine doesn't know what to do with it. when I try to copy from my XP machine to the disk, an error message saying "sector not found" comes up, stopping me from completeing the transfer.

The wierd thing is I successfully transfered a txt file, but the IBM XT goes into a "data error, Abort, Retry Fail" message.

Do I have to go and track down a 360kb floppy for my Win98 machine?
 
Yea, my mobo oddly enough supports TWO 360kb floppy drives. I don't have a need for HD floppies as I have no computers that need them, I was told that they could do the same thing as a DD drive and more by the guy that I bought my fully serviced XT from, and he said that was the way he transfered data between his personal XT machine (this is a guy who specializes in these things).

Guess its time to go buy another floppy drive and drop it in my internet enabled PC. If anything I can have both in there as I have room for one more 5.25 drive.

Btw, how valuable are the XT's these days? I have one with DOS 3.30, CGA, 5153 Monitor, 640kb ram, 33mb harddisk, and 1 floppy drive. I also have both manuals for the IBM and DOS. I paid about 350 for it. Is that too much?
 
Btw, how valuable are the XT's these days? I have one with DOS 3.30, CGA, 5153 Monitor, 640kb ram, 33mb harddisk, and 1 floppy drive. I also have both manuals for the IBM and DOS. I paid about 350 for it. Is that too much?

They usually go for considerably less than you paid, but if you're satisfied, that's all that really matters. IOW, it's worth whatever you are willing to pay for it.

--T
 
Well when I was seeing people trying to sell these machines for 1000 dollars upward, I was starting to believe that they had really gone up in value.

The thing to is I could have bought an XT for 40 bucks, but buying the parts would have got me up to the same price, I mean people are charing 40-50 bucks for both the keyboard and cga adapters, and upwards to 100 dollars for the monitor. That adds up quick.
 
Writing low-density disks in high-density drives, and trying to read them in low-density drives is a crap-shoot. That was pretty much the only reason to have a low-density drive on a 286 or newer machine.

I'd sum it up as follows:

Low Density disk, written to in LD drive
- Reads fine in any LD drive
- Reads fine in any HD drive

LD disk written to in HD drive
- Might read in LD drive (I think from experience I remember about 60% chance)
- Reads fine in any HD drive
 
Whoops, I didn't read that well enough. What I said is obviously not the problem (since the HD drive won't read it), but it still makes getting a 360k drive a good idea.

Joel
 
I'd sum it up as follows:

Low Density disk, written to in LD drive
- Reads fine in any LD drive
- Reads fine in any HD drive

LD disk written to in HD drive
- Might read in LD drive (I think from experience I remember about 60% chance)
- Reads fine in any HD drive

That's one of the major reasons why early on in the 1.2 MB days, computers would come with one 1.2 MB drive and one 360 KB drive. (My AT came that way.) I'm sure cost was SOME concern, but I think compatibility was more important.

The other incompatibilities I remember are that LD disks written in HD drives almost always read back fine in the WRITING drive, but didn't always read back fine in ANOTHER HD drive. (Although more likely to work than in an LD drive.)
 
One thing to try if you can is to bulk-erase the diskette and NOT format
it (or write to it at all) on the XT. The tracks on the HD disk are narrower (that's partially how it's HD: there are twice as many tracks),
so if you start with a wide track from the XT and then effectively write
a stripe down the middle on the HD drive, the XT will see both of them
when it reads the wide track. The HD drive on the other hand will
probably read OK because it will only see the thin stripe down the middle.
 
A word of caution here in using DSDD Diskettes in HD drives, some drives CAN be damaged by working with 360K diskettes too much. I've found this out the hard way, the HD drives on my 286 and 486 are proof, they get REALLY flaky after reading/writing 360K diskettes. However, my Tandy 1000's 360K is skill chugging along like brand new. It seems Mitsumi and TEAC Drives are the biggest for failures from using 360K disks in them a lot, probably because the head is in a little confusion trying to move between it's designated steps from the Servo Motor to read the tracks. I'm considering dumping all but the one HD drive I have left (a sony out of an IBM PS/Valuepoint, a really neat button loader deal). and putting 360K drives in all else for use with the Tandy 1000 EX (and possibly the XT if I can find a 360K for it).
 
Well, I'm a little, umm..., skeptical; maybe those 360K disks were dirty or damaged?

The drive mechanics & electronics couldn't care one bit (!) (or even know) what kind of disk is in there. It writes what and where the OS tells it and sends back whatever it reads, whether it's garbage or not.

There's usually no problem reading & writing DD disks in an HD drive, as long as you do not *write* with the HD drive on a disk that's been formatted or written on with a DD drive, even new blank pre-formatted disks; that's what the HD drives were designed to do. DD disks are a *little* less reliable because they're designed for a stronger magnetic field, but most of the time problems are caused by mixing DD & HD formats.
Using HD disks in a DD drive *is* usually problematic because of their lower coercivity. A bulk eraser is very useful.
 
Yep, we have had a post or 2 recently about really old diskettes gumming up the works. That would be my guess as well. Thanks for explaining the head width thing (again and again). I tried to find my last post on the subject but failed. And yes, I found out I should not have thrown out my Radio Shack bulk demagnetizer. I had to turn around and buy another one on the internet. It is really the only way to remove the wide tracks so you can format it with the narrow ones. I have also used the demagnetizer to rescue 3.5 floppy disks. If you get that "can't format track 0" error, demagnetizing the disk almost always fixes that problem. I was throwing them away until I discovered that trick.
 
so basically I should be formatting these DD disks in the HD drive? And the problem is supposedly linked to formatting the disks in the XT?

Where do I find a bulk eraser? I would like to know as this stuff is slighly foreign to me.

speaking of Track 0 error, I got that the first time I tried to format my floppy disk using format a:/8. but when I did format A:/t:40/n:9 it worked.
 
I have always found writing 360kB disks in a 1.2MB drive a bit random. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. If the data is small it seems to work better.

After the original full-height drive in the XT packed up, I replaced it with a half-height 360kB drive and a 720kB 3.5". That worked very well, although I have just replaced back the original FH drive after I repaired it.

Now I use a LapLink cable :)
 
Radio Shack used to sell erasers, but these days...
Never tried it, but I'd think any reasonable magnet would do the job; any big old speakers around? Dead hard drives are also a good source.

And isn't it format a: /4 ?
 
Nope, the erasers work much better. It's basically just a coil of wire with A LOT of a/c current going through it. You turn it on, bring it up the the media, move it around in a few circles, pull it a few feet away and shut it off. I repeat for the other side. You want to turn it off well away from the media so it doesn't leave it strongly magnetized in one direction. I had to do an internet search to find mine. Wasn't cheap, think it was $60 before shipping. Glad I spent the bucks, it's a well designed unit.
 
Never tried it, but I'd think any reasonable magnet would do the job
I expect that using a permanent magnet that is too strong would leave the disk (or parts of it) magnetised to such an extent that the erase head in the drive would not be able to remove the magnetism (with one pass).
I've been successfully using a deguasser designed for use on cathode ray tubes, although I find that it is weaker than deguassers I've used that are designed for use on magnetic computer media.
 
I got my 360kb floppy drive today and it successfully works in my windows 98 machine. I was also able to sucessfully get it to copy files from my Win machine to my XT with no glitches what so ever. The only issue I might be having is weather I format the disk in the XT or the Windows machine. then again I might have wore a disk out from formatting it so many different times.
 
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