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5150 problems

braxton

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Joined
Nov 17, 2008
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Does anyone know what type of 5.25 disks are compatible with the 5150 and what drive type i need to write them. I have DSDD 5.25 that say they are ibm pc/xt compatible but i read the drive on the 5150 is 160kb not 360. Also i can't seem to write anything to them when i format them on a 1.2mb drive, not sure if that makes them incompatible.
 
Does anyone know what type of 5.25 disks are compatible with the 5150 and what drive type i need to write them. I have DSDD 5.25 that say they are ibm pc/xt compatible but i read the drive on the 5150 is 160kb not 360. Also i can't seem to write anything to them when i format them on a 1.2mb drive, not sure if that makes them incompatible.

First up DSDD disks should be ok in a 160kb drive. These drives are single sided so only one side of the disk will be used, but that doesn't matter.
However, although formatting 160k DD disks on a 1.2MB drive can be done, special techniques are needed to get the track spacing correct. I assume you're applying the correct switches after the FORMAT command? Also some drives seem to behave better than others in this respect. I suggest you read the thread chuckmagee has provided and also search for similar threads in this forum. This kind of thing has been discussed quite a bit here.

Tez
 
The IBM 5150 will only read/wirte two types of disk's with it's stock later dubble sided drives. DSDD 360KB/320KB and 160 KB or if you a very rare early model 5150 it will only format and read single sided 160KB. 99% of the time a 1.2 MB drive is only good for reading 360 and 160 floppys... don't every use it to wirte anything but 1.2MB disks unless you don't care about it being read in older drives... disk wittren in a 1.2 at the 360 format will only be readable by a 1.2 drive


Does anyone know what type of 5.25 disks are compatible with the 5150 and what drive type i need to write them. I have DSDD 5.25 that say they are ibm pc/xt compatible but i read the drive on the 5150 is 160kb not 360. Also i can't seem to write anything to them when i format them on a 1.2mb drive, not sure if that makes them incompatible.
 
The 160kb drives were only installed on the VERY early 5150s. A great majority of the 5150s used 360kb drives. The 160kb drives are pretty rare.
 
Here's a possible issue--if you really have a SS drive, COPYQM has no way to determine that automatically. Almost all 5150s had their drives replaced with DS drives by the tme COPYQM came along. 160K was simply not sufficient to run DOS 2.0 and so most people upgraded.

Heck, my first 5150 had a SSDD (160/180) drive as A: and a DSQD (720K) drive as B:

Things moved pretty quickly in the early PC days. Although the 160/320K format is 8 sectors per track, by 1984, DOS was formatting new disks with 9 sectors and only using 8 if the 160/320 format was specified.

Try running COPYQM with BLIND SIDES=1 and see if that helps. Or use a double-sided drive.
 
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