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I got my XT yesterday

How often does this have to come up...

You can NOT use HD disks in a DD drive.

You can use DD disks in an HD drive (in any version of Windows and late DOS AFAIK) as long as you only write to them with one or the other drive, HD or DD.
 
MikeS said:
How often does this have to come up...

You can NOT use HD disks in a DD drive.

You can use DD disks in an HD drive (in any version of Windows and late DOS AFAIK) as long as you only write to them with one or the other drive, HD or DD.
Click to expand...

yes, but at least I managed to create a bootable 360k diskette from a 1,2diskette in a HD drive so I could get a (minimal) OS on my XT's HDD. That's better than nothing at all. I guess I just got lucky.
Trying to use the same method to copy a game failed with a lot of read errors, so I realized that this was a no-go.

Conclusion: it never hurts to try ;)

I believe an external HD drive for the XT fixes everything. That way I can read 1,2mb floppies on the XT and read/write to them from Win XP in my other 1,2mb drive.



I will, however, get some new 360k floppies so that I can use them for future needs.
 
Absolutely; it never hurts to try and sometimes you do get lucky, but you should not be surprised if you have problems when you use the wrong disks. If you're going to own an XT, why not use the disks that it was meant to use (which will work just fine in both your XP system and your XT).

But if you get that external drive, make sure that it and the controller will work in an XT; the fact that it's 8-bit is not necessarily a guarantee.
 
MikeS said:
Absolutely; it never hurts to try and sometimes you do get lucky, but you should not be surprised if you have problems when you use the wrong disks. If you're going to own an XT, why not use the disks that it was meant to use (which will work just fine in both your XP system and your XT).

But if you get that external drive, make sure that it and the controller will work in an XT; the fact that it's 8-bit is not necessarily a guarantee.
Click to expand...

Yes, when I can get my hands on such floppies I of course will do that. Norway is a desert for vintage stuff really.. Ebay or some webshop might be able to help me.

About the floppy drive:
What about this HD floppy drive on eBay?
 
QuantumII said:
yes, but at least I managed to create a bootable 360k diskette from a 1,2diskette in a HD drive so I could get a (minimal) OS on my XT's HDD. That's better than nothing at all. I guess I just got lucky.
Trying to use the same method to copy a game failed with a lot of read errors, so I realized that this was a no-go.

Conclusion: it never hurts to try ;)

I believe an external HD drive for the XT fixes everything. That way I can read 1,2mb floppies on the XT and read/write to them from Win XP in my other 1,2mb drive.



I will, however, get some new 360k floppies so that I can use them for future needs.
Click to expand...

Have you tried to format the DD disks as 360k in the 360k drive? I have had sucsess with using the DD disk in a HD drive and then a DD drive by using that technique.
 
Guess what?! Today I found 3x 360k floppies in the trash at work (1 is not working)

Originally they had drivers for a 8-bit network card on them.

I also found a 8-bit I/O card with 2x serial and paralell. There was also a 16-bit full lenght MFM controller and a prototype 8-bit ISA card with some chips and a connector on it.

Talk about great timing. Both some free 360k floppies AND an IO controller for the XT. It even said for IBM XT/AT on the box :)
 
QuantumII said:
Guess what?! Today I found 3x 360k floppies in the trash at work (1 is not working)

Originally they had drivers for a 8-bit network card on them.

I also found a 8-bit I/O card with 2x serial and paralell. There was also a 16-bit full lenght MFM controller and a prototype 8-bit ISA card with some chips and a connector on it.

Talk about great timing. Both some free 360k floppies AND an IO controller for the XT. It even said for IBM XT/AT on the box :)
Click to expand...

I got 4 of those I/O cards, 2 with manual. The ones without manual are therse: http://th99.dyndns.org/i/U-Z/51316.htm
 
Thanks :) It's a great machine.

Now I've gotten some software transfered to it:

A few dos game classics (Arkanoid, Larry 1, Ducktales , Grand Prix, California Games, Zaxxon)

Some nice dos apps:

Pkunzip & pkzip
Norton Utilities 4.5

All this using 1 360k floppy , pkzip and a lot of patience. But it works.. It works good :)

Next step is to install that IO card and get an 8-bit networking card (with TP not coax. Anyone have one for me ?)

I think I will leave the PSU intact, and use it with the voltage converter. In the future I will buy a 2nd PSU with switchable voltage.

By the way, The ST-225 I use is the one I found in the dumpster a few months ago. No bad sectors (yet)
 
Arkhan said:
*thumbs up*

Hope you put it to better use than me! (On a shelf, looking sad)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it now lives on my desk together with my P4 box (retrofitted with a 5 1/2 floppy and a 5 1/4 HDD frame :) )

The Hello Kitty doll is my girlfriend's btw..

EDIT: I also got the two missing keycaps replaced!

xt_2.jpg
 
XT with LCD kind of ruins it for me, but if you have an 8 bit VGA card why not I guess (or is it using a composite in or something?).
 
The LCD on top of the XT strikes quite a contrast. Still doesn't beat the feel of an IBM 5151 Monochrome monitor though :D. Nice setup you've got there.
 
Unknown_K said:
XT with LCD kind of ruins it for me, but if you have an 8 bit VGA card why not I guess (or is it using a composite in or something?).
Click to expand...

quite a lot of the VGA 16-bit ISA cards will run in a 8-bit slot, you can also play games on them since they can emulate CGA, BUT if you want to play a real Booter, then you'll need a real CGA or something that will do CGA on boot.

However, most booters have been cracked and turned into runable computer programs, and then they'll work with a VGA card.
 
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