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getting files onto a vintage pc?

Z

zor

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Jun 29, 2009
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Basically the hard drive wont play nice with anything else i own, nor with the 5.25 inch disks. And i have about 2mb of stuff i need moved onto its hard drive.

How on earth does one go about determining if my floppy controller will be able to handle a 3.5 inch floppy?

the connector that attached to the card controller itself appears to be much like a modern floppy cable but the other end is something else, like a femaile version

can i simply plug in the male end of the floppy cable to a modern 3.5 inch drive and go from there ?

http://www.cablesdirect.com/prodimages/CC2204_LR.jpg
 
i guess i should mention it is a ibm 5160 xt with the standard floppy driver card and full height 5.25 drive
 
The stock floppy controller in the XT won't handle high density floppies of any kind. You _can_ use a 720k 3 1/2" drive.

What problems are you having with the 5 1/4" drive? You are using the proper disks, correct? That's a DS/DD 360k floppy drive. You can't use high density floppies, they won't work at the lower density.

There are multiple little utilities out there to split large files and span them across multiple disks.

-Ian
 
Also, don't forget that you're going to have problems if you try to write 360k disks in a 1.2mb drive without bulk erasing them first. 1.2mb drives use a narrower head, and when you write a 360k disk, it doesn't fully erase the old data, so you get "iffy" disks. Bulk erase used media first, or just use a 360k drive to write the disks.

-Ian
 
720 KB drives in 5160

720 KB drives in 5160

RetroHacker_ said:
The stock floppy controller in the XT won't handle high density floppies of any kind. You _can_ use a 720k 3 1/2" drive.
Click to expand...
Of the three revisions of the ROM BIOS that have appeared on the 5160 motherboard (dated 11/08/82, 01/10/86, 05/09/86), support for 720 KB drives wasn't introduced until the 01/10/86 BIOS. Refer http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showpost.php?p=25701
If one has the first BIOS (11/08/82), it doesn't mean that there is no way a 720 KB drive can be used, but it is unlikely that one would be able to boot from a 720 KB diskette (assumption: using 'standard fit 5160 floppy controller card').

According to http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/msdosv.htm, support for 720 KB drives/disks wasn't introduced until DOS 3.2 (released JAN86, same month as the 01/10/86 BIOS)
 
You can always install a driver on even the most backward of 5150s to handle 720K diskettes, no matter what the BIOS is--provided, of course, that you're using DOS 2.0 or later.

I did on my 5150--which had the early BIOS. Actually, I used a 5.25" 720K drive (they were easy to get back then).

At the very worst, you can put a 3.5" drive in your 5160 and use it as a 360K/320K drive--half the disk won't be used, of course, but it's better than nothing. Providing that they're formatted on your 5160, your sourcing system won't blink an eyelash.

If you do go this route, be sure that you cover over the density indicator aperture in any 1.44MB floppies you might use (DS2D 3.5" floppies seem to be hard to find nowadays). Otherwise, the drive will decide that you're doing 1.44MB diskettes and adjust its internal circuitry appropriately--which you don't want.
 
Last edited:
And if you use a 1.44 meg drive as a 720k drive in the older machine, and you use 1.44 (HD) media, make sure you cover the HD sense hole in the floppy disk.
 
I had tons of luck with this suggestion:

Anonymous Coward said:
For hooking up a 3.5" 1.44 meg floppy, consider this alternative:

First get a 16-bit multi I/O controller like this:

IMG_1579.JPG


The get this software:

ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/diskutil/2m30.zip

and add the 2M-XBIOS.EXE to your config.sys file

If you need help configuring it, read this thread:

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=9661
Click to expand...
 
Assuming you:

a. Have such controllers
b. Have 16-bit ISA slots

That's probably the best way to get higher capacity media on the machine.

If you have cash to drop, you can buy 1.44MB 3.5" drives that hook up to the parallel port for less than $20 (inc shipping, if you're near them like I am) on Ebay by a company called "Microsolutions", called the "Backpack". I bought two of them and I use them for a laptop that has a broken FDC, and for any older machines that I need to transfer things to. It's driver works on DOS 2.0 and higher, so it's quite versatile!
 
from what i hear, you can still use the multi I/O controller in an XT or anything with 8-bit ISA slots, just only the floppy controller will work.
 
Raven said:
Assuming you:

a. Have such controllers
b. Have 16-bit ISA slots
Click to expand...

With my suggestion you won't need a 16 bit slot, it will work just fine in the 8 bit slot. You will need the software listed to get it to work with any drives high density drives. I managed to use this to get a 1.4mb drive working in my XT. The only tradeoff is you cannot boot from the floppy, so it is strictly a temporary thing to get data onto the machine.

linuxlove said:
from what i hear, you can still use the multi I/O controller in an XT or anything with 8-bit ISA slots, just only the floppy controller will work.
Click to expand...

And possibly the IO ports (serial/parallel), I never tested them to see if they worked.
 
Yes, floppy, serial, parallel are all basically 8-bit devices, and, unless they use the 16-bit interrupts can be located on a 16-bit ISA card with no bad effects.

Here's a thought--how about a 5160 with an 8-bit bidirectional parallel port (PS/2 style printer port--easy enough to rig one on many XT cards, including the MDA)? Should be almost as fast as a floppy without the need for media juggling.
 
strollin said:
You could add this card that will allow you to use 1.44M 3.5" floppies. http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=MCT-FDC-HD4
Click to expand...

That card is great; however, in my XT I had issues with it. I tried it a year ago so I can't say what it was but I know I replaced it with another old HDFC that did work in the XT. I was ready to return it but tried it in an old AT and it worked perfect with a 4 drive setup so I kept it.

framer
 
I agree with that last post. I bought that exact same card, and it didn't work on my original 5160 or clone system. I thought I might have had a defective ROM, but it seems it might have 286 code or something.
 
I usually transfer using the serial port. Put a copy of Telix or Procomm on each PC and send it through a serial cable. It's much more reliable and less time consuming than playing with floppies.
 
To me this is the best way: Ethernet via the Xircom PE3-10BT

Xircom_PE3_10BT.jpg


This adapter runs on any machine with a parallel port, including the original IBM PC 5150, PC 5160, PCjr, etc. If you have a more advanced parallel port capable of PS/2 bidirectional or EPP modes it will go even faster, but those are not required. An open interrupt is not required.

The packet driver (which is the device driver that allows you to send and receive data at the lowest level) is 32K on diskette, but only 7KB once loaded into memory. I'm pretty sure that I've tested it with DOS 2.1, but normally I use something like DOS 3.3 or DOS 5.

My FTP program is 88KB on diskette and requires about 150KB at run time. There are other FTP programs out there too.

Results? On a PC-XT I can transfer around 25KB per second, including disk I/O. You can't get close to that with a serial port, and Ethernet is inherently more reliable for data transfer. (Ethernet does the CRC on the transmitted data - the serial port doesn't, requiring the application to use the CPU to do it.)

Easy to connect, minimal resources required, fits easily on a diskette, and far faster than anything else ... And on eBay they are still pretty cheap.
 
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