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TL/2 with ST351A/X

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MrRedHat

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2012
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75
Location
Wisconsin
I have a Tandy 1000 TL/2 that I installed a Seagate ST351 A/X in. The max drive size it seems to be seeing is 26MB. I know DOS 3.3 had a partition limit of 30MB, but when I tried PC-DOS 7.0 it only 26MB as well. I assume the drive is compatible?

For curiosity sake, when I jumpered the drive for 30MB, DOS only saw 13MB as max disk size.

I must be missing something obvious. I was expecting to be able to partition the drive for 30MB and then 10MB to get a full 40MB under DOS 3.3. Under PC-DOS, I would have expected to see the full 40MB.
 
Although I have nothing useful to contribute in terms of troubleshooting your problem, I can confirm that I have a ST-351A/X running on the onboard SmartDrive controller in my 1000RL, and in Tandy DOS 3.3, it was recognized at its full capacity by FDISK and partitioned into a 30 MB c: drive and about a 10 MB D: drive. (The ROM drive moves up to E: )
 
vwestlife said:
Although I have nothing useful to contribute in terms of troubleshooting your problem, I can confirm that I have a ST-351A/X running on the onboard SmartDrive controller in my 1000RL, and in Tandy DOS 3.3, it was recognized at its full capacity by FDISK and partitioned into a 30 MB c: drive and about a 10 MB D: drive. (The ROM drive moves up to E: )
Click to expand...

That is interesting, I was unsure whether the RL supported a 40MB drive. Now I know that it does.

MrRedHat said:
I have a Tandy 1000 TL/2 that I installed a Seagate ST351 A/X in. The max drive size it seems to be seeing is 26MB. I know DOS 3.3 had a partition limit of 30MB, but when I tried PC-DOS 7.0 it only 26MB as well. I assume the drive is compatible?

For curiosity sake, when I jumpered the drive for 30MB, DOS only saw 13MB as max disk size.

I must be missing something obvious. I was expecting to be able to partition the drive for 30MB and then 10MB to get a full 40MB under DOS 3.3. Under PC-DOS, I would have expected to see the full 40MB.
Click to expand...

I would try using Tandy DOS 3.3. Check if there are any non-DOS partitions hanging around. I have used the following procedure to wipe the drive's partition table, and it may be helpful to you : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106419
 
Great Hierophant said:
I would try using Tandy DOS 3.3. Check if there are any non-DOS partitions hanging around. I have used the following procedure to wipe the drive's partition table, and it may be helpful to you : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106419
Click to expand...

I tried running debug on it and it still did the same. Sometimes Linux’s fdisk will see things, so I stuck it in another machine and checked the partition information with Linux's fdisk and it showed everything blank. I decided to create a MS-DOS FAT16 partition with Linux and it made a 40MB FAT16 partition (which one would expect).

I then took the HD and put it back into my TL2 and booted the computer. I formatted the drive with a format c: /s and it formatted fine, but it won't boot off the drive running PC-DOS 7.

I went to go fdisk it via PC-DOS 7 and it still sees it as a 26MB drive. I attached a picture of my jumper settings on the drive, as I might be making a mistake.

I suppose there could be something if it was ever formatted in AT mode it gets messed up if you switch to XT mode?
Here are my jumper settings on my Hard Drive

photo2.jpg
 
Your drive is jumpered correctly for single-drive XT mode operation and 40 MB capacity.

When in doubt, use the original Tandy DOS for your machine. Here is a ZIP archive containing the disk images of the 1000TL/2 versions of Tandy MS-DOS 3.3 and DeskMate 3.03:

ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/system/d1000tl2.zip

Of specific interest is the SETUPTL2 utility on the first disk, which will let you configure all of the computer's system settings (the equivalent of CMOS Setup on a modern PC). Add the /A switch to access Advanced mode (SETUPTL2 /A) for even more options.
 
Tried with the Tandy DOS for the machine as well and it still pops up as 27MB (about 24MB formatted).

There wouldn’t be a setting some place for setting the size of drive in the system? I found it odd that when I set the jumpers on the hard drive for 30MB in DOS it shows up as 13MB instead of 30MB.
 
Going back to what you said before... that Linux (in IDE-AT mode on a more recent PC) was able to format it at its full 40 MB capacity, then you installed it in the Tandy and PC DOS 7 was again able to format it correctly, but then it wouldn't boot. Did you try FDISK /MBR at that point? And/or did you remember to set the partition as Active in Linux?

Also remember that the Tandy is set by default to boot from the ROM drive, not the hard drive, so you may need to go in to SETUPTL2 and change that setting.
 
I tried FDISK /MBR and I set the partition as Active in Linux. I double checked with FDISK in PC-DOS 7 to make sure it was active. It definitely tried booting from the drive though, I could hear it trying accessing it like it would, but then it came up with unable to load operating system. I had to stick a floppy in the drive to boot it.

I suppose it could be the hard drive, but I figure the drive is fine if it can be read as 40 MB in IDE-AT mode.

I’m really stumped, especially since it sees it as 40MB in IDE-AT mode. I guess I could try getting another hard drive, but I’m not sure if that’s the problem.
 
kb2syd said:
Do you have a jumper on pins 3/4? If so, that forces the size to 30 MB in XT mode. Sets the drive as Master in AT mode. Check the online manuals to see what the jumpers mean in all modes. They can mean different things.

See the end of:
http://www.4drives.com/DRIVESPECS/SEAGATE/4252.txt
Click to expand...

No, the jumper settings I have is in the post above. I took a picture. When I jumper pins 3 and 4 the drive shows up as 13MB though.
 
This was posted by Jeffrey Hayes on the Tandy1000 Yahoo group, way back in 2005...

tvdog123 said:
For those interested in the ST351A/X, see these sites:

http://www.embeddedlogic.com/TH99/h/txt/4252.txt
http://support.radioshack.com/support_accessories/doc3/3076.htm

Those sites indicate that jumper pair 1-2 is located towards the
rear of the drive. For my drive, 1-2 was towards the front (it
was marked on the board).

If your ST351A/X has a large number of bad clusters, it might
need to have its low-level format redone (these drives are a little
bit past their 5-year design life :). To do this, get Seagate
Disk Manager from:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060224...upport/disc/drivers/diskmanager_download.html

That program creates a bootable disk. Jumper your drive for AT
mode and put it in a newer PC, and boot the Disk Manager disk.
Do not install Disk Manager, though. Instead search for the
low-level format option, which is buried about 4 menus deep.

After a low-level format, my ST351A/X is a brand new drive :).
Click to expand...
 
Eureka!!!! I finally got it work.

I tried using the Seagate utility to do a low level format (even though on the drive it says not to) and it didn’t do anything.

I've read tvdog’s Tandy 1000 FAQ so many times that I have it memorized. In the section here I read that it said not to use “HSECT” on a XT IDE drive because it will render them unusable. I decided to ignore that and ran HSECT. I put in what I think are the correct cylinders, heads, etc. I used 820, 6, and 17 (cylinders, heads, sec/track) when it HSECT asked me. After it finished, I rebooted, ran fdisk and everything worked as expected.

Maybe there’s a better way and more accurate setup for the hard drive, there were a few questions on HSECT that I just guessed at, so who knows if everything is right, but it boots off the drive and it installed deskmate ok, so far.

The only issue i have is that the ROM drive is drive D while the second partition is E, I figured that those would be swapped.
 
Last edited:
MrRedHat said:
The only issue i have is that the ROM drive is drive D while the second partition is E, I figured that those would be swapped.
Click to expand...

The first partition on each physical drive gets the priority when the drive letters are assigned. DOS sees the ROM drive as another hard drive, so it goes ahead of the second partition on the (real) hard drive. (Yes, I was mistaken when I said previously in this thread that the ROM drive would move up to E:... oops.)

If you want to run everything from the hard drive, you can go into SETUPTL2 and turn off the ROM drive; then the partitions on the hard drive will show up as C: and D:. But these Tandys are slow enough that the ROM drive is still faster than the hard drive, so if you're using Tandy DOS, it is beneficial to set it to boot from the ROM drive and use it for the main system files (COMMAND.COM, etc.). In that case, set up your DOS PATH so that the ROM drive is first on the list (PATH D:\;C:\DOS;C:\DESKMATE; etc....).
 
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