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Trouble w/ CompatiCard IV and Teac FD-235J

S

Shadow Lord

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Hi,

I just tried upgrading my Teac FD-235HF 1.44MB drive to a 2.88 FD-235J that I have had laying around for a while. I swapped the drives out and set SW2:1 on and SW2:2 on on the CCIV. Booted up, drive seems to seek okay (light comes on, makes noise) but when I try to access a disk get a fail error. If I put in a boot disk it seeks for a bit (drive spins, access light steaduly on) but then nothing happens and the system boots off of the HDD.

What I know/have tried: the CCIV, and computer are setup correctly. With the 235HF everything works fine. System boots, reads, etc. The disks I am using are fine (read in the 235HF drive as well as my other systems wiht no issues).

I have the 235J connected on the farthest connector of a twisted cable using a CardEdge to 34pin converter (same one I use on the 235HF) (i.e. the connector after the twist). The other connector has a 1.2MB drive which works fine irrelevant of the 235HF or 235J being installed. The cable is connected to the P2 connector on the CCIV.

I am using CCIV BIOS 1.05 which I believe is the latest.

CCIV Switch Settings:
SW1:
1:eek:ff
2:eek:ff
3:eek:ff
4:eek:ff
5:eek:n
6:eek:ff
7:eek:ff
8:eek:ff

SW2:
1:eek:n
2:eek:n
3:eek:ff
4:eek:n
5:eek:ff
6:eek:ff
7:eek:ff
8:eek:ff

The exact info on the drive is:
Teac FD-235J 3631-U5
P/N: 19307336-31
I've also checked the jumpers on the 235J and as far as I can tell they are in default position and the drive is set as DS1.

Any help/ideas? TIA!
 
Maybe the 2.88 is dead. I've had floppies die on the shelf before. Sometimes when they feel abandoned they just lose the desire to go on.
 
Well, I am using a 1.44 floppy disk which is good. The drive maybe bad but thats what I am trying to determine.
 
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Are you using DSED floppies? You can see the difference by the different position of the media sense hole and the "ED" stylized logo where "HD" would be on a 1.44M floppy... As far as I'm aware, the CCIV is set up for media-sense operation for 2.88M.

If you don't have any ED disks, you can probably get by with taking a good HD disk and adding a media-density aperture centered approximately 9/16" from the top edge--and cover the HD aperture. If you don't have the punch to do it, use a 1/8" drill (preferably brad-point) to make the hole.

ED disks are not formulated with ferric oxide, but with barium ferrite--hence, their price.
 
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Chuck,

But shouldn't the FD-235J read 1.44MB disks as well? I thought the drives were backwards compatible. I have ED media and I can test to see how the drive behaves w/ ED media. Thanks.

One thing that comes to mind is I am using this on an the Mega Cube which is an EISA system. The EISA config has no option for a 2.88MB drive, could that be the issue? i.e. the system can't recognize it? Although, I thought the CCIV had its own BIOS to get around this issue.
 
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Yes, if the 1.44M has been formatted to 1.44M.

It's the aperture in the disk that should determine what the drive responds to. I can double check for you--I still have the schematics to the first 235J and it does detail jumper settings. On any 3.5" drive used with the Compaticard, the density select should always be media, not host select. There were some other jumper settings for use with PS/2-type controllers, but that isn't what the CC IV is.
 
Chuck,

The 1.44MB has been formatted as a 1.44MB. As I stated the disk works fine in a 235HF drive. I got the schematics from Teac on the 235J and the jumpers checkout. I am going to try and check and ED disk in there later tonight. However, my guess is that either the drive is bad or the Mega Cube can't deal w/ a 2.88MB drive at which point I would need to activate the BIOS on the CCIV and see if that allows me to access the drive.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Any reason why you're not using the CC IV BIOS already?
Click to expand...

Honestly I don't remember. I seem to recall that when I was originally setting up the Mega Cube you advised to turn off the BIOS. In any case it has been working fine w/ the BIOS off until now.

I tried an ED disk / the same results so I have now turned on the BIOS and after much hair pulling (caused by a bad disk and a flaky FDD cable) I have the card installed with CCIV BIOS enabled. Here are my results:

1. BIOS Installed, FD-235HF used: Drive works fine. I can read and write 3.5" DD and HD disks w/ no issues. System boots as it should and no complaint from anywhere. Downsides are I no longer have the cool LCD display showing me tracks/sides being access on the FDD, QEMM fails miserably, and memamker can't seem to free up any memory.

2. BIOS Installed, FD-235J used: Drive now recognizes a floppy in it and will either report it as a "non-system disk" or boot from it. Booting goes through fine and I can run a program off the floppy (at least the couple I have tried). When I boot into DOS things get all topsy turvy. I can still use my 5 1/4" B: drive w/o issues however A: drive (the 235J) refuses to read disk, write to them, or format them. I get a sector not found error. This is on all types of (DD, HD, ED) disks. These are known good disks (same disks I used with the 235HF in the same system).

2a. I've tried setting the EISA cfg on the MB for A: drive to none w/ no change.
2b. I've also tried cleaning the heads w/ no luck.

Any ideas?
 
If you're booting from the hard drive, there's no reason that you can't use the loadable BIOS and drivers instead of the ROM version. It might make some difference.

Out of curiosity, what does your EISA box use for its built-in floppy controller?
 
Chuck(G) said:
If you're booting from the hard drive, there's no reason that you can't use the loadable BIOS and drivers instead of the ROM version. It might make some difference.

Out of curiosity, what does your EISA box use for its built-in floppy controller?
Click to expand...

Chuck,

Are you referring to the NOROM option? If so, I thought w/ that you lost the ability to boot from the floppy drive? Specially in my case where w/ the BIOS disable the drive won't even recognize a floppy in it at boot.

As for Everex the FDC function was provided through the Adaptec 1740 SCSI controller (thats the stock configuration). However, in the EISA config for the motherboard there is an option to identify what type of floppy drives are installed for disk 1 and 2 (360, 720, 1.2, 1.44, or none) even though there isn't a FDD connector on the MB.
 
But the 1740 doesn't have a floppy controller--only the 1742 does.

But does setting the CCIV to primary, telling the system BIOS that you have no floppies and disabling the 1742 floppy support (should be a jumper somewhere) and using the CCIV ROM BIOS reflect what you've been doing so far? Just trying to get a mental picture of what's going on.
 
Chuck(G) said:
But the 1740 doesn't have a floppy controller--only the 1742 does.

But does setting the CCIV to primary, telling the system BIOS that you have no floppies and disabling the 1742 floppy support (should be a jumper somewhere) and using the CCIV ROM BIOS reflect what you've been doing so far? Just trying to get a mental picture of what's going on.
Click to expand...

Sorry my bad: not a 1740 but the 1742. The 1742 has been long gone (I actually never used it myself). I replaced it with a Adaptec AHA-2740W from the get go.

The CCIV is set as the primary controller w/ default jumpers. I can not disable the floppies completely in the BIOS. I get an EISA configuration error at POST. Subsequently running the config program shows that a 360KB FDD has been auto set. I am guessing this is a fail safe so that if you loose the ESIA config you can still boot and setup the system?

So the setup right now is:
1. CCIV w/ BIOS enabled
2. 2740W for HDD Controller
3. FDD in EISA config set to Drive 0: None. Drive 1: 1.2MB.
4. There is no BIOS conflict.

Thanks.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Hmmm...I'll have to check my FD235J documents.

In the meantime, since you can boot from hard disk, have you thought about giving 2M-ABIOS a try to see what happens?
Click to expand...

Chuck,

Would I turn off the BIOS on the CCIV to use the 2M-ABIOS? I did not see a manual of any sorts. I am going ot figure out how to get this onto the Everex system as the LAN is not working (momentarily) and the 3.5" drive is not working either. :/ More than likely I am going to have to re-install the 235HF, xfer the files, and then put the 235J back.

Never Mind: got the package into my VM and saw 2M-INFO has the manual. Looking through it now.
 
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Okay,

I was finally able to get 2M-ABIOS over to the 486 and still no love. Here is the current system settings:

CCIV set to 2.88 FDD on 0 and 1.2 FDD on 1. BIOS enable.
EISA CFG has A: drive set to none and B: drive set to 1.2MB
On boot up the CCIV BIOS report A0 as 2.88 and A1 as 1.2

I loaded 2M-ABIOS w/o any parameters and it reported that:

A: 1.44MB B: 1.2MB [INT 40]

As expected A: drive was not working.

Then I loaded it using the following parameters:
DEVICE=2M-ABIOS.EXE A:5 B:2

and even though it now reports the drives correctly A: drive still refuses to read known good disks. I even tried the /13 switch w/ no luck....

Any other ideas? Thanks!
 
Ah, I located a FAX from Teac America that's old enough to vote (1992) that describes the jumpers after some discussion with a fellow by the name of John Allen.

On it is written "with Compaticard: DS1, DC34, EIS, HIS and MSC". I recall that I used those settings and the drive worked fine.

I also have "with GSI Controller: DS1, DC23, EIS, HIS, EO29, HO33, MSC" and "Default: DS1, DC34, HI2, EI33, HO27, EO17, G29, OiV", which I assume is for the PS/2 machines.
 
Thanks for the info Chuck. The defaults you have listed out match what I have on the drive right now (which also matches the attached document from Teac).

Teac FD-235J-3631.jpg

I will try out the settings you provided and will report back the results tonight.
 
I'll guarantee that the factory defaults won't work--they're only good for setups that can externally (from the drive's point of view) dictate what the density of the media is.
 
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