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IBM 5162 floppy problems

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cameronrsbh

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Joined
May 23, 2013
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42
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I recently purchased a 5162 off of eBay, and have encountered a problem with the 360Kb 5.25 drive, as it couldn't read disks. I took it out of the machine only to find that it was in fact a 1.2Mb drive, and that the eBay action was wrong, also that the heads wear clean. So my problem is this, as I am new to Computers this old I do not know how to configure it to work correctly, so i need some help. As far as I understand the FD/HD controller is the original, if that helps.

Thanks for the help

First time posting so sorry if I'm doing something wrong.
 
If you search through these forums, you'll find that a common problem with old 5.25" drives is that the [rails] that the head assembly slides on need to be cleaned then relubricated. Myself and others have found a silicone based lubricant to be satisfactory. The clean/relube is a worthwhile maintenance activity even if it doesn't rectify the problem.
 
cameronrsbh said:
So my problem is this, as I am new to Computers this old I do not know how to configure it to work correctly, so i need some help.
Click to expand...
Presumably, you want to verify that your 5162 (XT Model 286) has been set up for a 1.2M drive rather than a 360K one. The IBM way of configuring the 5162 (known as 'SETUP') is to boot the 5170 from the 'Diagnostics for IBM AT and IBM XT Model 286' floppy. [photo] Obviously, you are not in a position to do that.

The third-party program GSETUP.EXE will inform you of how your 5162 is presently configured. You could run that via a 1.44M drive that has been temporarily connected to the floppy controller. See [here] for an example.
 
Thank you, the drive is working fine now. all I have to do now is find out why it wont boot after a restart, repair the monitor (back of screen caved in) and find my damn 0 key
 
cameronrsbh said:
all I have to do now is find out why it wont boot after a restart,
Click to expand...
You did not indicate the type of restart: CTRL-ALT-DEL, or power off/on. If power, note that many power supply makers specify a minimum off time. For example, early IBM 5150 documentation suggests a period of 5 seconds for the 5150's power supply.
 
both and its for a good 5 minutes. It may be heat expansion in the hard drive, because it turns on, the process is, restart, checks floppy and hard drives, tries to read the c drive, fails, and leaves me with a useless blinking cursor.... I thought there was meant to be basic in rom but maybe not
 
cameronrsbh said:
I thought there was meant to be basic in rom but maybe not
Click to expand...
If the motherboard has its original IBM ROMs (78X7460 and 78X7461), then BASIC is present (in the ROMs). The 5162 BIOS won't boot into BASIC if it finds either a boot floppy or hard drive. If you disconnect power from the hard drive, then what I expect you to see at power on is:
1. On-screen RAM count, then floppy drive check, then
2. After about a minute of apparent inactivity, a 1780 error code will be displayed, then
3. After pressing F1 (in response to the F1 on-screen prompt), BASIC will appear.
 
I will try this when I have the time (it's exam time here, studying), but the real problem is that it wont boot, I think its a thermal expansion issue but is there any other possible reason that it wouldn't boot after a period of time being on, it will reboot fine is restarted soon after it has been turned on. I will be formatting the drives soon enough once I can easily get all the data off them.
 
cameronrsbh said:
I will try this when I have the time (it's exam time here, studying), but the real problem is that it wont boot, I think its a thermal expansion issue but is there any other possible reason that it wouldn't boot after a period of time being on, it will reboot fine is restarted soon after it has been turned on. I will be formatting the drives soon enough once I can easily get all the data off them.
Click to expand...
Electronic components can fail in such a way that they become temperature sensistive. I once identified a temperature sensistive 74LS138 chip on a 5150 motherboard, the chip working okay when cold.

Do you have something that can measure DC voltage?

Note that some of the hard drive checks in the BIOS have a one minute timeout - there will be a minute of inactivity before an error code is posted on-screen.

Note that the 5162 boot priority is: floppy drive A: followed by hard drive followed by BASIC.

Once you are in a position where you can create a bootable floppy disk, that will help diagnosis. For example, can the 5162 boot from floppy when the 5162 is either cold or warm.

Right now, a worthwhile experiment would be to use the procedure that I posted in my previous post. First, when the 5162 is cold, verify that the 5162 boots into BASIC. Then, see if the 5162 still boots to BASIC when the 5162 is warm.
 
Well it looks like any boot problems are hard drive related, I disconnected the hard drives, let it boot into basic, told it to start counting, after it got to about 1400 I reset it, it booted fine, where as with the hard drives installed it didn't do anything, so it looks like a low level format is in order, once I've transferred all the data.
 
MikeS said:
What was the problem with the floppy drive?
Click to expand...

was sold as having a 360Kb 5.25 floppy drive, was also configured that way, however it was a 1.2Mb drive so it did not function until I reconfigured it. I haven't done much with computers this old, my only other experience with something this old is a bbc micro...
 
Hmm, trying to write the diagnostics disk, trying to use diskcopy to write the image, not working out :/ any help ?

I have tried diskcopy (image).img a:

doesnt work :/
 
Although your syntax is correct, 'doesnt work :/' is about as descriptive/helpful as a turd on a choppy ocean. Didn't diskcopy return an error other than 'doesnt work :/'? If it did I think it would be a lot more helpful.
 
Stone said:
Although your syntax is correct, 'doesnt work :/' is about as descriptive/helpful as a turd on a choppy ocean. Didn't diskcopy return an error other than 'doesnt work :/'? If it did I think it would be a lot more helpful.
Click to expand...

Lol sorry, it's late, I'm not too awake, also I should be sleeping for an exam I have in less than 7 hours....

Anyway, from what I remember, with PC dos 5's disk copy, I think it just told me that I needed to select a drive and that trying to use the image file was incorrect.
With a different disk copy, that I got when downloading the image itself, it told me that the image file was corrupt, or not a disk copy file, or something.

I have tried multiple times with multiple images and it still says that, so idk to do :/
 
Sounds like you need to get a fresh copy of that .img file and preferably from a different source. BTW, what disk is that .img file going to recreate?
 
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