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3.5in floppy funny business

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RetroGaming Roundup

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May 14, 2013
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I recently bought two Tandy 1000HX computers to build a tricked out one. I had the first one set up last night and I made a few floppies to play a few games and it didn't work. It has been about 15 years since I have used floppies but I used methods I recalled in the past and it didn't result in the 1000HX being able to read the disks. The 1000HX has a standard 720k 3.5 floppy and the PC being used to make the disks was a modern Windows 7 laptop with an external USB floppy.

procedure was;

1. I had some HD MAC pre-formatted disks, new in box.
2. Put tape over the HD hole
3. Put floppy in drive and formatted using; FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9
4. Disk completed formatting without error, files were copied to the floppy which could be read just fine in the USB floppy drive
5. Disks could not be read (abort,retry,ignore) in the 1000HX

I'll try formatting them on the HX next, but I don't see why the above would not have worked?
 
I've read that those cheap ass usb floppy drives don't always support 720k. I would kill for a proper PCI floppy controller.
 
Three possibilities I can think of:

- media in 720K disks differs from 1.44 (although I usually get away with this)
- USB drive formatted it 9 sectors per track but used the 500kbit data rate (so it's formatted as 1.44 with half the sectors missing)
- T1000HX drive is faulty or dirty (unless you've tested it with good disks)
 
Tape was black electrical tape, no light getting through that. Not sure about the data rate, it can read the disks it formated. The HX can read from of the 720k old disks that came with it. My next move will be to format them on the HX and try and read them and then try them on the USB drive. I am betting that compatibility is sketchy on the USB drive. Are there any good utilities beyond command line for formatting floppys on modern systems?
 
Hey, when you're done with making that tricked out Tandy, would you be interested in letting the gutted case go?
 
You should really try writing disks in your USB drive with true 720K media, like one of those old floppies that you indicate worked with the HX (if its not a commercial software disk.
 
I have rarely had an issue either making 720K floppies into 1.44M floppies and vice-versa. There are cases where it becomes an issue, but in practice it will work either way more often than not.

Since later windows CLI format commands no longer support the quickie flags for forcing a drive to format at a specific floppy disk capacity, I would recommend going the opposite direction.

Format the floppy on the Tandy, see that the Tandy reads it, then go back to the Win7 machine and see if it reads it. If it does not, then this confirms:
SomeGuy said:
I've read that those cheap ass usb floppy drives don't always support 720k.
Click to expand...
 
I agree with the troubleshooting others have said, but from my own experiences with my Tandy 1000HX, it was REALLY spotty reading taped-over 1.44mb media. I had MUCH better results reading true 720kb diskettes - though to avoid any USB Floppy problems, I formatted them in the Tandy before putting them into the PC just as a matter of recourse.
 
I have a feeling that will be the case, Ill give it a go in a week or so once I get the HX rebuilt.

Eep386 said:
Hey, when you're done with making that tricked out Tandy, would you be interested in letting the gutted case go?
Click to expand...


Sure, a board member sent me one HX for the cost of one of the cards plus shipping, Ill ship it to you for the cost of postage.
 
Just for the heck of it, I tested a BT-144 USB floppy drive I had laying around. Hadn't touched it because I make sure all of my motherboards have REAL floppy controllers in them. Anyway, it completely refused to read a 720k disk, and trying a the same format command just returned that those weren't valid parameters for the drive.

Why does everything have to be such garbage these days?
 
I think that best solution for you is to get cheap old pentium with integrated floppy controller. Then isert 3.5" floppy ant format it with "format a: /f:720"
 
SomeGuy said:
Just for the heck of it, I tested a BT-144 USB floppy drive I had laying around. Hadn't touched it because I make sure all of my motherboards have REAL floppy controllers in them. Anyway, it completely refused to read a 720k disk, and trying a the same format command just returned that those weren't valid parameters for the drive.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what my model USB external drive is, but on my Windows 7 64-bit system I have found it cannot format a 720K DSDD disk no matter what parameter I give it. It can, however, read and write them if they were formatted previously.
 
Trixter said:
I'm not sure what my model USB external drive is, but on my Windows 7 64-bit system I have found it cannot format a 720K DSDD disk no matter what parameter I give it. It can, however, read and write them if they were formatted previously.
Click to expand...
It must be your drive. On my Windows 7 64-bit system, I can successfully use "format a: /f:720" on deguassed 2S2D 3.5" diskettes in the following three make/models of external USB drive:

1. Toshiba model PA3109U-1FDD
2. Sony MPF82E-U1
3. Teac model FD-05PUB (in an IBM case labelled as IBM part number 19308803-19)
 
i had the same problem with my amstrad pc2086, try this:

1) use traditional 1.44 mb floppy 3,5 inches , BUT CLOSE the hole on the right side with same tape
2) on windows , ms-dos promt , format it using "format a: /f:720"
 
Great Hierophant said:
You should really try writing disks in your USB drive with true 720K media, like one of those old floppies that you indicate worked with the HX (if its not a commercial software disk.
Click to expand...
Nah; for some people the ordinary challenges of getting old drives and diskettes working just aren't enough and they like to complicate matters even more by using the wrong type of diskette ;-)
 
I should perhaps mention that some versions of XP (I don't know why) won't honor the /f:720 tag, but rather insist on /n:9 /t:80 for some reason.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I should perhaps mention that some versions of XP (I don't know why) won't honor the /f:720 tag, but rather insist on /n:9 /t:80 for some reason.
Click to expand...
I've never seen /f: work for anything but the default 1.44 in XP; as a matter of fact format /? suggests that 1.44 is indeed the only valid option. Has Win 7 restored that capability?
 
Last edited:
MikeS said:
I've never seen /f: work for anything but the default 1.44 in XP; as a matter of fact format /? suggests that 1.44 is indeed the only valid option. Has Win 7 restored that capability?
Click to expand...
Same thing in Win8.
 
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