Model xt286 5162 questions

[Stone]

I really down to just needing a good YE-DATA 1.2MB floppy in black.

I cleaned the heads on that one I PMed you about and it now works fine. I guess 20+ years of just sitting around was responsible for that being necessary. I even checked the Alignment, Clamping, Speed, Hysteresis and Track 0 and it passed all these tests.

 

[framer]

Couple of notes I've seen

I 1st set the system up using a cheap Goldstar IDE/Floppy 16 bit card. I select a TYPE 1 drive and used a disk manager program. I fdisked the drive as 3 2GB drives and formated the three drives. It was a 40GB Maxtor IDE drive that was used. I installed ms 6.22

I also tested a CD-ROM writter installed as drive F: and it read old CDR's without a problem.

I then installed a 1.44mb floppy as a 2nd floppy.

A SB CT 1350, VGA card, IBM serial/printer card and last a Megalith plus memory card w/8megs onboard was installed as 7megs EXT and 1MB EMS

I then pull the IDE/floppy card, drive and CD-ROM and installed a WREN II 56mb using an Everex EV-332 controller that came with the XT286. The floppies were attach to that controller. The Wren was installed as a TYPE 12 drive and was LLF'd FDISKed to two 25 meg drives and formatted. MS 6.22 installed.

Now on both set ups I installed:

MS Flight Simulator 4.0 and ran fine. Joystick and mouse worked.

Red Baron the original WW I flight simulator, again both joystick, mouse, and sound worked perfect.

Now the issue. On both setups I was unable to install WIN 3.1. It failed on both setups at almost the same point. The system is NOT tring to read or copy when it fails. It just locks up and needs to be shut off. Ctrl-Alt-DEl does not do anything. This happens when it should start to access the 3rd floppy but no access light just a frozen screen.

I have installed Win31 on two other 5170's with these exact cards and setup before without issue. Could this be a XT286 bios issue?

Other issue, The LED HD activity light stays on except before dos starts to load. It then never goes off. There seems to be no jumper that controls this. I attached an LED to the controller card and it operates as it should. Is this an issue? I see other controller cards have a jumper to control latched and none latch LED on the drive.

I'd had this drive in an XT using a WD-GEN F300 dynamically LLF to its correct numbers and the LED worked proper.

framer

 

[IBM_User]

Now the issue. On both setups I was unable to install WIN 3.1. It failed on both setups at almost the same point. The system is NOT tring to read or copy when it fails. It just locks up and needs to be shut off. Ctrl-Alt-DEl does not do anything. This happens when it should start to access the 3rd floppy but no access light just a frozen screen.

I have installed Win31 on two other 5170's with these exact cards and setup before without issue. Could this be a XT286 bios issue?

Interesting, I have exact the same issue on my XT Model 286 (tried that a couple weeks ago but with the original hardware setup).
Unfortunately I didn't further investigation since then, time to get a closer look now.

 

[framer]

I also copied the 6 disks to one sub-dir on my D: drive and tried installing from there. It got past the point of the disk install but still failed after 20~30 files copied from where the 3rd disk would have been inserted, then it froze.

It happen with both the MFM drive set up and the IDE drive setup.

 

[framer]

Had a yd-380, pull from a 5170 and switched the face plates with a mint black yd-580, I install the 5.25 yd-380 on the bottom as drive B and above it added a black 3 1.2 inch Alps 1.44M as drive A.

 

[framer]

Back to the win31 install. I took all the cards with the exception of the Everex HD/Floppy controller out of the XT286 and put it in test 5170 system I keep. It also uses a old MFM drive but a st4038 with a WD MFM/floppy controller card. VGA, serial/printer, memory card. I had 14M clear on the HD from a 3.4" 1.44M I installed Win31 from original disks without any problems. NOTE this system is also got a SCSI CARD 50 PIN W/HD AS D: AND SCSI CDROM AS E: It all works perfect.

The last thing I'm waiting on is an ST-22 card due in on Monday. I give it one more shot installing Win31 but It's not looking good.

For the record this 5170 was a type one MB but has an aftermarket Award Bios.

Can this Award BIOS be used in the XT286?

framer

 

[framer]

I installed a ST-22 disabling its bios by installing a jumper on JP3, the doc say that in one place and say the opposite elsewhere, LLF'd the H-drive again to a type 12. fdisked and formatted. I then installed Win31 with a clean system, no config.sys or autoexec.bat, I figured to let Win31 to set it up on the setup.

Got passed the 3rd disk and kept feeding it until it rebooted, It works...

framer

 

[framer]

Done. Film at 11....

I replaced all the LED with yellow ones. I used 5mm defused yellow for both floppies and the correct rectangular replacement for the HD.

Photo will be posted soon.

framer

 

[framer]

The photo's

Cards left to right, SB1350, ET4000 VGA, IBM serial/parallel, Megalith 6MB Extended/EMS, ST-22. A battery box is sitting on top of the floppy. I have not got the correct battery for the box on back of the unit.

The hard drive model data.

Like all project will it ever be done.

framer

 

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you have fun mounting the 1.44MB drive? I have a late model 5160 with four half height drives (all matched black panels). It was such a PITA to get everything in and properly aligned. I hope I never have to touch it again. My only regret is I could not find a 5.25" to 3.5" face plate that fit inside the official IBM plastic retainer ring that normally holds two 5.25" drives together.

 

[framer]

No that was the easy part. I acquired a original part you use to mount a HH floppy on top. That came with two side brackets that hold the two drives and the face plate of the YE-data 5 1/4 inch drive was made to go though from the back side. I then attach the face plate to the 3 1/2 inch floppy adapter.

The hard and I mean HARD part was changing the LED in the 3 1/2 inch floppy to yellow. The motor assembly was removed to gain access to solder the LED on. Adjusting the motor so it would read and write was tough. It took 50 tries. I had to format a disk on a known good drive and kept loosening, move/wiggle, retighten the motor and try and read the disk with a DIR command until it worked again. The known drive can also read a disk formatted and written to by this drive again.

framer