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Is it possible to transfer TRS-DOS files to a TRS-80?

ardsleytank said:
Oh, for got to ask! What do you mean by a "MIII" floppy cable?
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Sorry, ignore that comment. I meant the 34 pin floppy cable with the female card edge connectors that is already in your Model III. But, you are not using this in your TRS-80, you'll be plugging it into your PC. So, you just need a 34 pin cable from your PCs floppy controller to the disk drive.
 
Yeah, please ignore my previous comment. I realized what you meant after I posted it! :)

I bought the drive and a floppy cable to boot! Can't wait for them to come.
 
Well the drive came, and I have installed it. Changed the settings in the BIOS and Win98 recognizes it.

However, when I try to open A:\ it gives me the following error: "A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready."

What do I do? :(
 
ardsleytank said:
Well the drive came, and I have installed it. Changed the settings in the BIOS and Win98 recognizes it.

However, when I try to open A:\ it gives me the following error: "A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready."

What do I do? :(
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Can you format and write and read to a blank diskette? Generally, that error message means the diskette is in a format that Win 98 does not recognize. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/140060 for a longer explanation.

Now, if you can't format a diskette on that drive, then the problems are severe requiring more complex diagnostics.

Try some of the utilities http://www.trs-80emulators.com/downloads/ to see if your system can read your TRS-80 disks. The documentation for READDISK explains some of the issues involved.
Edit: http://www.trs-80emulators.com/#Utilities might be a better link.
 
No, when I try to format them it gives me the following message "There is no disk inserted, please insert a disk then retry" or something of similar fashion.

I'll be sure to check out those links.
 
Okay, sounds like the floppy drive has a flaw of some kind. Double check the cables, open the drive and make sure it has read/write heads and clean out any obvious dirt.
 
Okay, tried a few different cables to no avail. I forgot to mention that when I click "Retry" the head moves back and forth rapidly for a few seconds followed by the previous error.

So do I have a dud drive?
 
ardsleytank said:
Okay, tried a few different cables to no avail. I forgot to mention that when I click "Retry" the head moves back and forth rapidly for a few seconds followed by the previous error.

So do I have a dud drive?
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Wrong longer reply before. Several likely causes. Could be dirty read/write heads or dirty sensor preventing drive from recognizing disk. Could be damage to the heads that prevent them from contacting the disk. If you have cleaned the drive, then it is likely the drive has a defect.
 
No, I haven't cleaned the drive. There's no obvious dust that I can see, but perhaps like you said, it may be the sensor.

Any tips on how to clean it?
 
Does the fact that the PC is expecting a DISK CHANGED and receiving instead a DRIVE READY (The Qume seems to not have a jumper to select the behavior of pin 34) makes it incompatible?
 
Can you try formatting from a DOS prompt instead? The command would be:

Code: 
FORMAT /F:360 /U A:

The /F:360 switch tells Windows it's looking at a 360k floppy instead of having it try to read the drive first and guess. The /U switch tells Windows to format unconditionally -- in other words, to accept the switch that you've given and not try to verify the capacity, as well as not to attempt a 'quick format'.
 
Well, I got the drive working, using the command you suggested. This works well, and I can copy files to the disk.

However, when I put them in my TRS-80, it can’t read them. And when I format them in the TRS-80 my Gateway 2000 can’t read them.
 
ardsleytank said:
Well, I got the drive working, using the command you suggested. This works well, and I can copy files to the disk.

However, when I put them in my TRS-80, it can’t read them. And when I format them in the TRS-80 my Gateway 2000 can’t read them.
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Almost there. The Gateway and the TRS-80 use different formats and you will need a utility to read a disk in the wrong computer. I linked to a few DOS and Windows utilities that should let you read/write TRS-80 disks in the Gateway.
http://www.trs-80emulators.com/#Utilities
 
Okay, probably a really stupid question, but it seems like all of these programs are for pulling programs off of floppy disks, I'm trying to put files on.

Is there a program out there that can help me? Or am I missing something?
 
Okay, maybe the wrong link. There were a lot of utilities that did this. I haven't done it in a long time so I don't remember what I used.

http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/disk-conversion-instructions/ has some more utilities that are listed as being able to read, write, and format TRS-80 disks from a PC. (And one utility that does the opposite: letting TRS-80 read and write MS-DOS disks.)

For most of the DOS based utilities, it is prudent to boot into DOS with as few programs and drivers loaded as possible.
 
Here's a link to how I got disk images onto my TRS80 Model 1. It's the same idea for Model III/IV however it's easier because they already have double density disk support; so ignore most of what I wrote about single density problems.

Basically you access the disks via a TRS80 emulator on the PC. You can copy from the real disk to a virtual DSK image on the PC; then extract the files from the DSK image using something like TRStools. Takes a while but it works.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?50430-Writing-System-80-(TRS80-Model-I)-clone-disks
 
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