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Tandy model 4P with internal HD??

M

marcfrick2112

Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2005
Messages
13
Location
Stupidville, WI
Hello all,
I am new here, so please don't flame me for asking what may be a stupid question.... I have had a Tandy model 4P with printer for some time. I think it has an older version of TRSDOS in it, as I can't enter a date after 1984. I know that external HD's were available, but were there ever Internal Hard Drives for 4P's?? I ask, because, I swear that when I first bought the machine, it would boot up without a floppy in either drive, later a 'friend' messed with it, and wouldn't boot. I ordered a set of disks for the 4P from RS, and boot from one of these floppies to this day..... I remember an error/problem regarding 'SYSGEN' when everything went bad..... Maybe my (own) memory is bad, or I just don't know enough about what the 4P is doing during a boot, could someone give some info?? Sorry I can't give more info, this is all I remember....

:?
 
No internal HD was ever available from RS for a 4p. do a search on ebay for computernews80 they sell a trsdos 6.3.1j that accepts dates till 2031. It's about 8 bucks including postage if memory serves.

katey
 
I have seen Model 4s (desktop version) with third-party hard drive kits installed, and I can't think of any reason similar kits wouldn't have been available for the 4P as well. Last I knew, my friend Mark was attempting to convert one of the desktop kits over to his 4P, but I'm not sure how that worked out, I'll have to ask him.

--T
 
Well space would be an issue as the 4p is pretty well packed. Also the power supply was marginal at best with just the floppies. Compared to a 4p a desktop model 4 is cavernous :)

Gotta love the model 4 even today I still enjoy firing up my 4p now and again and bathing in that green light

katey
 
Oh, you'd really love the Model 16 I've been playing with all week. I'm just sorry I can't keep it. (Mebbe I'll try to get another one fired-up for myself)...

--T
 
Hi, Out of curiosity, how rare or expensive are the external HD's for the model 4P, anyway? And what does it plug into? It would be nice to ditch the floppies... Again, sorry if these are dumb questions.
 
There are external drives that hang off the Model 4's expansion connector, but I don't know how common they are. I know it's been quite a while since I've last seen one, and what they're worth is whatever you're willing to pay for one. (For myself, I'd draw the line at the $20. - 25.00 range, but that's just me, and I'm a cheapskate).

--T
 
I've heard that the 4P will autoboot from a hard drive. This isn't possible with a 4. I never gave any thought of connecting one although I have one in storage. Something to consider?
 
Rick Ethridge said:
I've heard that the 4P will autoboot from a hard drive. This isn't possible with a 4. I never gave any thought of connecting one although I have one in storage. Something to consider?
Click to expand...

I dunno. I have a manual right here handy, I'll look it up if I have time.

--T
 
Rick Ethridge said:
I've heard that the 4P will autoboot from a hard drive. This isn't possible with a 4. I never gave any thought of connecting one although I have one in storage. Something to consider?
Click to expand...

I have a 4P with external HD. It will boot Montezuma Micro CP/M directly from the HD. If you want to autoboot LDOS, you have to install some patches. I have the info for that around somewhere. I think I found it on Ira's site, www.trs-80.com
 
I have just now discovered that my Model 4P has the HDD interface installed. I called up Mark, who I got the 4P from, and he tells me that it is just an interface that runs off from the system bus, and that the actual HDD controller is contained within the external hard drive enclosure. I have available to me a couple of the old 8-Mb hard drives, but he also tells me that LS-DOS only recognizes the 5-Mb & 15-Mb drives (and mebbe the 33-Mb), but he can't remember if the hard disk version of TRSDOS 6.0 (which is actually LS-DOS) recognizes the 8" drives or not. The 8-Mb drives are a wierd animal that may require a special patch to get them to work with a 4P under TRS-DOS or LS-DOS. I'm going to do some experimenting this week, and I'll report back here with what I figger out.

--T
 
yes. I have two of these ROM chips, not in front of me now, I believe they work on one one or the other, you had to specify when you ordered (in 1988)
 
I discussed this issue with my mentor, Mark, and he tells me that the Model 4P doesn't need a special bootROM to boot from the hard drive, but the Model(s) 4 & 4D do. It makes no difference if it's the gate-array model or not, the same "rule" applies. He did note that the Trash-80 can only have one primary boot partition defined, so if you have the MM partition set as the primary, you will have to use a bootdisk to access the TRSDOS partition. You can, however, set the TRSDOS partition as primary, and make it bootable (on the 4P only). Nobody has ever got around to writing a "Boot-Manager" type program for our beloved Trash80s though (he then challenged me to take on the project, but gee, I wish...)...

Billdeg,

I'll reply to your PM shortly (or longly).

--T
 
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