Recent content by Tincanalley

I have an ATI 8514/Ultra dual bus video card (Microchannel and ISA). I did something stupid years back and now I need to fix it. I found a supposed BIOS updater program and file that supposedly worked on the card. Figured it never had a BIOS update since new, so why not. Well it didn't go as...

Don't know if this is your issue, but I had two of these drives that wouldn't spin up, so I started with the drive board on the back. I noticed a capacitor that was leaking. I replace three capacitors and the drive worked. I then removed the capacitors on the second drive and one tested well...

The first HD I got was in an IBM 50Z and was a whole 30MB. If I knew more about how I trapped myself into a corner buying a PS/2 because of it's limitations for upgrades and modifications, I would have purchased a clone. Live and learn. I still have the 50Z, but the drive has so many bad...

Standard DOS format won't accomplish the same? If it's an alignment issue, wouldn't it have issues reading and writing a factory formatted disk?

So many possibilities! I tested the cable and controller by replacing the drive with a Teac FD-55GFR and it works for both disk types and IMD is able to test speed and alignment for both as well. The BIOS is so basic it doesn't even know there's a hardcard installed. Nothing has changed on...

I spoke too soon. It's been almost 3 days and the time and date have stuck, as well as the configuration. Not sure how long the cell will last, but I'm trying to find one the same diameter as the 2030, but will higher capacity.

Right now I have a hardcard in the AT clone, but when it dies, I will go the XT-IDE route like I did on my 5150. My need is to understand how the IDE stuff all started. Did they just take the geometry of the old MFM drives and make IDEs of out of them? That would explain why there is an IDE...

Well I realized I skipped a step in testing. I was so busy trying to figure out why it fails with reading 360s I never bothered to test formatting. I guess it never dawned on me since it reads 1.2s all day long, so how could it be some kind of alignment issue, blah, blah, blah. I am able to...

The most involved repair I did was to a pair of IBM drives from a 5150. Had to get a third probe for my oscilloscope to connect to the two test points and trigger point. It worked and now I have two working drives original to the machine. I just couldn't put unbranded drives in the machine...

I have this controller running my floppy drives as it allows 1.44, but never used the IDE on it. I was thinking of trying out some older IDE drives I have, but then realized that this controller has no BIOS and needs the drive setup in the configuration program for BIOS. This seems pointless...

This drive was working fine a day ago. I used it to boot 360K DOS disk to install a Hardcard. I even loaded files to the newly installed Hardcard from the drive off 360K floppies. Today I tried to install a game from 360K floppies and got a general drive read failure. I though the disk was...

It's back to booting, but I can't say what worked. I've given up trying the WD controller as it seems to be the cause. I'm think that since the floppy light stays on when they are connected to that controller, it might be bad.

Well it will post, after messing around with pulling and reinstalling other cards. Here's the situation. I put the card in to test a couple MFM drives I have. After installing the card, it booted once, but I couldn't get the drive recognized, so I realized the simple CA8390 IDE/Floppy...

You might be right. While my CMOS is staying, the clock and date are gone. Maybe I can stack two batteries for 6V.

Ah, that's the one. So I'll still need to use driver.sys if I set the switches to 2 drives instead of 3.