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1.44mb floppy in a 5150 help

J

JDT

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2007
Messages
564
Location
Cicero, NY
Good Day,

Had a hankerin' to play oregon trail on my 5150... which led to me copying the game to a 1.44 floppy disk... then remembering my 5150 didn't have a 1.44 floppy drive.
So I added one.

My current config is as follows
factory floppy controller.
drive a:=360k drive
drive b:=1.44m drive
motherboard SW1 switchs: 1=0ff, 7=off,8=on (two drives)
config.sys line: device=c:\dos\driver.sys /d:1 /f:7

While the machine seeks both drives a boot, msd.exe reports drive b: as a 360k, however driver.sys maps it to d:, which is reported by msd.exe as a 1.44mb floppy drive.

The problem is I am unable to read or write to the 1.44 drive/disk, can't format it, gives me track 0 is bad. I have tried 4 different drives and disks (all known working) and 2 cables.

Is there something obvious I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.
 
The 5150's factory controller isn't capable of the 1.44's 500K data rate. You can, however, read 720K 3.5" floppies with it.

There's plenty on this forum (search) about using 16-bit SCSI cards and a post-boot BIOS to get 1.44M support, as well as there existing third-party controllers that can replace the 5150's original controller, such as the Sysgen Omnibridge.
 
Your floppy controller should support HD drives (1.2/1.44). Plus you should have a BIOS extension (ROM on a controller card or a TSR/driver). For a controller card you could use any cheap AT combo IDE/FDD card plugged in an 8bit slot since the FDD/COM/LPT part uses only the 8bit bus.
 
I found a generic 16-bit ISA IDE/Floppy controller (no rom) and disabled the IDE portion, my 1.44mb drive is now happy =)
Thanks guys.
 
I'm having the exact same problem. I have a single 1.44 floppy drive in my 5150. The system sees it as a 360K floppy and will even format it to 360K and boot from it. I've used several floppy drive controllers with no luck. Do I need a tsr or driver before it will see it as a 1.44 drive? If so where do I find such a thing?



Gary Fletcher
 
Dos 6.22
I used config.sys line: device=c:\dos\driver.sys /d:1 /f:7
/d:1 = because my 1.44 is my drive # 2 (starts at zero) and /f:7= because I set the factor to 1.44mb
driver.sys is a tsr / overlay that remapped my drive to d:, but im fine with that.
 
JDT said:
Dos 6.22
I used config.sys line: device=c:\dos\driver.sys /d:1 /f:7
/d:1 = because my 1.44 is my drive # 2 (starts at zero) and /f:7= because I set the factor to 1.44mb
driver.sys is a tsr / overlay that remapped my drive to d:, but im fine with that.
Click to expand...

Use DRIVPARM instead of DRIVER.SYS, that way it doesn't take up any RAM and the drive letter stays the same, instead of being remapped to D.
 
I have tried and neither driver.sys or drivparm will work. A 1.44 drive needs bios support. I have been looking for some sort of tsr to do this, but have not found one (yet)...
 
joekster said:
I have tried and neither driver.sys or drivparm will work. A 1.44 drive needs bios support. I have been looking for some sort of tsr to do this, but have not found one (yet)...
Click to expand...
The original IBM floppy controller in incapable of high density support, no matter what driver software you use. That is a hardware limitation, not a software or BIOS limitation.

DRIVPARM can, however, at least get the 1.44 MB drive functioning as a double-density 720K drive using the original IBM floppy controller, using either double-density disks, or high-density disks with the media detection hole covered up with opague tape.
 
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