make sure you have a terminator on one of the FDD's, and that the cable and drive controller are correctly set up. Did you verify the switch settings (I assume yes).
It's much harder to find a working hard drive than a replacement set of disk drive(s), I would not worry too much, you'll find something. Almost any DD/DS drive will work.
Bill
The cable and drive controller are in place correctly. By switch setting I assume you mean the set of dip switch's on the MB. They're in the same position they were in when I acquired it and the number of drives have not been changed. The only thing I altered on them was for the cga/80 columns from mono. I have no idea what this terminator is of which you mentioned. The only ones I'm familiar with are generally large, silver and very good at killing people.
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Sounds like the program is still trying to load from the autoexec file. Delete or REM out the line(s) that load the ol' DB program and try again. As to the floppy problem, the FORMAT program on your hard drive may be corrupted, since you did have bad data on it before SpinRite (it doesn't fix bad data, just bad formatting). Try replacing it with another one from the same version of DOS as the one you are using.
--T
I don't know how to even find what lines those might be let alone deleting and/or altering them.
The thing with the format issue is that it refuses to format anything even when booted from DOS on a floppy. I'm using disks that were N.O.S. from two separate boxes and makers. Both of which are 2D/2S.
You don't need an autoexec.bat or config.sys for a base install of the OS on an XT. It will not hurt to simply rename the file like this:
ren autoexec.bat autoexec.old
ren config.sys config.old
IF you have a good complete DOS, I would re-format the hard drive and re-install DOS into a DOS directory.
What happens if you enter the ver command?
Bill
Where and when exactly would I type those lines in? I have "copies" of both DOS 2.1 and 3.1. I have a real copy of 3.3, which by the way is the same version that on the HD. Before it would never boot from that disk though. I tried this morning and it successfully booted but when I attempted to copy it there were unrecoverable read errors.
The terminating resistor has to be on the drive farthest from the controller. It looks like a blue IC with eight connectors on it. I didn't realize that the floppy disk controller had to be configured - I guess you have to set the number of drives it's attached to.
Also I wonder if using brand new disks from Athena would fix the bad sectors problem. And getting the computer to stop trying to boot up to the database program is a matter of taking that line out of the autoexec.bat file. Darth, what does yours have in it?
Sean
I'm not changing the number of drives, just trying to replace the one with a better one so the card wouldn't be operating anything different that it did beforehand. I don't see were this resistor would be. The only thing I notice different between the two drives I have in a 5150 is that one has this chip that has T-RES written on it and the other doesn't. It's the yellow chip with the white sticker on top. in the upper right corner of the lefthand drive in the picture below. That's why I tried the drive that had that particular chip on it for a replacement since the original one in the XT has it as well. I assume the other drive doesn't have it since it's the secondary drive.
Here's a pic of the two floppies in the 5150. Where would this terminator thing be and would it be on the left drive or right? Can the right drive be used as an A: drive on my XT? If so is there any changes that need to be made to it?
How would I access the autoexec.bat file. I don't know what's in it so I can't answer that question or did you mean what's in the computer, component wise, itself?
Sorry everyone but I need things to be very specific. I'm not up on any of the technical side of these machines like the vast majority of folks on here are.
