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A tip for those designing new hardware for vintage machines...

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JonnyGators said:
I wouldn't say MFM drives in general almost never work, depends on the model. I've got multiple seagate st225 drives that work without issue. And a pile of broken tandon tm 262 drives. Too bad my nostalgia is for a computer that used a tandon, I'm down to one working tandon drive, and it requires a few drops of oil to get it going anytime I let it sit for a while.

For me the big problem is picking up another tandon drive is usually at least $200, and based on experience chances are it won't work long, if at all. That's a lot of money for something that's just about guaranteed to let you down.

But - it's the only way to have one machine that actually sounds like my old PC when I turn it on.
Click to expand...

I have a few st225s now that seem defunct at least. I don't go that far into troubleshooting drives. When I was raking in old computers around 2008-2012, it was rare when I'd find a 5.25" hard drive that functioned. I did find a real strange 5.25" drive in a more modern computer. It was 2 gigs or so? I still have the platter hanging on my wall.
 
Dwight Elvey said:
Are all old MFM drives bad? When I wanted to add a hard drive to my NC4000 processor ( and I'm cheap ) I bought 3 ST506's at $5 each. I accidentally damaged one ( never rotate the spindle backwards ). Now I have 2 have these drives. I got an old XT 8 bit MFM controller ( for a few dollars ) and I had a mass storage for my NC4000 computer. I turned it on about a year ago and it still worked!
I still have a spare that also worked. Both have the mechanical brake and make a bad sounding noise but are relatively sound.
I should note that the NC4000 is nothing like an Intel processor.
I'd never even thought of using a ST225 or such ( all junk ).
Dwight
Click to expand...
Of all of the MFM drives I have the st225 drives have survived the best
 
purportedly people have had better luck with full height 5.25" drives.
Many moons ago when Weird Stuff was still in business, I spoke to a few people buying 5.25" full height drives in their as-is section. Their claim was that nearly all the drives they bought works just fine.
 
cjs said:
So what did you do with your carpet rakes? There's a piece of retro gear that I bet almost nobody here has.
Click to expand...

I have a modern one...
Yes carpet can get nasty to deal with. Wonder if I should put hard floors in my next house.
 
Well, the texelec card arrived. Unfortunately, I see zero evidence that this card they sent me is capable of booting to a CF card. I've tried using the CF card I previously had working in the other adapter, which still has all it's data intact, it will not boot to it. I tried using a new CF card, ran fdisk to create a partition, formatted it, did a standard DOS installation on it, same procedures that work every time on an MFM hard drive, but when I go to reboot - nada. Sees the card present, but just sticks on booting to C, with no boot.

I reached out to them for advice, they've offered nothing useful so far.

I just want to buy something that works, not sure why no one seems to be able to provide that anymore.
 
JonnyGators said:
Well, the texelec card arrived. Unfortunately, I see zero evidence that this card they sent me is capable of booting to a CF card. I've tried using the CF card I previously had working in the other adapter, which still has all it's data intact, it will not boot to it. I tried using a new CF card, ran fdisk to create a partition, formatted it, did a standard DOS installation on it, same procedures that work every time on an MFM hard drive, but when I go to reboot - nada. Sees the card present, but just sticks on booting to C, with no boot.

I reached out to them for advice, they've offered nothing useful so far.

I just want to buy something that works, not sure why no one seems to be able to provide that anymore.
Click to expand...
Well I can assure you, this one: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/ and this one: https://texelec.com/product/isa-compactflash-adapter/ both work with CF cards just fine.

You reached out to "Them"? You mean Kevin? Seems like the problem your having is PEBCAK.
 
VERAULT said:
Well I can assure you, this one: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/ and this one: https://texelec.com/product/isa-compactflash-adapter/ both work with CF cards just fine.

You reached out to "Them"? You mean Kevin? Seems like the problem your having is PEBCAK.
Click to expand...
Reached out to the texelec ebay account.

If you're going to use cute little acronyms with me, please explain exactly what steps I did wrong.

1. insert blank CF card in card, insert card into known working slot in PC
2. boot PC using DOS 3.30 floppy disk
3. run fdisk
4. create primary DOS partition
5. computer restarts, boot to floppy again
6. format C: drive
7. run sys c:
8. make DOS directory on C: drive.
9. copy contents of DOS 3.30 floppies into DOS directory on C: drive
10. copy command.com to root of C: drive
11. reboot
12. watch PC get stuck trying to boot to C: drive and never do anything
13. walk away for a cuppa to make sure I'm not just being impatient
14. PC still stuck, it will not boot to the CF
15. reach out to eBay account
16. advice from texelec is to run fdisk/mbr
17. find that running fdisk/mbr or fdisk /mbr just runs the same fdisk command and brings you to the menu to create partitions, does nothing to change anything.
18. for the sake of trying to follow the directions of the manufacturer, proceed with removing the partition on the CF card, and redoing all above steps running fdisk/mbr instead.
19. find that still the PC will not boot to the CF card.
10. reach back out to the texelec ebay account for further advice. Receive no response.


So, tell me what problem you are expecting to find between my chair and keyboard, because it sure as hell isn't me!
 
JonnyGators said:
find that running fdisk/mbr or fdisk /mbr just runs the same fdisk command and brings you to the menu to create partitions, does nothing to change anything.
Click to expand...

Without Googling to check my memory for sure I'm *reasonably* positive that /mbr is only in FDISK supplied with DOS versions five or later. I think earlier versions just ignore the switch and take you to the FDISK menu. Have you tried FDISK on a DOS 5 or better boot disk?

The problem /mbr sometimes solves is the normal DOS fdisk doesn't *completely* redo the master boot record on a disk if it already exists, and if the disk in question was initially set up by a newer OS or on a controller that used a different translation scheme/geometry it might leave some bits behind that cause confusion. If you're able to try it with the apropos version of FDISK it's worth a shot. You can still run DOS 3.30 if that's what you want, /mbr just repaves the boot sector and repoints the active partition to where it thinks it belongs.

An alternative thing to try is using WipeDisk or some other method to completely zero out the first few sectors of the disk. That will give DOS 3.30 a completely virgin disk with no MBR on it, which means it will definitely write the "correct" things to it.

Anyway. When I tested a big box of CF cards of different sizes and brands and found only about a quarter of them *really* worked completely that's when I decided I wasn't doing anything but SD card adapters anymore, but I will say that when CF cards work they *should* work repeatedly, so... Here's another thing I would recommend you run after partitioning and formatting your disk. In between cards that work completely and cards that weren't even seen by my XT-CF was a netherworld of cards that would let you partition and format them (and maybe even boot them), but over time would corrupt themselves. "disktest mediatest" turned out to be a really useful tool to see if a card was going to behave or not.
 
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JonnyGators said:
1. insert blank CF card in card, insert card into known working slot in PC
2. boot PC using DOS 3.30 floppy disk
3. run fdisk
...
Click to expand...
What size CF card? DOS 3.3 has some pretty small size limits for both the disk and for partitions: 504MB total for the disk and 32MB for partitions.

It almost sounds like the partition isn't being marked as a boot partition.
 
I've tried using wipedisk, but it isn't working, although it says it's wiping the primary disk, all data is still intact on the non booting C: drive after it runs.

I bought these CF cards - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JVYDDLX?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details - after finding a site with pictures of cards that supposedly work and saw this identified on that site. (yes yes, I know, yet another classic example of "I read it on the internet, so it must be true"...)

Obviously DOS isn't using the full space on the card, I'm fine with it setting a partition to it's largest limit and using that.

I find it ironic that a few weeks ago I spent a Saturday afternoon messing around with various MFM controllers and aging hard discs, and got 2 PCs working with those, and now here I am spending a few weeks messing around with these modern creations and can't get a thing to work with them.
 
I’m guessing you have a CF reader for a modern PC handy, you could try wiping the card there. (For Linux or MacOS I’d suggest doing a ‘dd’ to the block device with the card unmounted, I’m sure someone here has a suggestion for Windows.)

What does disktest’s mediatest tell you about this unbootable disk?
 
JonnyGators said:
Reached out to the texelec ebay account.

If you're going to use cute little acronyms with me, please explain exactly what steps I did wrong.

1. insert blank CF card in card, insert card into known working slot in PC
2. boot PC using DOS 3.30 floppy disk
3. run fdisk
4. create primary DOS partition
5. computer restarts, boot to floppy again
6. format C: drive
7. run sys c:
8. make DOS directory on C: drive.
9. copy contents of DOS 3.30 floppies into DOS directory on C: drive
10. copy command.com to root of C: drive
11. reboot
12. watch PC get stuck trying to boot to C: drive and never do anything
13. walk away for a cuppa to make sure I'm not just being impatient
14. PC still stuck, it will not boot to the CF
15. reach out to eBay account
16. advice from texelec is to run fdisk/mbr
17. find that running fdisk/mbr or fdisk /mbr just runs the same fdisk command and brings you to the menu to create partitions, does nothing to change anything.
18. for the sake of trying to follow the directions of the manufacturer, proceed with removing the partition on the CF card, and redoing all above steps running fdisk/mbr instead.
19. find that still the PC will not boot to the CF card.
10. reach back out to the texelec ebay account for further advice. Receive no response.


So, tell me what problem you are expecting to find between my chair and keyboard, because it sure as hell isn't me!
Click to expand...
Its been a while since I used DOS, but when you set up a new disk - after fdisk and reboot - instead of steps 6/7/etc, try using the "SELECT" command and see if that works. It should format the drive, install the system, and copy over the files.

SELECT A: C: 001 US
 
Chuck(G) said:
When you did the fdisk, did you set your primary (boot) partition active? (I know, stupid question, but somebody's gotta ask it).
Click to expand...
When using fdisk in DOS 3.30 to create a single primary partition, that partition is automatically active. If I go into the fdisk command and view the partition information, it confirms the single primary DOS partition is in a status of active. I actually see no option to activate a partition, only an option to change the active partition. I'm not up on the variations of the fdisk command in different DOS versions, but perhaps you were thinking about diskpart where you would run a command to activate a partition after creating it?
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I’m guessing you have a CF reader for a modern PC handy, you could try wiping the card there. (For Linux or MacOS I’d suggest doing a ‘dd’ to the block device with the card unmounted, I’m sure someone here has a suggestion for Windows.)

What does disktest’s mediatest tell you about this unbootable disk?
Click to expand...
No blocks had errors.
 
bsd64 said:
Its been a while since I used DOS, but when you set up a new disk - after fdisk and reboot - instead of steps 6/7/etc, try using the "SELECT" command and see if that works. It should format the drive, install the system, and copy over the files.

SELECT A: C: 001 US
Click to expand...
This method seems to have a fatal flaw. The select command is on Disk 1, the keyboard.sys file is on Disk 2. The process requires the use of the keyboard.sys file. Instead of having the common sense to program the command to request the disk with the needed keyboard.sys file, it bombs out bitching about the lack of a keyboard.sys file.

Brilliant programming there.
 
It's been so long since I DOS-formatted a hard disk with DOS fdisk that I don't recall if primary partition1 is automatically set active or not.

When you prep your drive, stop after 6 and modify that step to add a /s in format command. You won't need to sys or copy COMMAND.COM over--format does the job. See if it boots then--don't copy anything else over for the moment.
1. insert blank CF card in card, insert card into known working slot in PC
2. boot PC using DOS 3.30 floppy disk
3. run fdisk
4. create primary DOS partition
5. computer restarts, boot to floppy again
6. format C: /s
Click to expand...
 
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