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Finding specs on 5150 with 5161 expansion unit

marcoguy said:
If you have a C prompt, you are in DOS; not BASIC.
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Thanks. That's what I thought. I didn't ever get an A prompt on the 5150, so definitely BASIC there, but it did behave as I would expect it to - light on, tried to boot, gave up, light off, BASIC OK prompt.
 
Obviously the 1701 hard disk error has also resolved itself.

It looks like your boot diskette is bad though; while you still have the 5161 you might want to make a new one or redo that one if you don't have any other diskettes, or you won't be able to boot the 5150 except to BASIC.

Assuming the floppy drive is OK of course.
 
To make a bootable disk, type format A: /S. That will format the disk in drive A and make it bootable.Then, you copy whatever files you want from the C drive to the A drive.
 
Thanks. Unfortunately I don't have an extra disk. If I hadn't mentioned the two disks that I do have in the 5150 auction, I would do that to one of them. Once that unit is sold, I might contact the seller and ask them whether they would like me to try to make a boot disk with one of those two and make sure that it boots, but in the meantime, having mentioned them in the auction I don't want to destroy them.

I have one place I know of where I might have an old floppy; I'm going to check later today.

marcoguy said:
To make a bootable disk, type format A: /S. That will format the disk in drive A and make it bootable.Then, you copy whatever files you want from the C drive to the A drive.
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I wouldn't worry too much. As long as your honest in the auction.

If you do insert any disks, rotate the donut a little bit and shine a light off the data surface - make sure it's still shiny and not patchy. Otherwise the heads can build up crud (and then start scratching disks, I learnt this the hard way, fun times).
 
I set it up again today sort of step-by-step, and here's some clarification on the boot / 1801 thing.

1) When the 5150 is turned on WITHOUT the extender card installed, the following happens
a) with either of the two floppies in the drive: "Non-system disk or disk error"
b) with the drive doors opened: boots to BASIC.
​

2) When the 5150 is turned on WITH the extender card installed, but not hooked up to the 5161, then it immediately displays 1801 on the screen, thinks a bit with the 1801 still displayed, tries to boot off of the floppy drive but then displays the "Non-system disk or disk error" (and boots to BASIC when the A drive door is open). So it seems like the orphaned card is causing the 1801 error? It detects the card, but not the hard drive that the card leads it to expect is there, so it displays the error?

3) When the 5150 is turned on with the 5161 properly hooked up, and the A drive door open, it just boots to DOS. No error, though it does take about a minute or perhaps even longer to get there. I assume that that is normal. From the DOS prompt, I can then read the floppies in both A and B with a dir command, so it would seem that both floppy drives are functional. I haven't tried copying to nul which I vaguely recall is what I used to do eons ago if I was trying to test the integrity of files on a floppy; I imagine that would also test the ability of the drive to read all of the files on the disk. I've found that some of the stuff I remember from DOS (e.g. some of the DIR parameters) don't work on this version, so I'm always a bit reluctant to try anything that might not end well! One of the floppies has a copy of Procomm on it; the other appears to be either a boot disk or an attempt at one, as it has an autoexec.bat and a command.com on it. The command.com is dated 04/09/91, which seems rather newish compared to the age of the machine.

Modem7, I didn't yet try the drive parking commands that you wrote (thank you again for that. GREATLY appreciated!), as I know I'll have the machine on again. I'll give it a try sometime in the next day or two. I did check just to make sure that Debug was in the \DOS directory, and it is. I also looked in the \UTIL directory as well, and besides nu.com, there was also an xtree.exe (think I remember that from my previous life as showing the hard drive directory/subdirectory structure), and also a ship.exe. Is that a drive parking thing? It was time-stamped 4/4/86, 10:56 AM, for what that's worth. I do recall reading something about IBM's SHIPDISK causing trouble with drives, so I am a bit wary, though if this is a parking program, it seems to be a different one.
 
xtree.exe is XTree, best file manager known to man kind.
ship.exe most likely is the parking tool, but wont know until it's been run. (double checked that with google, and it concurs that it's a common filename for a park tool)

Good little set of utils.
 
Everything is working fine as it should:

1. When you start w/o the extender card your system acts like a plain old 5150 w/ no HDD. If you close the FDD doors it tries to read a floppy to boot. If you don't have one or if it is not a bootable floppy you get the nonsystem disk error. W/ the doors open the system boots to ROM BASIC.

2. W/ the extender installed it is erring out because the extender does not se the receiver on the other end.

3. W/ everything setup the system POSTs finds the HDD in the 5160 and boots from it.
 
Now this makes sense. At the beginning I was confused because the OP was booting and either not getting errors when they should, or getting errors when they shouldn't be. This post corrects all of that.

Thanks for posting this clarification. Happy selling.

DumbQuestionDuJour said:
I set it up again today sort of step-by-step, and here's some clarification on the boot / 1801 thing.

1) When the 5150 is turned on WITHOUT the extender card installed, the following happens
a) with either of the two floppies in the drive: "Non-system disk or disk error"
b) with the drive doors opened: boots to BASIC.
​

2) When the 5150 is turned on WITH the extender card installed, but not hooked up to the 5161, then it immediately displays 1801 on the screen, thinks a bit with the 1801 still displayed, tries to boot off of the floppy drive but then displays the "Non-system disk or disk error" (and boots to BASIC when the A drive door is open). So it seems like the orphaned card is causing the 1801 error? It detects the card, but not the hard drive that the card leads it to expect is there, so it displays the error?

3) When the 5150 is turned on with the 5161 properly hooked up, and the A drive door open, it just boots to DOS. No error, though it does take about a minute or perhaps even longer to get there. I assume that that is normal. From the DOS prompt, I can then read the floppies in both A and B with a dir command, so it would seem that both floppy drives are functional. I haven't tried copying to nul which I vaguely recall is what I used to do eons ago if I was trying to test the integrity of files on a floppy; I imagine that would also test the ability of the drive to read all of the files on the disk. I've found that some of the stuff I remember from DOS (e.g. some of the DIR parameters) don't work on this version, so I'm always a bit reluctant to try anything that might not end well! One of the floppies has a copy of Procomm on it; the other appears to be either a boot disk or an attempt at one, as it has an autoexec.bat and a command.com on it. The command.com is dated 04/09/91, which seems rather newish compared to the age of the machine.

Modem7, I didn't yet try the drive parking commands that you wrote (thank you again for that. GREATLY appreciated!), as I know I'll have the machine on again. I'll give it a try sometime in the next day or two. I did check just to make sure that Debug was in the \DOS directory, and it is. I also looked in the \UTIL directory as well, and besides nu.com, there was also an xtree.exe (think I remember that from my previous life as showing the hard drive directory/subdirectory structure), and also a ship.exe. Is that a drive parking thing? It was time-stamped 4/4/86, 10:56 AM, for what that's worth. I do recall reading something about IBM's SHIPDISK causing trouble with drives, so I am a bit wary, though if this is a parking program, it seems to be a different one.
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MikeS said:
And the listing is also very well done!
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Thank you. I was a bit nervous about listing something I know so little about, so I really appreciate the feedback. I'm also very grateful for all of the information and assistance I've gotten from everyone here. It's been invaluable.
 
Two final dumb questions as I'm packing things up:

1) I'm planning on making two cardboard drive protectors for the floppy drives, rather than just leaving the disks in. I assume that this is advisable. I found these instructions on-line

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/1571/transit.txt

but I have no clue whether this, which it says fits a "1571" or "1541" drive is the proper one because I'm not quite sure what those two numbers are and how they would relate to the IBM 5150 drives.

2) Am I better to use the "SHIP" program in the \UTIL directory to park the hard drive, or am I better to use the debug code that Modem7 was kind enough to write? I've read that IBM's own SHIPDISK from that era could be problematic, so I'm a bit reluctant to use a program I don't know the source of. (ETA: and by that I'm referring to the one on the hard drive; I'm a bit wary of it and trust Modem7's code a bit more, though he had said something about it not going out to as high a cylinder as he wanted or something like that?)
 
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But make sure to PARK the HDD someway. Like DLO said you can just copy the ship utility to a floppy disk, run it, and shut down the system right afterwards. Do not turn it back on (unless you plan to re-park). Or if you can get your hands on the park utility from spinrite II you can use that. I found that utility to be the best. Then ship it to its new home stat!
 
So I copy it up to one of the two floppies that I have, go to the A drive, and from the A drive type

SHIP C: ??

Or will it know that the C drive is what I want to park without specifying?

The only park program I have is the ship.exe that I mentioned earlier in the thread that resides in \UTIL with XTREE and NU. I'm not sure whose program it is, so I'm definitely a bit wary. The only thing I know about is that it is time-stamped 4/4/86, 10:56 AM.
 
DumbQuestionDuJour said:
So I copy it up to one of the two floppies that I have, go to the A drive, and from the A drive type

SHIP C: ??

Or will it know that the C drive is what I want to park without specifying?

The only park program I have is the ship.exe that I mentioned earlier in the thread that resides in \UTIL with XTREE and NU. I'm not sure whose program it is, so I'm definitely a bit wary. The only thing I know about is that it is time-stamped 4/4/86, 10:56 AM.
Click to expand...

Not sure about the syntax on ship but ship c: sounds like a good guess. You can run it w/o any arguments and see if it throws up a little help screen. And don't forget to take out the extender card from the 5150 once you have finished parking the drive.
 
Shadow Lord said:
Not sure about the syntax on ship but ship c: sounds like a good guess. You can run it w/o any arguments and see if it throws up a little help screen. And don't forget to take out the extender card from the 5150 once you have finished parking the drive.
Click to expand...

Thanks, yes, I put the anti-static bag right on the table so as to remind myself!

How about the floppy drives. Any clue if that pattern will work for the drives on the 5150? Obviously I don't want to do anything that will damage them.
 
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