kiyotewolf
Experienced Member
I've been spending the better part of an hour sorting out issues with why my IBM PS/2 MODEL 25 won't accept a nice shiny new disk, with the exact same stuff as another working disk.
The working disk was made from a pre-existing 1.44M floppy, with green tape on the hole to "label" it double density.
Went through two iterations of formatting the floppy,.. did the /s switch, then plain with the SYS command after, then found the working disk had a COMMAND.com with no +R switch in the file attributes..
Whittled it down, finally, ..
I was using nice clear electrical tape on my disk, cause the disk was see-through plastic anyways.
I thought about it, and got some black electrical tape instead.
SOLUTION:
If you're going to use HD disks for the DD purpose, aka 1.44MB down to 720K, you need dark opaque tape covering the hole. I recommend black electrical tape. Cut the ends of the tape with scissors, don't just rip the tape, otherwise it might jam in your drive. If the ends of the tape are cut clean & neatly, the tape will stay on the disk more readily.
In the drive I've been testing for the past hour, it uses an optical sensor to determine if it's DD or HD.
This might be why elsewhere in the forum, someone said that formatting disks using a "modern computer" wasn't working any more..
~Kiyote!
I'm making a boot disk to access the PALMZIP driver, if it works, and if not, just to run a VGA 320x200x256 colors ANSI terminal, custom wrote, to act as a terminal to a Windows based paint program.
I'm using the trick CAD designers used, with a little hercules monitor and then an SVGA monitor, side by side.
I'm tired of coding GUI interface crap for my fancy FreeBasic sprite editor. Tired. Sick. Tired.
Going to just dump a simplistic interface to the terminal program, via USB to serial.
The working disk was made from a pre-existing 1.44M floppy, with green tape on the hole to "label" it double density.
Went through two iterations of formatting the floppy,.. did the /s switch, then plain with the SYS command after, then found the working disk had a COMMAND.com with no +R switch in the file attributes..
Whittled it down, finally, ..
I was using nice clear electrical tape on my disk, cause the disk was see-through plastic anyways.
I thought about it, and got some black electrical tape instead.
SOLUTION:
If you're going to use HD disks for the DD purpose, aka 1.44MB down to 720K, you need dark opaque tape covering the hole. I recommend black electrical tape. Cut the ends of the tape with scissors, don't just rip the tape, otherwise it might jam in your drive. If the ends of the tape are cut clean & neatly, the tape will stay on the disk more readily.
In the drive I've been testing for the past hour, it uses an optical sensor to determine if it's DD or HD.
This might be why elsewhere in the forum, someone said that formatting disks using a "modern computer" wasn't working any more..
~Kiyote!
I'm making a boot disk to access the PALMZIP driver, if it works, and if not, just to run a VGA 320x200x256 colors ANSI terminal, custom wrote, to act as a terminal to a Windows based paint program.
I'm using the trick CAD designers used, with a little hercules monitor and then an SVGA monitor, side by side.
I'm tired of coding GUI interface crap for my fancy FreeBasic sprite editor. Tired. Sick. Tired.
Going to just dump a simplistic interface to the terminal program, via USB to serial.
