HDD on a Tandy 1000TL/2

[Ec1564]

I found this web site and made me boot up my old Tandy 1000 TL and TL/2! Well the TL booted up fine, but the TL/2 the HDD failed. I had a 2nd HDD of the same type:"WD93028-1 20Mb" but found that one had a bad control PCB.
I since tried several other under 45Mb Hdd's(ST-157a 44MB and Maxtor 8051A 42MB) and can not the the TL/2 to boot or even FDISK them. The limited setupTL2 program can only turn off the HDD chip on the MB. I since used a 8bit XT IDE hdd card controller to boot up using a CF to IDE adaptor and a 16Mb CF card(works really good!). But the TL/2 still will not acknowlage the other HDD's or the CF card on its own IDE port. The original HDD the partition table failed and I only get errors trying to write the system files making the HDD unusable.
Is there any special way the TL/2 look for the HDDs on the IDE port?
Eddie

 

[Ec1564]

I forgot to add, the other 2 HDD's will boot off the 8bit XT IDE controller with no problems and I am using DOS 6.22 on all drives. I want to free up that XT IDE card for another project(hopefully)

 

[someoldpc80286]

HDD died on Tandy 100 TL/2

HDD died on Tandy 100 TL/2

as the title says, i have a dead HD that was a WD 20 MB IDE drive that worked on the MB
controller.

I have seen a "name brand forgotten i think adp50" controller card that is
a 16 to 8 bit HDD controller card that may work and I saw where
someone has got a CF drive to work.

Can someone tell me of a vendor that I may obtain parts to have a
Hard Disk Drive (HDD) on this old pc. I am rather fond of it because
it has worked for 20 years and I found some old parts including
a sony 2X cd-rom and got a CD-ROM 8 Bit controller card that
allows me to play Cd's on this machine. I also have lots of
old software that runs better on a Hard Drive than on a floppy drive.

Can anyone help me with this?

please advise.

thanks in advance!

 

[someoldpc80286]

Ec1564, can you tell me where you got the 8 bit XTG IDE controller card that works? Can you tell me
where i can find HD's that may connect to such controller card?

 

[Lord Moz]

The TL/2's onboard IDE only works with 8 bit IDE HDs, which were never made in sizes over 40MB and are not very common. I believe the most common may have been the Seagate ST351A/X 40MB drive, which was switchable between 8 or 16bit IDE mode.
So you add-on card is probably the way to go unless you really need to use the onboard controller for some specific reason.

Hope that helps.
__
Trevor

 

[Agent Orange]

Check out the Vintage Forum's own XT-IDE controller project - (Vintage Computer Hardware). You will soon be able to buy (at cost)
either an IDE-XT controller in kit form or the assembled card.

 

[Ec1564]

The XT IDE card I have, I had for many many years and forgot when/where I got it. I think it's a ADP50 or Adptic. I have to pull the TL/2 back down from its location. I have been watching the XT-IDE project and once they get going on production, those controllers will be the best way around for us

Ok, just rembered the IDE card I am using I got back in 90 or 91 from Megahouse(anybody rember them?), it was a 40M hardcard setup for the Tandy 1000 TL I have(now has 2 20M rll drives). The origional 40M hdd failed but I kept the card(stupid me tossed the holder) I think I still have the booklet someplace...

 

[Agent Orange]

Another cheap way to go is SCSI. I have a Trantor T130B 8-bit SCSI card (dirt cheap) and a Maxtor 7245SR SCSI hard drive which I got off of eBay for $10.00. There are lots of ways to skin that storage cat without breaking the bank. I do remember Mehahouse, and Shamrock was a big player also. Bought my first hardcard set up from them back around 1991. It was a 60 MB SCSI setup.