The two questions that I have now are:
1. Would the DOS 1.1 version prohibit access to a hard drive?
In your case, you do not need to boot from floppy in order to access the hard drive. In theory, based on knowledge gathered about your scenario, after adding the WDXT-GEN card and matching drive, the IBM 5150 should boot from the hard drive.
You are correct about the blinking cursor. The cursor was blinking in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Nothing else displayed on the monitor until the BASIC screen appeared. (I was watching pretty closely and didn't see any type of blip or instantaneous screen display.)
When I fit my WDXT-GEN card to an IBM 5150, but no hard drive, I observe at 5150 power-up:
1. Blinking underline cursor.
2. After what seems an eternity (as the RAM is checked), I then see "1701" appear.
3. Then, my (empty) A: drive is accessed.
4. A single beep from speaker.
5. About 1 to 2 seconds later, the 5150 jumps to BASIC.
The 1701 indicates:
1. The 5150's POST found the BIOS expansion ROM on the WDXT-GEN.
2. The 5150's POST then validated the ROM's checksum.
3. The 5150's POST then executed the BIOS expansion ROM.
4. The BIOS expansion ROM signalled "1701" to indicate a problem.
1701 is the typical error code signalled by the BIOS expansion ROM in XT-class eard disk controllers
If you disconnect the hard drive (or disconnect power from it), do you see "1701" ?
4. I powered on the computer. There was a single beep and hard drive activity, and then approximately 30 seconds later there were several other beeps.
Are you still hearing multiple beeps? If so, would you describe them as: 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps ?
Where I am going with that is the bug referred to in step 27 of the POST sequence described at [
here].