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New computer XT/AT/Something?

R

rosaage

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2014
Messages
88
Location
Norway, Rogaland
I bought a new Computer today, but its not booting.
I have no idea what the computer is or whats wrong, When i power it on the screen blinks black once, the power supply fan starts and the hdd starts spinning. It looks like the case is a at case with parts from an XT, and the manuals I got and some the cards say 1983 and the manual has pages for XT. It came with the original IBM Model F keyboard and the 5153 cga monitor.
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Looks like an XT because of the 8-bit slots. The processor is hidden under the disk drives. One of the PC speaker wires is unplugged. Fix that and you may get a beep code.
 
The machine actually booted now, I'm not really sure what did it. It boots with the hard drive and the floppy is not working it's not fitting either, a full-height floppy in a cabinet made for half-height floppies is not good. There are no screw holes in the middle where the drive has holes so I can't screw it in place.
 
For what it's worth, it looks like a Taiwainese Turbo XT clone (8088 @ 8Mhz). Layout looks pretty similar, to my DTK Turbo boards.

Glad to see you got it running :)
 
I'm having truble getting the floppy drive to work. Ive tried a good working flopy controller so that's not the issue. When i try to access the a: drive I'm not getting the regular not reading drive a error, I'm getting a data error. Anyone know something abput what could be wrong?
 
rosaage said:
I'm having truble getting the floppy drive to work. Ive tried a good working flopy controller so that's not the issue. When i try to access the a: drive I'm not getting the regular not reading drive a error, I'm getting a data error. Anyone know something abput what could be wrong?
Click to expand...
Extremely dirty read/write heads ?
 
With a floppy disk drive cleaning kit. It consists of a floppy disk jacket with an abrasive disk inside and a solvent to apply to the cleaning disk. As the disk rotates in the drive it cleans the heads.
 
I like using cleaning kits as Stone suggested.
Some other members here prefer to do it manually - using someone soft like a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol or an alternative solvent.

But I'd check a couple of other things too:
- disk works in another PC
- disk is DSDD not DSHD (360KB, not a 1.2)
- see if computer can format a disk, and then use it afterwards
- when you shine a light off the surface of the disk, it doesn't look like it has little spots growing on it (always check for this before inserting an old disk)
 
I looked a bit at some sites, and floppy kits are usually expensive so I think I'll try isopropyl alcohol. I've tried working dsdd floppies I use to boot my 5155. How do I format? is it format A:? or is there something else? can I run the command safely from a C: prompt or does it have a risk of formatting my hdd? I thought it was floppy only.
 
They run around $10 or less. One kit can last for many years. And the real benefit (aside from being so much easier) is that there's no risk of totally destroying the floppy drive by mangling the heads by inserting a foreign object. Are you a klutz? :)
 
rosaage said:
I looked a bit at some sites, and floppy kits are usually expensive so I think I'll try isopropyl alcohol. I've tried working dsdd floppies I use to boot my 5155. How do I format? is it format A:? or is there something else? can I run the command safely from a C: prompt or does it have a risk of formatting my hdd? I thought it was floppy only.
Click to expand...

FORMAT A: will format the floppy drive. It is used to format the hard drive as well, but you'd specify that, and usually get a special fixed disk confirmation warning. The command does not format the current drive - that would be quite troublesome :)
 
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