I found the AST software among the floppy collection. I think maybe I had an AST product in the original AT&T PC 6300 from the '80s and the disk is left over from that.
I also found a pair of tabs and some spare screws in a bag.
A new issue: DOS commands to select drive A: or B: are successful, but if I try to access the contents of a disk in either drive things get squirrelly:
On each drive I have received the message "On-board parity error - system halted" after issuing a "DIR" command. On drive B: the error was indicated at 0000:DAFA (56,058) two times in succession, after resetting, and on drive A: once at 0000:0A02 (2,562). I tried to repeat the error on Drive A:, which is a 1.2 5.25, but the second attempt read the directory with no error.
However, subsequent directory reads read only a partial list of the files, and when I TYPEd some of the text files I would get strange characters or gaps in places.
My first hypothesis was a motherboard memory issue; my second was a problem with the RAMPAGE board and my third was a problem with the floppy chain, maybe termination or lack thereof. I think I'll start with the drive chain: the HD seems to be performing properly. (MS-DOS 6.22 is on a 2 GB partition on the Bigfoot).
-CH-
