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Tandy 1000 TL with XT/IDE

mdh

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2021
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139
Location
North East Ohio
Having an odd problem with this; The computer already has a hard card that is working (for now), but I want to get a backup, and to move files between computers so I can get it on network. I’m using an IDE to CF adapter, and it sort of works.

I can boot off of hard drive, use fdisk on the CF to set it up, format it, no problems. I copy files to it on another machine and power on the Tandy again, and this is where things go sideways. DIR works. Changing folders works. But it seems any file of a size that is useful (hwinfo16, 3C509b configure program) all fail - they are all corrupted.

Any ideas? I’m going to look up the IDE to CF adapter I have to see if anyone else has one.
 
This is the IDE to CF adapter I’m using:


The link here is to an IDE to SD adapter. Is that what you’re actually using or was this link malformed?

If you are using CompactFlash know that compatibility issues between CF cards and XTIDE/XT-CF adapters are depressingly common. Try downloading this disk test software and running it against your formatted disk in the Tandy using the “mediatest” argument.


If it doesn’t pass you can try double-checking to make sure your CF adapter is properly powered or try another one, but you’ll probably need to try a different brand/model/size of card.

I actually exclusively use those IDE-SD adapters instead of CF because I’ve had perfect luck with them vs, the 50%+ failure rate I saw testing a whole box of random CFs, but I’m sure your mileage may vary.
 
Interesting.

I would still recommend trying the disktest.EXE media test on the Tandy 1000 after doing a clean format and see if the XTIDE subsystem can work with the drive without errors. Can you copy files to the drive on the Tandy without them getting corrupted? If the problem is only happening with files you copy to the SD card from the other computer then the question becomes what’s going on on that side. Are you mounting the SD card directly in a USB reader or whatever in a modern computer, or moving the IDE adapter around?

And if you take the card back out of the Tandy and look at these “corrupted” files on the source machine, are they actually changed? Are the checksums changing on the disk, and are you sure the file system was cleanly unmounted, etc?
 
I hung the adapter out the back of the computer so I can insert and remove the sd card. I guess I’ll have to move the hard card to another computer to see if I can copy files to it. I have no other way to get files to the machine, unless someone has a short qbasic program to send / receive files by serial.
 
I use Laplink for DOS to connect my Tandy 1000 to my Gateway 2000. That works good for moving files. I'm not sure if Laplink for DOS is still around? I've owned it since way back. But I also know Norton Commander can use an FTP connection. I have played with that a little using mTCP FTP server. If you can't find Laplink maybe mTCP will work.

Seaken
 
The problem is getting something on the Tandy. It has the normal deskmate, and DOS 5, pretty much that’s it.
 
unless someone has a short qbasic program to send / receive files by serial.
The GW-BASIC manual had a BASIC terminal program in Appendix F (Communications) which included a Send/Receive function. That should get you started; send a copy of Telix, or something, and you're in like Flynn.
 

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The problem is getting something on the Tandy. It has the normal deskmate, and DOS 5, pretty much that’s it.
Are you saying you don't have a floppy drive? If you do have a floppy you can copy LapLink to a floppy and then copy from the floppy to the HD. I often just use Laplink off the floppy. You can also hookup by cable and then have Laplink install direct from the other machine.

Maybe a Gotek would work better for you than the IDE CF?

Seaken
 
I have no other way to get files to the machine, unless someone has a short qbasic program to send / receive files by serial.
If you have the hardware for that, why not use the virtual serial drive functionality in XTIDE Universal BIOS?

EDIT: BTW, I suspect bad RAM.
 
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If you have the hardware for that, why not use the virtual serial drive functionality in XTIDE Universal BIOS?

EDIT: BTW, I suspect bad RAM.
Because I didn't know it supported it... Going to have to give that a try.
 
EDIT: BTW, I suspect bad RAM.

I can speak from hard experience that bad RAM can totally masquerade as disk problems. But if that's what were going on I would think the original hard card would be behaving badly as well.

On the topic of getting stuff back and forth to this machine, if you can scrape up some plain old 1.44MB floppy disks you should be able to format them in the TX as 720K disks (repeat a few times if you have to, sometimes the slightly weaker write current in DD mode has trouble overpowering the original format, but it's not very different) and then read/write them in a plain USB floppy drive as long as you put a piece of opaque tape over the density detection hole. You might have to be *slightly* picky about USB floppy drives, some of the very newest ones have problems with DD disks, but there are tons of older ones in circulation.
 
I can speak from hard experience that bad RAM can totally masquerade as disk problems. But if that's what were going on I would think the original hard card would be behaving badly as well.

On the topic of getting stuff back and forth to this machine, if you can scrape up some plain old 1.44MB floppy disks you should be able to format them in the TX as 720K disks (repeat a few times if you have to, sometimes the slightly weaker write current in DD mode has trouble overpowering the original format, but it's not very different) and then read/write them in a plain USB floppy drive as long as you put a piece of opaque tape over the density detection hole. You might have to be *slightly* picky about USB floppy drives, some of the very newest ones have problems with DD disks, but there are tons of older ones in circulation.
Yes, I do this all the time. I am lucky to have a couple USB floppy drives that read and write to 720K diskettes just fine on my Win7 machine. I've also used 1.44M drives in place of 720K drives, formatting and R/W in 720K. But I also have alot of old 720K diskettes from some old accounting software backups that we didn't need anymore. So, I reformatted them.

Seaken
 
Well, my XT Bios is 1.1.5 from 2010. Time to burn a new one...

Someone mentioned bad ram, I don't think so, as I can't boot from the sd card (I formatted it with /s and copied dos files over to it). Also, Deskmate runs fine, as do several games that are on the machine.
 
Someone mentioned bad ram, I don't think so, as I can't boot from the sd card

You can or you can't?

Assuming you are actually able to otherwise run fine with the card using software you've installed from the TX (how did you get DOS installed? Did you copy DOS and the software from the hard card to the SD) and it's only stuff you're copying to the SD card on another computer that's "corrupted" I'm thinking the finger might be pointing over there.
 
I have a floppy, but I don‘t have one for usb. I need to get around adding one to my other computer that doesn‘t have one, but does have network and such installed.
 
You can or you can't?

Assuming you are actually able to otherwise run fine with the card using software you've installed from the TX (how did you get DOS installed? Did you copy DOS and the software from the hard card to the SD) and it's only stuff you're copying to the SD card on another computer that's "corrupted" I'm thinking the finger might be pointing over there.
I can’t boot from SD card, but the hard card that the machine came with has dos 5 on it, deskmate, some games, and pc file I think. Everything works that came with the pc, I just need some way to get files to it. Worse case is I move the hard card to another machine and copy files to it, just afraid of touching old things that still work…
 
can’t boot from SD card, but the hard card that the machine came with has dos 5 on it, deskmate, some games, and pc file I think.

So you're FDISK-ing and format -s-ing the SD card after booting from the hard card (the two are present together), and then... have you tried booting the XTIDE after pulling the hard card and it doesn't work, or you've had both present all the time? (FWIW, have you tried running "fdisk /mbr" against the drive if that's the case?)

And to be clear, have you tried copying the contents of the hard card over to the SD card and running them from there? Again, I guess I'm unclear if everything that hits the XTIDE is getting corrupted or if it's just the stuff you're trying to copy to it.
 
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