Tandy 1000 TX and MS-DOS 5.0 eccentricities

[EddieDX4]

I've replaced the Tandy provided MS-DOS version 3.20.something on my TX with version 5.0, so that I can access a single 100mb partition on a Zip disk (palmzip.sys driver). Right off the bat, I ran into the following:

The A: drive was recognized as a 360k drive (it can read 720k floppies, but FORMAT defaults to 360k and FORMAT /F:720 or /T:80 /N:9 fail due to the system stating the parameters are not compatible). I remedies this by using DRIVEPARM=/d:00 /f:02 in config.sys.

Any idea of why this is?

Also, keyboard related, my keyboard works perfect under the command shell itself, but when I enter, say, EDIT (or QBASIC, for that matter), the special characters on the numeric keypad area will not work at all. If I invoke NUM LOCK, the numbers on the keypad work, but turning NUM LOCK off renders the keys useless. The problem comes about when trying to add stuff to CONFIG.SYS that references directories... Since the backslash "\" is located on the 7 key.

Is there a Tandy 1000 keyboard specific DOS driver that I'm missing?

 

[Chuck(G)]

Any idea of why this is?

"White box" MS-DOS operates under the IBM paradigm. Since your system isn't an AT or better, there's no place to store drive type information, so the default is to a 360K drive (standard on an IBM PC). Some vendor-specific versions of MS-DOS have been modified to default to other types of drives.

 

[southbird]

I guess they must have fixed this later or something. The RL has a 720KB drive and I loaded DOS 6.22 on it which recognizes it correctly.

 

[EddieDX4]

I guess they must have fixed this later or something. The RL has a 720KB drive and I loaded DOS 6.22 on it which recognizes it correctly.

I might just try 6.22 then... Although, I'm trying to maximize available DOS memory, and the higher the DOS version the lower it is (unless you have EMS at your disposal).