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Tandy DOS Install Issues

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LinkedBlade

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Oct 9, 2024
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I bought a Tandy 1000 off eBay, woohoo. It has the extended memory card, so 640k ram. I have some Tandy DOS 3.2 disks and I have an XT-IDE card that takes sd cards.

I do a diskpart clean on my windows pc to the sd card. On the Tandy, I run fdisk to create a dos partition on the sd card. Then I do format c: /s and it throws a "Bad Partition Table Format Failed" error.

My goal is to boot to c:.
 
always reboot after doing something with fdisk! I presume you did after creating partitions and before doing a format.... maybe the sd card is wonky?
 
BloodyCactus said:
always reboot after doing something with fdisk! I presume you did after creating partitions and before doing a format.... maybe the sd card is wonky?
Click to expand...
It prompts you to reboot when you do fdisk. I tried with 2 different sd cards, an older 2 gb card and a new 16gb card. Could it be ms-dos 3.2?
 
I don't recall having any particular issues with Tandy DOS 3.2, but I think I ran it for about an hour before switching to a DOS that could make better use of the available space? (If you want to stick with a Tandy DOS there's a Tandy 3.30; the difference between the two is 3.3 allows you to set up additional volumes in the extended partition, while 3.2 sticks you with just the one.)

One relatively common problem with XTIDE setup involves older DOSes getting confused by junk left over by later OSes in the first sector of the disk, where the MBR is located. Here is a page that lists a bunch of options for ABSOLUTELY ZERO-ing a used disk. I'm not entirely sure if diskpart's clean function actually zeros the MBR, so I would suggest using one of the methods on this page to completely repave your memory card and try again. (I usually use the "dd" method, either on a Linux machine or a Mac.)
 
CF cards can still be found really cheap in 32mb capacity. That's my suggestion. SD never went that low.
 
MGaddict said:
CF cards can still be found really cheap in 32mb capacity. That's my suggestion. SD never went that low.
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SD cards cost less than a fast food cheeseburger, so who cares if you waste it?

(Also, FWIW, I have a few 16 and 32MB SD cards lying around. The standard dates to the year 2000. I wouldn't use one for a hard disk replacement because those early cards usually didn't wear very well, besides being slow, but you can say the same for old CF cards.)
 
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Eudimorphodon said:
I don't recall having any particular issues with Tandy DOS 3.2, but I think I ran it for about an hour before switching to a DOS that could make better use of the available space? (If you want to stick with a Tandy DOS there's a Tandy 3.30; the difference between the two is 3.3 allows you to set up additional volumes in the extended partition, while 3.2 sticks you with just the one.)

One relatively common problem with XTIDE setup involves older DOSes getting confused by junk left over by later OSes in the first sector of the disk, where the MBR is located. Here is a page that lists a bunch of options for ABSOLUTELY ZERO-ing a used disk. I'm not entirely sure if diskpart's clean function actually zeros the MBR, so I would suggest using one of the methods on this page to completely repave your memory card and try again. (I usually use the "dd" method, either on a Linux machine or a Mac.)
Click to expand...
I did exactly as you suggested, used the dd command. Used the same method fdisk then format c: /s. Still get the "bad partition..." error. Although I did try to boot to c: and i got a "bad boot sector" error, whereas before it would just hang on a blinking cursor.

I have a 5.25" drive coming in so I can image discs for Tandy 3.30. In the mean time is there a way to partition and image 3.30 onto the sdcard?

edit: I have ms-dos 3.30 from winworldpc for the og tandy 1000. Is there a way I can use those disc images to make a bootable drive on the sdcard?
 
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LinkedBlade said:
I did exactly as you suggested, used the dd command. Used the same method fdisk then format c: /s. Still get the "bad partition..." error. Although I did try to boot to c: and i got a "bad boot sector" error, whereas before it would just hang on a blinking cursor.
Click to expand...

This got me second guessing whether I'd actually installed Tandy 3.21 (I built my first XT-CF dingus for my Tandy 1000EX back in 2019), so... I checked, and you know what? It looks like Tandy DOS 3.21 does have some kind of problem, at least with my current setup. I will throw out the grain of salt that the *original* version of my XTIDE setup involved smaller CF cards instead of my current version that uses an PATA->SD converter, so it's *possible* it might work with a much smaller disk (I probably would have tried it on a 128MB card), but it's also possible I went straight to a better version of DOS.

Just to document my work:

I started with a virginal out-of-the-box 32GB Samsung Pro Endurance micro-SD card in an SD card converter; didn't even bother to erase it, just stuck it right in and booted Tandy DOS 3.21. (The disk is either the 1000 SX or TX OEM version from the oldskool Tandy archive.) After booting I realize, doh, that old versions of FDISK won't delete "non-DOS" partitions, so I booted an MS-DOS 6.22 install set and used that to delete the stock partition on the SD card. (My A: drive is a Flashfloppy'ed Gotek and I have a ton of different DOS disks available on the USB key.) Then I booted back into DOS 3.21, ran FDISK, told it to use the "whole disk" for DOS, rebooted, ran FORMAT C:/S, and...


20241017_140341.jpg

(I realize this doesn't look much like a Tandy 1000. It is, I promise.)

So... just to make sure I'm not going completely insane(*) and/or didn't break something switching cards, I switched to my Tandy DOS 3.30 disk set, deleted the 3.21 DOS partition, repeated everything with 3.30, and:

20241017_141529.jpg

Looks like 3.30 works but 3.21 doesn't, at least with my SD card setup. (Which I would guess is logically equivalent to yours; so far as I know all these adapters use the same chipset.)

(* I was worried here because my normal SD card is actually set up with dual-boot options for Tandy 3.30 and IBM PC-DOS 7.0; apparently it was *not* a fluke that I was able to install it.)

I guess the takeaway here is that Tandy 3.30 should work for you. Maybe when I have absolutely nothing better to do I'll find one of my ancient small SD cards and see if 3.21 likes that. (Or I could swap in a CF carrier, but... I dunno, man, life is too short.)

LinkedBlade said:
I have a 5.25" drive coming in so I can image discs for Tandy 3.30. In the mean time is there a way to partition and image 3.30 onto the sdcard?

edit: I have ms-dos 3.30 from winworldpc for the og tandy 1000. Is there a way I can use those disc images to make a bootable drive on the sdcard?
Click to expand...

So... the answer is "yes", but it's a guarded one and it's kind of a pain in the neck. My working copy of PC-DOS 7.0 is based on a CD-ROM version of it they have on WinWorld, and, well, just to find out if I *could* make this happen I came up with method of installing the CD-ROM DOS onto a disk image I could "dd" onto a memory card and run in the Tandy. The procedure involved using QEMU to set up a "486" virtual machine equipped with a CD-ROM drive and a hard disk image that I specifically set up to use the same LBA geometry as the XT-IDE BIOS uses.

A secondary annoyance is at least the older Tandy OEM DOSes check for a Tandy ROM signature when they boot and refuse to come all the way up on non-Tandy machines... although they *might* have given up on that with 3.30? It's been a while...
 
The Tandy 1000 version of DOS will indeed refuse to boot on anything that isn't a Tandy 1000. Even a Tandy 1100FD laptop (made by Panasonic) isn't close enough:

bootable.png

Also keep in mind that AFAIK, there is no version of Tandy MS-DOS 3.3 that was specifically made for the pre-RL/SL/TL 1000's. I believe 3.21 was the last version they officially released for the original 1000 and EX/HX/SX/TX. You can take a copy of 3.3 that was meant for the later 1000s and it will mostly work on the older ones, but certain machine-specific features may not.
 
vwestlife said:
Also keep in mind that AFAIK, there is no version of Tandy MS-DOS 3.3 that was specifically made for the pre-RL/SL/TL 1000's. I believe 3.21 was the last version they officially released for the original 1000 and EX/HX/SX/TX. You can take a copy of 3.3 that was meant for the later 1000s and it will mostly work on the older ones, but certain machine-specific features may not.
Click to expand...

So far as I’m aware the only “machine specific” parts of DOS for the earlier machines are the BASIC (includes support for Tandy video modes) and the MODE command (has commands for changing the speed on the SX/EX/TX/HX and to switch text mode between 200 and 225 lines), and you can copy both of those to other DOSes. (I have the Tandy version of mode available as “TMODE” under PC-DOS 7.)

Also, Tandy never updated BASIC for the “L” series, so the version that comes with their DOS also works on the older ones so far as I recall.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
So far as I’m aware the only “machine specific” parts of DOS for the earlier machines are the BASIC (includes support for Tandy video modes) and the MODE command (has commands for changing the speed on the SX/EX/TX/HX and to switch text mode between 200 and 225 lines), and you can copy both of those to other DOSes. (I have the Tandy version of mode available as “TMODE” under PC-DOS 7.)
Click to expand...

So, I just checked, and for the version of Tandy DOS 3.30 I have on my HX:

1: The mode command includes the "fast/slow" command and they work to control the speed.
2: It also has the "200/225" commands for switching on and off the extra line spacing the Tandy video supports, and
3: It has exactly the same version of BASIC (appears to be the same binary) as included with DOS 3.21.

(This was checking the floppy image, not the installed version, so I don't think this was me swapping these components out.)

vwestlife said:
The Tandy 1000 version of DOS will indeed refuse to boot on anything that isn't a Tandy 1000. Even a Tandy 1100FD laptop (made by Panasonic) isn't close enough:
Click to expand...

A thing that's slightly gnawing on me is I'm not 100% sure there aren't two different versions of Tandy DOS 3.30. There's disk version included with the SL/TL/RL 1000's; is that the same version that was included with their true-AT machines like the 3000? I'm wondering if the latter doesn't have the machine lock. I have vague memories of playing with this in QEMU but I forget what the answer was.
 
vwestlife said:
The Tandy 1000 version of DOS will indeed refuse to boot on anything that isn't a Tandy 1000. Even a Tandy 1100FD laptop (made by Panasonic) isn't close enough:

View attachment 1288207

Also keep in mind that AFAIK, there is no version of Tandy MS-DOS 3.3 that was specifically made for the pre-RL/SL/TL 1000's. I believe 3.21 was the last version they officially released for the original 1000 and EX/HX/SX/TX. You can take a copy of 3.3 that was meant for the later 1000s and it will mostly work on the older ones, but certain machine-specific features may not.
Click to expand...
You are right about that. The Tandy 1000SX went with a version of Microsoft DOS 3.2.
 
vwestlife said:
The Tandy 1000 version of DOS will indeed refuse to boot on anything that isn't a Tandy 1000. Even a Tandy 1100FD laptop (made by Panasonic) isn't close enough:

Also keep in mind that AFAIK, there is no version of Tandy MS-DOS 3.3 that was specifically made for the pre-RL/SL/TL 1000's. I believe 3.21 was the last version they officially released for the original 1000 and EX/HX/SX/TX. You can take a copy of 3.3 that was meant for the later 1000s and it will mostly work on the older ones, but certain machine-specific features may not.
Click to expand...
I'm working on an original Tandy 1000, no suffix. So that shouldn't be an issue. The 3.20 discs I have work, it's just the issue of formatting the sd card. Which interestingly works fine if i boot to A:, and switch to C: I just cannot boot to C:
 
Eudimorphodon said:
<snip for brevity>
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Like I said I have a 5.25" drive coming in, I'll try to image some discs using the Tandy 3.30 DOS from winworldpc and see if they are bootable and try to format the sd card using them. It specifically says it's meant for the 1000.

I'd be interested to know if there is a way to vet what software was released by Tandy. This is all completely new to me, as these machines were built before I was born, lol. How were software patches distributed? Like mailed invitation or newsletter? Advertisement?
 
LinkedBlade said:
I'm working on an original Tandy 1000, no suffix. So that shouldn't be an issue. The 3.20 discs I have work, it's just the issue of formatting the sd card. Which interestingly works fine if i boot to A:, and switch to C: I just cannot boot to C:
Click to expand...

I'm kind of tempted to stick that SD card I was experimenting with back in and see if I can SYS C: with 3.21 after partitioning and formatting it with 3.30 and get it to work. But that said, I can't think of a good reason to prefer 3.21 over 3.30. 3.21 takes a *little* less RAM, but not enough to matter on a 640K machine.

FWIW, the reason I run IBM PC-DOS 7 is it doesn't use much more RAM than 3.30 and it'll let you use partitions up to 2GB. (It's about 10K smaller than MS-DOS 6.x on machines where you can't load anything high.) Something to think about if the 32MB partition limit gets irksome. (But again, with 3.30 you can use multiple partitions, at least.)


LinkedBlade said:
I'd be interested to know if there is a way to vet what software was released by Tandy. This is all completely new to me, as these machines were built before I was born, lol. How were software patches distributed? Like mailed invitation or newsletter? Advertisement?
Click to expand...

They used to have a newsletter, and although they got out of the computer manufacturing business in 1993 (sold it off to AST) they actually had a web/ftp site with a lot of useful information and patches on it pretty much right up until Radio Shack went out of business. (I'm talking about the "real" Radio Shack, not the zombie brand that exists today.) Snapshot on the Wayback machine, assuming that's working when you click this.
 
vwestlife said:
I believe 3.21 was the last version they officially released for the original 1000 and EX/HX/SX/TX.
Click to expand...

On the topic of trying to stick to the "original" DOS on these machines, has anyone found an image of the "hard disk utilities" disk that was apparently included with the 1000HD? (May have also been included with the 1200?) The DOS 2.11 that was included with the *original* 1000s does support hard disks but they didn't include FDISK or a formatter on the main MS-DOS disks.

I've never heard of anyone bothering to try to use DOS 2.x on an XTIDE, but I've been vaguely curious if it's doable.
 
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