TI portable some progress, need help

[harry]

I,ve been trying to get this machine to show something on the screen , but decided to remove the existing motherboard, which gave all three, red, yellow, and green led's as error, I have now fitted a USA made TI pc motherboard, ( the other was the original japanese board) and almost have success! the machine comes on to the point of asking for its system disk, ( which unfortunately I don't have, .... next step perhaps) but it does have a Miniscirbe 3212 HD fitted, so I refitted the HD controller board , connected the drive and rebooted.
The screen now gave " booting Texas Instruments Winchester system V1.12 "
unfortunately the HD does not respond that well. it spins ok, but no sound or clicks like it is attempting to read.
It does give a flashing error code on the red led on the front, and it appears to be four quick flashes, which it does three times , then one continuous light for about one sec. then it will repeat that cycle, untill it times out, and the screen shows "system error 1104 on drive E "
drive E??? can any one help to sort what is happening to the miniscribe , or should I be looking for another HD, shame as I was hoping the machine would be able to boot from the HD, especially not having the sys.disk. thanks Harry

 

[curtis]

Been a long time since I messed with a TI Portable. Unfortunately, not long enough! Those things were quirky!

I seem to remember when the hard drive, it would switch its drive letter to either E or D and there was no way in heck you could get it to go back to C. If I remember correctly, there was some sort of compression going on or something else weird there.

I also seem to remember it was very particular about what hard drives were installed.

Sorry I couldn't be much help, but lots of luck!

 

[harry]

Hi curtis, thanks for reply, It does seem strange to appear to have the drive reconised as E,
and if I could find out a little more what the error on the screen means, it may help, The miniscribe HD error, is the main problem, I am still searching for relative info, and rememdy thanks anyway,

........ harry