Well, I went too far...

[leeb]

Edit: Just had to do this...
Stupid Thing To Do... #2 (a.k.a. how to turn a hard drive system into a FD-only one...)

It looks like Ive damaged the controller... it wont even recognize 'Lazarus' now, and sits there, constantly blinking...

I fear it is DOA...

Not pleased. Not pleased at all.:blush:

 

[johnorun]

Sad news, but I hope this isn't the end of this blog.

I'm waiting til the weekend to resume work on my Tandy 1500, which wasn't recognizing the hard drive either.
Does the CMOS battery have to working in order for the drive to be visible? Mine is dead.
This battery is soldered to the motherboard and I'm going to try soldering a newer battery socket from a desktop m-board that holds a coin lithium battery and see if that works.

I have also found an 80MB Connor laptop drive to replace my non-recognized Connor 20MB and I need to know if useing a later version of DOS (like v.5 or v.6.2 would allow for a larger size hard drive capacity to be used. I think DOS 3.2 allows only 32MB to be utilized- correct?

I'll post my progress here to share.

 

[leeb]

Unfortunately, I have recently learned that the BIOS on the 1500 is not setup to accept anything larger than the 21Mb (615/4/17). It is configured for SMALLER drives... for some reason, but not bigger.

The CMOS battery would help, but it seems that it is not REQUIRED...

Doe the drive seem to 'click' alot? It MAY be 'sticking' in the park position, just as mine did.
Does it say that HD initialization has failed or is it complaining about read error?
IF it is not saying FAILED you SHOULD be able to use HSECT (from a TANDY disk...even a 1000) to 'enable' it, then FDISK and format/s for system...

You can use DOS 6.22 but it still does not work with anything but the 20mb drive. Or, at least I havent managed to get anything else in there.

And, so far, I wont still... I believe I have found that 'Lazarus' has been corrupted and Im cleaning it off to start over. We'll see what happens!

 

[johnorun]

To use HSECT, the C: drive has the be recognized, but it's not and I when I tried to change drive to C:, "abort, fail, retry" prompt appears!

 

[leeb]

try saying FAIL...
Edit: cant you run HSECT from floppy? It sounds like the system at least knows the drive is there (which is better than mine) and THAT is the key... just dont expect to save anything from it!

Yep... the controller is screwed...

I am so pissed with myself... but at least I dont know what I did!