Jorpho wrote:

Are you plugging in the cable the right way? As I recall, the light will come on if the cable is plugged in the wrong way, but of course it won't work. There should be a red stripe on the cable that corresponds to "pin 1" (which should be marked on both the floppy drive and the motherboard).

Yes, if I plug it in backwards, the boot sequence halts with an error message.

Also, is the drive correctly configured in the BIOS?

BIOS only has settings for date, time, CPU speed, COM/LPT adresses and mouse. No drive settings.

If it's a really old floppy drive (and if the BIOS is also really old), it also might only support 720k disks and not the usual high-density ones.

That's probably it. Have to find a 720k drive then.

Glottis wrote:

In both cases interlnk returns with "Connection NOT established, Driver NOT loaded". It doesn't matter which com port I use.

Interlink needs a bunch of switches to run properly.

You also need to run Intersvr on one end, and Interlink on the other.

Or maybe see if you can track down a proper file transfer utility like FastLynx, or LapLink, which don't need drivers to do their magic.

SquallStrife wrote:

Or maybe see if you can track down a proper file transfer utility like FastLynx, or LapLink, which don't need drivers to do their magic.

But as has been established, this other computer has no working floppy drive, so he has no way of getting another program onto this other computer.

It did occur to me that there might be some simple thing out there that can be coded into BASIC, either directly or in such a way that it outputs a .COM file with the relevant functionality. (There's a UUdecode program that works like that.) That would probably involve a lot of meticulous transcription, though.

If the serial cable is in fact working, you can bootstrap FastLynx over a serial cable, using the CTTY command. Don't know about Laplink.

lo

i remember win95 and 98 having an optional component called `direct cable connection' which may be compatible with your dos machine's interlink but it's not something I have ever tried. you can find out more info, there may even be something for modern windows, who knows?

in my own experience though, doing the same with a 286 which had a working floppy drive I may add, was to use `kermit' which is an old and trusted method of copying files over links like this.

cya!

EDIT: it would seem that `DCC' is far too advanced as it uses a networking protocol and is incompatible 😀

really?

Really?

REALLY?

I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but seriously, in a forum supposedly full of classic computer enthusiasts, nobody has thought of the most obvious and ubiquitous way of copying files in the DOS era?

.....seriously?

I'm not trying to be holier than thou, I just am JAW ON FLOOR that nobody here seems to be an old dos guru or even power user...

OK, here's what you do, you have two "best options" with a third that isn't quite as attractive.
1) get/buy a newer pata hdd, something like a 10gb or 20gb wd pata drive, they are available all over ebay for like $10-20.... hook that up as secondary drive in secondary pata controller, use fdisk and format to make a partition, copy the files, drop that into your newer pc, and copy them to it. If it is really old and has no BIOS LBA mode, you will need to find a software called "dynamic drive overlay" and install it to access the disk properly.
2) get/buy a zip100 drive and zip100 disc or two, and hook that up as slave to hdd or master of 2nd pata channel, install the zip disc drivers via a floppy drive (yeah they can be had for $5 on ebay, seriously, get one if you want to mess with old pcs) or even less all over.... you may even find a whole classic pc with working floppy for $5 at a resale shop or such. Do what was suggested in 1 for the files. win9x and 2000 and newer will all recognize the zip natively, dos just needs a TSR like a CD drive does
3) just drop another hdd in the thing and install win95-98 along with an intel pro/100+ and set up peer to peer networking, copy the files over network. Done.

Hell, you could get a pata to CF card adapter (I have two I bought from an ebay hong kong seller for $3 each shipped) and a little (256mb is cheap) cf card and use it to copy the files off the drive. I could come up with about ten more ideas on how to get it, but I think you get the general idea, yes?

jaqie wrote:

1) get/buy a newer pata hdd, something like a 10gb or 20gb wd pata drive, they are available all over ebay for like $10-20.... hook that up as secondary drive in secondary pata controller, use fdisk and format to make a partition, copy the files, drop that into your newer pc, and copy them to it. If it is really old and has no BIOS LBA mode, you will need to find a software called "dynamic drive overlay" and install it to access the disk properly.

Did you notice what's the type of the original HD? Western Digital WD93044-X , as I can see must be an earlier 8bit IDE disk, probably not compatible with "regular" 16bit IDE disks. So adding any newer disk, can't be an option on that controller. Maybe if a second 16bit IDE controller was used, that could happen, but we have no clue about the exact type of that pc. Having such an old HDD and 720kb floppy, it might be an 8bit XT system, where a 16 bit ISA card certainly won't work. But even if a second "modern" disk was able to be used, he couldn't not use the "dynamic drive overlay" software, as he has no working FDD.

jaqie wrote:

2) get/buy a zip100 drive and zip100 disc or two, and hook that up as slave to hdd or master of 2nd pata channel, install the zip disc drivers via a floppy drive (yeah they can be had for $5 on ebay, seriously, get one if you want to mess with old pcs) or even less all over.... you may even find a whole classic pc with working floppy for $5 at a resale shop or such. Do what was suggested in 1 for the files. win9x and 2000 and newer will all recognize the zip natively, dos just needs a TSR like a CD drive does

That would be a great solution, if only he could get the floppy to work in order to run the zip driver.

jaqie wrote:

3) just drop another hdd in the thing and install win95-98 along with an intel pro/100+ and set up peer to peer networking, copy the files over network. Done.

I doubt if a system having originally a 40MB HD would be able to run windows 95. WFW would also do the job, but I'm not sure that even that version is able to run on that pc. Anyway, all of those versions were on 1.44MB floppy disks, so that's another problem, even if the floppy drive was fixed.

Several errors in your post. First, most 16 bit cards will work in 8 bit mode if you set their IRQ below IRQ9. Getting a floppy, as I said in my post, is very cheap nowadays, I have some just sitting around. You seem to have missed that, as well. I also talked briefly about the option of getting a second oldpc for almost nothing at resale shops and using parts from it to do this work.

There is no such thing as "8 bit IDE" as well, all IDE hard drives work with at the very least the old motherboards up to the PIIX4 controllers in first and second generation pentium (P54C and P55C) systems, if not even newer than that. I have personally worked on these sort of systems when they were new. Have you?
I think you are confusing MFM/RLL with IDE.

tech info on that drive: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/w … -HH-IDE-XT.html
Easy to manually set parameters in most P54C/P55C based systems and many more.

My favorite hard drive from this time was an old quantum prodrive 52LP.

jaqie wrote:

Several errors in your post. First, most 16 bit cards will work in 8 bit mode if you set their IRQ below IRQ9.

Well, that's correct, but I'm afraid, totally irrelevant here. An IDE controller just provides the interface used to connect the drive. However, the support for IDE disks is integrated on the BIOS on AT and newer systems. Very few XT systems had "native" support for IDE, and if they had any, it would have to be the earlier type that I called 8bit IDE, or IDE XT. That's why you can't just install a 16bit ISA controller with an IDE disk on a PC-XT and expect it to work. I thought that such an experienced techie like yourself would be familiar with that.

jaqie wrote:

There is no such thing as "8 bit IDE" as well, all IDE hard drives work with at the very least the old motherboards up to the PIIX4 controllers in first and second generation pentium (P54C and P55C) systems, if not even newer than that.

You can read here that :

In the early days of IDE, there were two other variants on the IDE/ATA interface, that were not compatible with regular IDE/ATA. One was an 8-bit version intended for use on the ancient 8-bit ISA bus of the first IBM PC/XT machines and clones. Another was a 16-bit version designed for IBM's MCA (MicroChannel) systems. Both of these have been obsolete for a decade or more and are no longer seen in modern systems;

I've worked on PCs using that kind of HD interface, have you? I've also tried to replace such a disk with a CF2IDE adapter (which as you say is like a regular IDE disk),
and had no luck,even when I tried with cards as small as 32MB.

jaqie wrote:

Getting a floppy, as I said in my post, is very cheap nowadays, I have some just sitting around. You seem to have missed that, as well.

You seem to have missed that the topic starter said trying a couple of other floppy drives had no success. In fact that makes us assume that it needs a 720kb drive. And by the way, I think there should be some jumpers on the floppy drive that might make it compatible to 720kb operation. But if that doesn't work either, that's where a 16bit floppy controller would be useful.

jaqie wrote:

I also talked briefly about the option of getting a second oldpc for almost nothing at resale shops and using parts from it to do this work.

I'm afraid this specific disk won't work on any newer system. There were some other "hybrid" disks that would work on either IDE XT or regular IDE (call it AT if you like). I own one of those, and I have successfully installed on 386 and Pentium PCs. But this one is reported as IDE XT only, and in my opinion, that's the issue here. I see that there were two different models released, 93044A and 93044X for AT or XT. Check here .

jaqie wrote:

I have personally worked on these sort of systems when they were new. Have you?
I think you are confusing MFM/RLL with IDE.

Yes, I've been working on PCs since 1990. I admit that I didn't use a hard disk since 1993, but I think I can compensate for that by dealing a lot with several pc-xt and later systems in the past couple of years.

There definitely is such a thing as 8 bit IDE. Some drives like this one had a jumper to choose between modes. Perhaps some newer controllers will work with 8 bit drives but getting a 16 bit drive to work on an 8 bit controller is a different matter.

There was also an earlier 8-bit standard called XTA, which looks very similar to IDE but is not quite compatible. This is different to MFM/RLL drives which have a seperate data and controller cable (more properly referred to as ST-506 interface, as MFM and RLL are two different ways of encoding the data on the drive)

As far as getting a CF card working on an 8 bit IDE controller - have a look here http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showt … -ESDI-CF-Drives

It can be done but you need to force the card into 8 bit transfer mode. There is also further information about XTA there.

I think you two are confusing several things - one, is between the IDE bus itself and the bitwidth of the controller and style of controller, bios on controller, and the protocol of the controller and drive. Again, you should be able to access those drives on a newer system if you manually specify the C/H/S parameters in an AT bios like I have been saying. That is still standard IDE bus, not some crazy thing you two are calling 8 bit IDE. I also never said to use the pata controller or CF card on an XT system, I would like to be shown where I said that was possible. I was talking about using parts from a newer system. As I said already.

720k floppies and 1.44mb floppies are compatible with eachother, with one caveat: many of the older 720k were too "rough magnetic surface" to format as a 1.44mb. you just have to cover the hole across from the readonly hole to make the system think they are 720k.

I know all about the 8 bit ide controllers and hard drives with extra logics on them to allow working with them (and paired hard drives), and im getting rather sick of being told those are some magical old 8 bit ide bus, which never existed.

Take a look here, and also wherever you wish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

IDE itself was always 16 bits data bus from the beginning. the 40 pins were set and the values assigned back in the beginning. This is why it is 40 pins in the first place.

Pin 1 Reset Pin 2 Ground Pin 3 Data 7 Pin 4 Data 8 Pin 5 Data 6 Pin 6 Data 9 Pin 7 Data 5 Pin 8 Da […]
Show full quote

Pin 1 Reset
Pin 2 Ground
Pin 3 Data 7
Pin 4 Data 8
Pin 5 Data 6
Pin 6 Data 9
Pin 7 Data 5
Pin 8 Data 10
Pin 9 Data 4
Pin 10 Data 11
Pin 11 Data 3
Pin 12 Data 12
Pin 13 Data 2
Pin 14 Data 13
Pin 15 Data 1
Pin 16 Data 14
Pin 17 Data 0
Pin 18 Data 15
Pin 19 Ground
Pin 20 Key or VCC_in
Pin 21 DDRQ
Pin 22 Ground
Pin 23 I/O write
Pin 24 Ground
Pin 25 I/O read
Pin 26 Ground
Pin 27 IOCHRDY
Pin 28 Cable select
Pin 29 DDACK
Pin 30 Ground
Pin 31 IRQ
Pin 32 No connect
Pin 33 Addr 1
Pin 34 GPIO_DMA66_Detect
Pin 35 Addr 0
Pin 36 Addr 2
Pin 37 Chip select 1P
Pin 38 Chip select 3P
Pin 39 Activity
Pin 40 Ground

and by the way, you can use AT IDE drives in an XT system.

http://www.notanon.com/electronics/how-to-bui … -xt/2010/07/30/

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showw … e=XTIDE+project

yes you'll find most of us are well aware of the XT-IDE project 😉

After looking into this some more I think what I was referring to as 8 bit IDE was in fact XTA. So I stand corrected on that point.

jaqie wrote:

I think you two are confusing several things - one, is between the IDE bus itself and the bitwidth of the controller and style of controller, bios on controller, and the protocol of the controller and drive. Again, you should be able to access those drives on a newer system if you manually specify the C/H/S parameters in an AT bios like I have been saying. That is still standard IDE bus, not some crazy thing you two are calling 8 bit IDE.

You should in theory, but in fact you just can't. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

jaqie wrote:

I also never said to use the pata controller or CF card on an XT system, I would like to be shown where I said that was possible. I was talking about using parts from a newer system. As I said already.

Are you sure?

jaqie wrote:

Hell, you could get a pata to CF card adapter (I have two I bought from an ebay hong kong seller for $3 each shipped) and a little (256mb is cheap) cf card and use it to copy the files off the drive.

jaqie wrote:

720k floppies and 1.44mb floppies are compatible with eachother, with one caveat: many of the older 720k were too "rough magnetic surface" to format as a 1.44mb. you just have to cover the hole across from the readonly hole to make the system think they are 720k.

You seem to confuse things a lot. Nobody said anything about floppy disks. About floppy disk drives, yes. Read more carefully.

jaqie wrote:

I know all about the 8 bit ide controllers and hard drives with extra logics on them to allow working with them (and paired hard drives), and im getting rather sick of being told those are some magical old 8 bit ide bus, which never existed.

Well, obviously you don't know all. There's no point insisting on definitions. The fact is that there is an incompatibility. And that's what we're trying to help the guy with.

jaqie wrote:

and by the way, you can use AT IDE drives in an XT system.

http://www.notanon.com/electronics/how-to-bui … -xt/2010/07/30/

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showw … e=XTIDE+project

Oh, yes. For the past couple of years you can. But I still don't get your point....

I'm sorry. I have been having severe emotional problems lately, along with having issues with memory due to a degenerative neurological problem. I guess I just snapped for a while... Im not usually like this at all. Im going to go for a while as I sort this out.

I have been having severe emotional problems lately

WHOA CHEAP TARGET FOR GENERAL DISS DETECTED!!!1!1!!

No seriously, don't let hardware discussions (especially about the "tricky old stuff") get you down like that, all people nice and helpful.

It's just an internet forum, you shouldn't take it too seriously 😀