Troubleshooting adding SCSI drive to Tandy 1000 TX \ VOGONS

Troubleshooting adding SCSI drive to Tandy 1000 TX

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First post, by snorg

Posted on 2014-02-23, 17:57

snorg Offline

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So I'm trying to add my SCSI floptical drive (in lieu of an HD) to my Tandy 1000 TX. Since Tandy Corp, in their infinite wisdom, only put one molex cable in to power 2 floppies, I had to get a splitter to power the SCSI drive.
When I boot up the machine, I see the message about the Future Domain card's SCSI bios, the drive lights up, and it starts seeking on the disk. I then get the "system disk not found, insert system disk" error.

I'm sure the disks I have are unformatted, but the Tandy no longer does its bootup floppy seek, so I wonder if the drive is no longer getting power or if the system will only attempt to boot off a fixed disk if it detects one.

How do I get it to boot off the floppy so I can install an OS to the SCSI drive? Do I need special drivers for my SCSI card first? Is there not enough power to run both drives? I'm not sure the Tandy has a regular BIOS and I have no clue what the key combo to get in it would be, but maybe I need to make a change there first.

Reply 1 of 6, by snorg

Posted on 2014-02-23, 20:20

snorg Offline

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Ok well the only possibilities I can think of:

1. Accidentally pulled out data cables from one or both floppies, so I'll need to make sure they're seated properly
2. SCSI card has an onboard BIOS so I don't think it needs a driver
3. There may be a jumper/switch on the motherboard that needs to be flipped, so I'll check that
4. Maybe there isn't enough juice from the PS to power both floppies and the disk drive?

Reply 2 of 6, by snorg

Posted on 2014-02-23, 20:29

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Another possibility is I may not have the floptical terminated properly. Do I need a terminator if I only have one device on the chain?

I checked the floppy and while one of the cables was loose to the 2nd floppy, the other as well as the connector to the motherboard was seated properly.

Reply 3 of 6, by snorg

Posted on 2014-02-23, 20:58

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OK, well removing the SCSI drive, and after properly reseating the floppy cables, the machine will boot off floppy A. Adding the SCSI drive back, the system will not boot off floppy A.

So either it is a driver issue, jumper issue, or both.

Reply 4 of 6, by snorg

Posted on 2014-02-23, 21:35

snorg Offline

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Well I changed the IRQ from 5 to 3 as I'm pretty sure the Tandy must be using IRQ 5 for something.
The SCSI device is detected but without a formatted disk with an OS on it it isn't going to boot, so I may need to put it in another system and install an OS onto it and then move it over.

The card has its termination resistor packs installed, the manual I found online says if the host adapter is not at the end of the scsi bus (I'm assuming that means you have more than one device installed, like one or more external devices hanging off the port on the back) then you should remove the termination resistors. Since I only have the one device, I've left the resistor packs in.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong or missing here, that the system isn't trying to boot off the floppy when the SCSI floptical drive is present? I'm about ready to pull my hair out. I'm going to need to have some sort of HD if I want to be able to install software and not just run it from the floppy.