VOGONS


First post, by infiniteclouds

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Hey,

So just wiped/formatted a Tandy 1000SX that I bought that had MS-DOS 5.xx on it so that I can install the original Tandy MS-DOS 3.2/3.3.

(http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/system.html)

This 1000SX has a 360KB 5.25" drive and a 720KB 3.5" drive.

I have a Slot 1 machine that has 98SE installed that has a 3.5"1.44MB floppy drive and I have 3.5" Double Density diskettes. At first I tried dumping the contents of the 360KB .DSK image, copying it onto the formatted 760KB disk and booting up from it on the XT - Non-System disk or disk error. I tried doing the same with the "720k disk image" (.imz instead of .dsk) of version 3.3 and while I get no error the system just hangs after POST and the floppy disk drive LED remains solid.

I figure I must use a program to properly copy the direct .imz so I downloaded WinImage 7.0, copied it over to Win98 and loaded up the .imz file in there. When I tried to write it to disk (to the DD floppy)... blue screen. I then tried to first format it using "Current Image File" as the format and was met with Track X, Head X, disk errors. I skipped through each of these enduring a very slow, very long (maybe hour?) process of the program formatting the disk, continuously having to press skip every few minutes. I was rewarded for my patience with it hanging at 96%. God, I had almost wholly forgotten the DELIGHT of older computers trolling you as hard as they possibly can.

Short of buying a 360KB or even 720KB disk drive to install in the Slot 1 machine (if that would even work) how can I proceed to make some MS-DOS disks to reinstall the OS on my Tandy 1000?

Reply 1 of 12, by Jo22

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Hi and good morning,

Personally, I've never ever had a bluescreen with WinImage.
Not even with Version 3 (16-Bit) on my 286 running Windows 3.10.

Ideas. Did you try an USB floppy and a virtual machine already ?
Programs like WinImage can run inside a virtual machine, too.

That way, you can convert obscure disk images from each type to another:
- Simply configure Virtual PC, VMware Player, VirtualBox, etc. to use an image file or your host's "A:" drive.
(Technically, you *could* also run an emulator like PCem/86Box/Qemu for that purpose. )

By the way, this also saved me a lot of work when dealing with MS-DOS boot floppies.
My host system refused to properly format 3.5" disks to 360K/720K.
Running MS-DOS 6.22 in a VM with my USB floppy drive mapped as "A:" worked fine.

Best regards,
Jo22

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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I'm not trying to format the disks on my Windows 7 machine though, since it has no floppy drives to write to.. -- I copied the .imz and .dsk files over to a Windows 98 machine -- that has an actual 3.5 floppy drive.

Reply 3 of 12, by Jo22

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Oh, I see. Then I recomment to try the Win16 or Win32s versions of WinImage, too.
They should run on Windows 98, as well. Or try WinImage 6.x. That's what I used in the XP days, I think.

If that still doesn't work, I suggest to check your floppy drive. Maybe it needs to be cleaned.
Checkit! can perform such a test, as far as I know. It has a built-in floppy test.
If you want to try it, please makle sure that the disk is fine before you start.

Anyway, good luck! 😀

Best regards,
Jo22

Edit: Oh I forgot.. Windows 98 is a floppy disk killer. But you know that already, I suppose.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-ihc-damage/

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 12, by Malvineous

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You can't copy the files normally for a bootable floppy because the operating system files have to be at a certain place on the disk. The DOS "SYS" program is used to make a floppy bootable because it knows what sectors on the disk the operating system files must be, and it can move other files out of the way if they are occupying those sectors. This is why just copying the files across doesn't work.

I don't have much experience with the Tandy but I guess the disk drives are PC-compatible, so you could move them to your Slot-1 machine if need be. However a blue screen when writing to a floppy suggests there's a bigger problem, such as a faulty stick of RAM or flaky chip on the motherboard. You could also try booting it in DOS mode and using a DOS imaging program to create the floppy.

3.5" drives have the same size head for 720k and 1.44M formats, so unlike 5.25" drives, it's fine to use a 1.44M drive to write to a 720k disk. Just make sure it's a real 720k disk and not a 1.44M one with one of the holes covered, as the two types of disks have different magnetic coatings and treating the disk as the wrong type (by drilling a hole or covering it up) often causes read problems.

Reply 5 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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Jo22 wrote:

Edit: Oh I forgot.. Windows 98 is a floppy disk killer. But you know that already, I suppose.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-ihc-damage/

Nope, I had no idea. This is pretty infuriating to read considering floppy disks aren't exactly cheap to get anymore -- I figured Windows 98 was the best and easiest place to work with them. Does this apply to MS-DOS 7 included with 98?

Malvineous wrote:

You can't copy the files normally for a bootable floppy because the operating system files have to be at a certain place on the disk. The DOS "SYS" program is used to make a floppy bootable because it knows what sectors on the disk the operating system files must be, and it can move other files out of the way if they are occupying those sectors. This is why just copying the files across doesn't work.

I figured this was the case. Unfortunately the 720KB version is already in a .imz file which I don't believe can be written to disk through DOS or any other program besides WinImage. What you've explained also means that a 360KB boot disk can never be written to a 720KB one, I imagine.

I don't have much experience with the Tandy but I guess the disk drives are PC-compatible, so you could move them to your Slot-1 machine if need be. However a blue screen when writing to a floppy suggests there's a bigger problem, such as a faulty stick of RAM or flaky chip on the motherboard. You could also try booting it in DOS mode and using a DOS imaging program to create the floppy.

3.5" drives have the same size head for 720k and 1.44M formats, so unlike 5.25" drives, it's fine to use a 1.44M drive to write to a 720k disk. Just make sure it's a real 720k disk and not a 1.44M one with one of the holes covered, as the two types of disks have different magnetic coatings and treating the disk as the wrong type (by drilling a hole or covering it up) often causes read problems.

Indeed, I bought Double Density disks for this purpose after I discovered the unreliability of using the tape trick.

Reply 6 of 12, by DosDaddy

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When you have data stored on real, physical media, the way to go is ImageDisk: It dumps everything that's actually readable as well as track/sector information into a raw file which allows for a perfect 1:1 reconstruction of the original disk if you've got the spare floppies. No need to care for formats or anything specific to any system.

Alternatively, and assuming compatible drivers and uncompressed images, you may use a hex editor like HxD to directly access the drive and manually dump/write the data yourself, which's what I use for zeroing out my old pen drives.

Reply 7 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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DosDaddy wrote:

When you have data stored on real, physical media

I'll keep this bookmarked for when I have physical disks to be backed up. For the Tandy MS-DOS 3.2 I only have the .DSK image files, though.

Reply 8 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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Ok, I traced the issues I'm having back to the fact that the hard drive in my Windows 98 PC was swapped from another system without being reformatted and a fresh OS. DOS has no complaints with such things but it makes sense that the motherboard, IDE, floppy controllers, etc would have driver issues in 98. After a fresh install and with WinImage 5.0 I was able to create a working 720KB boot disk from the 720KB image. I could not, however, create a boot disk from the 360K image onto the 720K disk... so it looks like if I want to create 360KB boot disks I need to get a 360K drive.

The issue I am having now is that I'm getting

"Invalid Drive Specification"

whenever I try to change to the C:\ drive -- not sure how I can create a DOS Partition with FDISK with this being the case. "SEAGATE BIOS....." shows up on during the POST and "One Drive Found" as well so I'm not sure how to proceed with installing DOS to the hard disk. I may make a new thread in another section at this point.

Reply 9 of 12, by Jo22

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Malvineous wrote:
You can't copy the files normally for a bootable floppy because the operating system files have to be at a certain place on the […]
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You can't copy the files normally for a bootable floppy because the operating system files have
to be at a certain place on the disk. The DOS "SYS" program is used to make a floppy bootable because it knows what
sectors on the disk the operating system files must be, and it can move other files out of the way if they are occupying
those sectors. This is why just copying the files across doesn't work.

That's right. The disk also needs to have a bit of spare space reserved for the boot loader code.
So someone can either do a "format a: /s" or "format a: /b" and "sys a:". On DOS 5/6 at least.
I forgot how things were done on DOS 2/3. The format utility had different commands, I believe.
DOS 2 or3 was also special in that it stored the system files in a special way.
Not sure how to explain. I saved them a way, so that they could be loaded from
withing a simgle chunk of data. As DOS grew, this feature was dropped.

infiniteclouds wrote:

Icould not, however, create a boot disk from the 360K image onto the 720K disk...
so it looks like if I want to create 360KB boot disks I need to get a 360K drive.

I managed to to write a 360KB image to an 1.44MB floppy with a taped hole.
As Malvineous pointed out, this is no permanent solution.

Writing to 360K formatted 1.44MB disks worked for me on my Win7 machine,
as well as on my PC/XT clone with a 720KB drive (i had to not load that floppy BIOS driver).

Formatting is a different beast, however.. Sometimes it didn't work very well.
My 286 with a 720KB refused to down-format 1.44 disks (I was running DOS 6.2).

If you have a working DOS system on your Tandy, you can try the following:
Run WinImage, open the IMZ file (IMG, zipped) and save it as *.IMG file.

On your XT/Tandy, run can than run Disk Copy Fast and write the image file to disk.
How to access the image file is up to you. A 360K floppy will fit on a 720KB disk.
Maybe you can copy it into a RAMdrive then. Or use a serial connection to your Win98 PC.
I mentioned a few programs for that in Re: Toshiba T3200SX BIOS?

Some links..

Disk Copy Fast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zEVBO84afk

FileMaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlL9XILVTs

PS: Sorry,for the bad writin. I'm a bit sleepy now. Can barely keep my eyes open. ^^

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 10 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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Using Img2Dsk in DOS rather than WinImage in 98 made all the difference. I was able to just Format A: /F:720 the disk and then copy the image 360KB image files over using Img2Dsk which specifics that the diskette must be 360KB 'or greater.'

Funnily enough -- now that the 1000SX has its original OS the 3.5" 720KB drive can properly format 720KB disks instead of only formatting the 3.5" disks to 360KB. It seems to be a bug with that system for anything later than 3.2. Now I just have to find some good resources to learn about the OS. I immediately noticed the pain of having to "Prompt $p$g" every time I start up the system if I want to get a basic prompt that shows my drive:\directory> and "Edit" doesn't do anything so I can't create an autoexec.bat. Also Attrib only has Attrib -r and I think Attrib -s neither of which seem to reveal any hidden folders. I actually have the original manuals for the system but the MS-DOS section isn't all that comprehensive. It's nice to be able to use Mode.com properly to change the CRT modes as well as Mode Fast/Mode Slow to switch between 4.77 and 7.16mhz.

Reply 11 of 12, by Malvineous

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Glad to hear you got it working! Sounds like it was a modified version of DOS with some machine-specific defaults built in. You can probably address the drive issue by loading DRIVER.SYS in later DOS versions, which override the defaults and can change the drive type, but the other issues might be more difficult (unless you can configure SETVER to allow the older utilities to run in a newer DOS version).

Without 'edit', you have to resort to the old "copy con autoexec.bat" to make one by typing it in by hand - welcome to the early DOS days 😀

Reply 12 of 12, by infiniteclouds

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Thanks! Yeah I've since learned the "Joy" of Edlin.