pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-06-24, 23:35:

Any chance the hard drive is a conner or very early IDE hard drive that uses cirrus logic IDE controller on the hard drive's? This cirrus logic chipset on the hard drives is not compatible when trying to make 2 drive to work on one cable.

Otherwise, what is the hard drive you have in this tandy?

Cheers,

The Tandy 1000 TL/2 has a built in XT style hard drive controller. It is not actually IDE, even though they use the same connectors. The ISA card that is my XT-IDE + CF card reader is NOT connected to the Tandy 1000 TL/2 hard drive controller. The XT-IDE ISA device is an XT-IDE BIOS and an IDE controller on a card, with the CF adapter bound to the card. These devices are NOT using the hard drive controller on the motherboard, and therefore not the same cable. The drive in the computer is a Western Digital XT hard drive.

This is the XT-IDE ISA card I am using for my CF adapter: https://monotech.fwscart.com/XT-IDE_Deluxe_-_ … 4_19478732.aspx

There MIGHT be some kind of address conflict with the onboard HD controller, but I figured I would have been able to exclude this by changing IDE controller addresses on the ISA card. So far, changing the address of the ISA card's IDE controller hasn't helped, but I haven't gone through all the available addresses. I wanted to come here to see what other Tandy 1000 TL/2 owners were using on theirs.

Here is the XT-IDE CF card I am using that I got on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124118342613?hash=it … LQAAOSwAkZebZdB

I have also used this one by Lo-Tech from TexElec:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284233499409?hash=it … -0AAOSwk-1aBSf-
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284328312846?hash=it … F0AAOSwC51dSLoJ

Both worked just fine, but the one from Lo-Tech needs to have the first 16K of the BIOS image padded with hex FFFF when the adapter is set to C800 for the ROM address. It's is documented on the Lo-Tech website for use with some Tandy 1000s like the TL/2.

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-06-25, 01:17:

Here is the XT-IDE CF card I am using that I got on eBay. […]
Show full quote

Here is the XT-IDE CF card I am using that I got on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124118342613?hash=it … LQAAOSwAkZebZdB

I have also used this one by Lo-Tech from TexElec:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284233499409?hash=it … -0AAOSwk-1aBSf-
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284328312846?hash=it … F0AAOSwC51dSLoJ

Both worked just fine, but the one from Lo-Tech needs to have the first 16K of the BIOS image padded with hex FFFF when the adapter is set to C800 for the ROM address. It's is documented on the Lo-Tech website for use with some Tandy 1000s like the TL/2.

Thanks. Yeah, I saw that about the BIOS image padding. Mine works fine with the BIOS, and I'm glad, because I didn't want to have to deal with hex editing a BIOS image. That's hackery that I am not comfortable doing.

Do you know which IDE port address(es) you're using?

dysamoria wrote on 2021-07-02, 07:29:

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-06-25, 01:17:

Here is the XT-IDE CF card I am using that I got on eBay. […]
Show full quote

Here is the XT-IDE CF card I am using that I got on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124118342613?hash=it … LQAAOSwAkZebZdB

I have also used this one by Lo-Tech from TexElec:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284233499409?hash=it … -0AAOSwk-1aBSf-
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284328312846?hash=it … F0AAOSwC51dSLoJ

Both worked just fine, but the one from Lo-Tech needs to have the first 16K of the BIOS image padded with hex FFFF when the adapter is set to C800 for the ROM address. It's is documented on the Lo-Tech website for use with some Tandy 1000s like the TL/2.

Thanks. Yeah, I saw that about the BIOS image padding. Mine works fine with the BIOS, and I'm glad, because I didn't want to have to deal with hex editing a BIOS image. That's hackery that I am not comfortable doing.

Do you know which IDE port address(es) you're using?

The standard XT-IDE port number 300.

I'm not sure what the actual problem was, but I am suspecting it was the DOS version not liking both devices. When I booted from a DOS 5.0 upgrade diskette, I could see both drives (HD and CF), so I was able to copy stuff from the HD to the CF. I then unplugged the HD and all seems to work fine. I've closed up the machine and started looking for games that run on it.

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

dysamoria wrote on 2021-07-15, 20:49:

I'm not sure what the actual problem was, but I am suspecting it was the DOS version not liking both devices. When I booted from a DOS 5.0 upgrade diskette, I could see both drives (HD and CF), so I was able to copy stuff from the HD to the CF. I then unplugged the HD and all seems to work fine. I've closed up the machine and started looking for games that run on it.

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

Glad you got things working!

Good on you for persevering and sorting out the issue and sharing it...😉

Greetings all,

Sorry to revive a semi-old thread but I recently purchased the same card as @jasa1063 (Blue Lava XT-IDE) for use with a Tandy 1000 TL/2.

When I install the card in the machine and attempt to boot, the machine boots from the internal hard drive as if the card is not there at all. If I disconnect the internal hard drive, the machine just boots into the ROM DOS. I am not sure I am using the right settings on the card (port/address/options) and was hoping that someone could provide them.

Thanks,
DJ

dannycamps wrote on 2022-06-16, 17:23:

Greetings all, […]
Show full quote

Greetings all,

Sorry to revive a semi-old thread but I recently purchased the same card as @jasa1063 (Blue Lava XT-IDE) for use with a Tandy 1000 TL/2.

When I install the card in the machine and attempt to boot, the machine boots from the internal hard drive as if the card is not there at all. If I disconnect the internal hard drive, the machine just boots into the ROM DOS. I am not sure I am using the right settings on the card (port/address/options) and was hoping that someone could provide them.

Thanks,
DJ

Making it boot from XT-IDE should be a good start. You can compare the address settings with those I used in my video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDfGeSXS3A - as you will see TL is very picky about the disk devices - it wouldn't boot with a particular card (it wouldn't even POST!) while with another one it works perfectly fine.

HanJammer wrote on 2022-06-17, 00:09:

Making it boot from XT-IDE should be a good start. You can compare the address settings with those I used in my video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDfGeSXS3A - as you will see TL is very picky about the disk devices - it wouldn't boot with a particular card (it wouldn't even POST!) while with another one it works perfectly fine.

Thank you. This was helpful. I was able to get the card to boot by disabling the onboard controller via setuptl2. Next question - is there a way to have it boot from the card but still retain access to the onboard HDD? When I keep them both enabled, the XT-IDE BIOS screen shows up and says booting from C, but then boots from the internal drive on the machine and seems to ignore the CF card.

dannycamps wrote on 2022-06-17, 17:02:

Thank you. This was helpful. I was able to get the card to boot by disabling the onboard controller via setuptl2. Next question - is there a way to have it boot from the card but still retain access to the onboard HDD? When I keep them both enabled, the XT-IDE BIOS screen shows up and says booting from C, but then boots from the internal drive on the machine and seems to ignore the CF card.

It's a matter of controller address. You can have more than one controller, but generally the lower-address controller will boot. Try changing the controller address for xt-ide, although keep in mind that memory map of the TL is pretty congested and it make take a while until you figure out suitable configuration.