Thanks again for the info. I appreciate it.

I do not want to hijack this thread, but since this is one of the few active threads on this machine on pretty much any site, I hope it's my best chance to get somewhere, maybe you can shed some light on my troubles since you have a working system. I have a Tandy 1000sx that no matter the bios in my ISA-CF adapter will not boot a formatted CF, even though in a newer Tandy (2100) with the exact same ISA-CF adapter card etc it boots fine. The 1000sx gets the the Boot C and does not progress
The CF card is 4GB partitioned, formatted as 2.1GB, and has DOS 6.22 installed with nothing else at the moment.
Is there a partition size limitation, a jumper, switch or something simple I am overlooking?
Thank you anyone who answers for your attention and time.

I have xt-cf-lite in my 1000sx no problems but my partitions are 31mb on DOS 3.31, Does your XT-IDE adapter have an XT or AT bios in it? Do you have an 8088 or did you upgrade your sx to an NEC V20?

btw, DOS6 is not much good on the 1000sx. DOS3 will give you the most free memory.

XT Bios flashed with an eeprom writer. It is using the 12kb build atm to try troubleshooting However I do have the V-20, that is if its a legit one and not a reprinted top. I bought on ebay and have yet to get anything meaningful to run to test if it is the real deal as I received it 2 days ago. It won't use the 8186 builds so I am not sure yet. It hangs at the 640kb check. I am aware of the memory usage of 6.22 but at the moment, of all my old disks these are the only fully working ones that I could use to format anything. I'll have to work out means to write others I guess.

I have seen another post where 256mb seems to be the upper limit of boot-able partitions, so this may be my problem.
This 1000sx developed a problem shortly after I first got it to work. The floppy controller is not sending the needed signals to the drives to step through tracks. I see a YouTuber or two seems to have this same problem. I'll get it on the scope eventually to work out the problem, but in the meantime I am using the Tandy 2100 to format the CF

Thank you for the info, I might be on the right track now ( partition size ) Not entirely sure why but next thing to try I guess.

wolvenar wrote:

XT Bios flashed with an eeprom writer.

Wait, please tell - did you run the XT-IDE configuration utilitiy for DOS beforehand ?
If not, this might be part of the issue. Afaik, it writes some vital data to the ROM file when saving the settings (checksum, etc.).
Anyway, it's just a guess.. I had some similar issues once and made a little video because of that.

No, I didn't run the configuration utility. I did not realize this would be necessary. I have done this with a few other systems without trouble.
I cannot get software to run on that machine atm because the floppy controller, which once worked when I first got this, will not step the heads of drives now. This is one of the main reasons I am trying to do this. One day I'll be able to make the time it could take to get this on the bench with a scope and figure the floppy drive problem out. It has to be a non socketed IC at this point, as I have tried swaps in everything relevant. I was hoping though that I wouldn't need to worry to much about the floppy drives given their troubles. At first I thought that the last 360k drive I had failed, but a Gotek setup with Flash Floppy and proper 360k images do not work in this either. It acts like its accessing the drive, but the step pulse is just not there.
This Gotek floppy emu setup boots the Tandy 2100 as well. I actually plan to use it to repartition and format the CF card to ~200mb and DOS 3.3.
I am not home until weekends to work on this so, Sat I'll have more hands on I can report.

On the todo list:
Install DOS 3.3 on CF with partitions smaller that 256mb
Reconfigure the current best working ROM with more customized settings. *EDIT* I notice you do not need to run this on the desired machine.

With this in mind, Would a preconfigured image for a Tandy 1000sx from another working machine do?
I would assume most are going to be pretty much the same.?.
Again thanks everyone for the help.
Is it a good idea to fork this to another thread?
I really don't want to step on the OPs thread unless its ok with them.
I thought though it might be a good place find someone that was currently working with one of these (the OP).

OK, sorry for the late update. I reformatted the CF to DOS 3.3 limits, (32mb), transferred the system etc and it boots great.
I'll make a new thread on the floppy controller fix here on Vogons when I get to the point I can tackle the project.

Thanks to everyone that responded.

I can affirm that there IS a limit on partition size with the Tandy 1000sx. Even with DOS 6.22 it will only address 256mb partitions.
Apparently you also cannot use that additional space on the CF for more partitions either?
This is apparently why I could not boot from the CF setup on a later model system.
I have seen it mentioned on the net before, so maybe I am just slow and out of the loop?
I also tried multiple CF, and various builds of the XTIDE BIOS including the 186 build for the NEC v-20 I have in this system.

Is there possibly something else I am missing, or is this a normal limitation?

wolvenar wrote:

Is there possibly something else I am missing, or is this a normal limitation?

Hard to say. In my place, getting an overpriced Amiga 1000 is easier than getting a Tandy 1000.. 🙁
That's why I am, like some others here are, unable to perform any testing in that regards.
Strictly speaking, the Tandy 1000 is rather a PC Jr. clone than an PC/XT compatible also,
so there might be some quirks or limits within the Tandy 1000 architecture I / we don't know of yet.

That's interesting to hear that they are tough to come by..
I actually have 2 that were given to me. One is a 1000a ( in BAD shape) and then the 1000sx I have been concentrating on first.

Hi, it depends on where you live, I guess. Here in Europe, the Tandy 1000 isn't very common to find.
In Canada, for example, I suppose it might be easier to get hold of than an early Amiga computer model.
This reminds me of my old Sharp MZ-700. from what I read it (along with the 800 series) was well known in Japan, GB, W-Germany and
Czechoslovakia (?) for a while, while the rest of the world never really heard of it (except Australia, maybe). Gratefuly, this is different with the Tandy 1000. 😀

Hi, Jo22.

Thank you for the PM. I do not have access to that feature yet. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you, too.

Thanks! Your're welcome. Merry Christmas everyone. ^^

To you as well

Thank you! I also wish you a happy new year! ^^

Hi everyone, just found something that could be useful to you or whoever may browses this thread somewhen.
It's JrIDE, an adaption of XTIDE for the IBM PC Junior (incl. hardware). I have no idea how well it works with a Tandy 1000,
especially since it also interferes with memory settings, but maybe it is more compatible to it than the stock XTIDE version
(since the PC Jr. once was more or less the role model for the Tandy).
http://www.brutman.com/jrIDE/jrIDE.html

I would like some help on a related issue if possible.
I have a Tandy 1000SL/2 running DOS 3.3 with a Lo-Tech XT-IDE with TexElec CF adapter.
The machine is working perfectly when using a 32MB CF card. I can get C:\>(hard card), D:\>(XTIDE CF), and E:\>(ROM)
BUT, I'm trying to get a Sandisk 1GB CF card to work and I'm having no luck.
One thing that is making this difficult is the fact that I have no working floppy drive.
I can get stuff into the computer by using my 32MB CF card and transferring onto my built in hard card.
Tried running FDISK on the 1GB CF from the DOS directory on my hard card, but it fails to partition it. I can see it in the FDISK menu, but can't do anything with it.
My brain is fried from all this. Please help.

I was able to use my P3 Win98SE machine to partition the card with 32MB primary DOS partion and then I could put it in the Tandy to make 32MB partitions all the way to drive Z:\>
That is the only solution I have found for my situation using MS-DOS 3.3. The card can really only be used with those two computers though....My Windows 7 machine will only see the primary partition. If I want to transfer stuff from that computer, I have to put it on the primary partition, move it to the P3 Win98SE machine, copy the files to any of the secondary partitions, delete the files from the primary partition....It's a pain in the rear.

lbruington wrote:

One thing that is making this difficult is the fact that I have no working floppy drive.

That's a common issue. On my oldest PC, I'm using a Gotek floppy emulator with FlashFloppy because of this. 😉

lbruington wrote:

That is the only solution I have found for my situation using MS-DOS 3.3. The card can really only be used with those two comput […]
Show full quote

That is the only solution I have found for my situation using MS-DOS 3.3.
The card can really only be used with those two computers though....My Windows 7 machine will only see the primary partition.
If I want to transfer stuff from that computer, I have to put it on the primary partition, move it to the P3 Win98SE machine,
copy the files to any of the secondary partitions, delete the files from the primary partition....It's a pain in the rear.

That's a known limitation of both DOS 3.3 and Windows. In Mac OS (or rather Mac OS X, macOS) you can see all partitions appearing on the desktop (if not, Disk Utility may help)..
Same for Linux, I remember. The 32MB limit is quite normal for DOS 3.3x, as it uses the original FAT16 (the nowadays FAT16 variant is FAT16B aka BigDOS).

Hi guys, happy to stumble across this thread, as I'm the unhappy owner of a Tandy 1000 Tl2 in great working order with a rev3 lo-tech XT-IDE CF 8-bit card that gets recognized (@d800) but won't recognize the CF drive no matter what size and type I try - the board won't display its startup msg at all if i jump it to c800h.

When the board does recognize @d800 It displays 'no master/slave drive @300'...and goes to built in C: with system files for boot. I used setupTl to change boot to disk, not rom.

James P (assuming that's @JJ_pearce here) did email me instructions to flash the bios - 6 months ago!- with padded (FF) after merging the board bios, but to actually read the Tl2 xt controller rom using debug is beyond me sadly :'(

A nice guy (Dr Zeiss) here (i think) did direct me to a padded rom.bin file posted somewhere that was Tl2 specific for the xt-ide but that didn't work.

To say I flashed the thing (using the flash.exe that Texelec supplies with the card) about 20 times with different jumpers, addresses, and IDE-XTP.bin etc is understating the frustration. I just need a really simple debug command line spelled out (dos 3.3 is what this beast has)... and to get dos 5 or 6 on this thing is near impossible without spending $$$ on ebay finding upgrade 720k disks.