Dual Teac floppy won't do 720 Kb

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2 total messages Started by John Gilman Fri, 21 Mar 1997 00:00

Author: John Gilman
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 00:00

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I have a Club 286 (an AT clone) with an AMI BIOS that doesn't recognize
3.5" floppies.  The Access Methods Inc. BIOS was a problem from the
start because even though I payed Club America extra for an enhanced
keyboard, the BIOS didn't recognize the extra keys.  A few months later
when I recognized the deficiency the price was $80 for a new BIOS which
I thought excessive, so I didn't replace it.  Both floppy drives are
now set to "high density" on SETUP.

I recently installed a new Teac dual 1.2/1.44 Mb dual floppy drive.  In
order to make my computer recognize the 1.44 Mb drive I included the
line "DRIVPARM = /D:1 /F:7" in my config.sys file.  This allows my 3.5"
drive to be the B drive so that I can still boot from the 5.25" A drive
if need be.

The problem I now have is that the B drive won't read, write, nor
format 720 Kb floppies.  Many of the games I had hoped to use came on
720 Kb 3.5" floppies.  I tried the new drive with associated cable in a
friend's computer that had a newer bios and it worked perfectly, so I'm
confident the drive and cable are ok.

I'm running a 540 Mb Maxtor SCSI-2 hard drive from an Adaptec 1522 ISA
adaptor card and the floppy cable is plugged into this card.

I've tried various combinations of the drivparm and driver.sys commands
in my config.sys and haven't been able to find a solution.  Any ideas?
John Gilman

Re: Dual Teac floppy won't do 720 Kb

Author: Computer Guy
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 1997 00:00

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John Gilman wrote:
> 
> I have a Club 286 (an AT clone) with an AMI BIOS that doesn't recognize
> 3.5" floppies.  

[snip]

> when I recognized the deficiency the price was $80 for a new BIOS which
> I thought excessive, 

Is your 286 in a standard clone-type case?  For that $80 you could have
bought a 486 board which would have had a modern BIOS.  Even if you
don't have a standard case, you should be able to buy a case with 230w
p/s for about $35 mailorder.  Check out "Computer Recyclers" and similar
companies on the web.  Also, upgrade to DOS 6.22, you can get it from
surplus software outlets for $19.99 (I am assuming that you don't do
Windows)  :-)

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