Dual Teac floppy won't do 720 Kb (fwd)

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2 total messages Started by John Gilman Fri, 04 Apr 1997 00:00

Author: John Gilman
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 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 and to perform all normal 1.44 Mb functions.  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?
Any hope?
John Gilman

Re: Dual Teac floppy won't do 720 Kb (fwd)

Author: Guy Martin
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 00:00

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John Gilman wrote:
> 
> 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?
> Any hope?
> John Gilman

Man... I love your dedication to wanting to preserve your i286 based
PC.  But, for the price you payed (assumption) for the dual floppy Teac
drive you could have upgraded to a PCI based motherboard with an
AMD586-133Mhz CPU w/fan and pushed it to 160 Mhz.  I know... speed is
not a necessity for you.  Mixing todays components with the older
hardware is tough though.  My suggestion would be to upgrade your MB. 
Network, ask around, see if anyone's got a 386 or 486 sitting around on
a shelf collecting dust that they'll just give to you.  I just tossed
two 486 ISA MB's in the trash a couple of weeks ago.  They're out there,
parts, just sitting on shelves not being used...

   -g

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