Amstrad 2086 Bios and Upgrades

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2 total messages Started by William Fang Tue, 22 Feb 1994 07:25

#30

Author: William Fang
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 07:25

16 lines
1207 bytes

I'm trying to upgrade the ST-506/mfm hard-drive inside a friend's
computer.

It's an Amstrad PC 2086, 640K V1.4 (C) Amstrad 1988.

How do I get into the BIOS to tell the Amstrad the geometry
of the new hard-drive, which is significantly bigger than the
old one?  I have tried using fdisk, but the computer has trouble
reading the hard-drive, obviously I need to set the drive in the
bios.

Thanks for any help.


- Jim

Re: Amstrad 2086 Bios and Upgrades

#31

Author: Tooraj Enayati
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 22:35

32 lines
2127 bytes

int877w@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au (William Fang) writes:

>I'm trying to upgrade the ST-506/mfm hard-drive inside a friend's
>computer.

>It's an Amstrad PC 2086, 640K V1.4 (C) Amstrad 1988.

>How do I get into the BIOS to tell the Amstrad the geometry
>of the new hard-drive, which is significantly bigger than the
>old one?  I have tried using fdisk, but the computer has trouble
>reading the hard-drive, obviously I need to set the drive in the
>bios.

You are out of luck Jim (or is it William - I can never figure out!).

2086 is an XT as you might know by know. It doen't have a BIOS such as
that you could set up a drive parameters.

It comes with a MFM (some of the have RLL the 30MB ones) controller that
handels the bootup. What yo need is the old debug command to at C800 or
is it C500. Something like that depends on the controller cards BIOS.
It will prompt you for disk parameters and the will low level format it
for you. The you try FDISK.

Someone with better MFM and XT knowledge could probably help you with
the low level format command for the controller card.

Good luck.
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________________
Tooraj Enayati     Melbourne    Australia   tooraj@daneel.rdt.monash.edu.au

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