Greetings from Arizona

[Architecture8088]

Hi everyone, I am a 20 year old college student who has an unhealthy fascination with computers from the 80's and 70's.

Here's what I got

I currently own an IBM XT with 640kb ram, 33mb Harddrive, single full height floppy drive, cga adapter, and an original monitor. I probably paid a bit much, which was 350 dollars, but it came with original documentation and software such as DOS 3.30 with manual, and IBM Diagnostic disc and manual as well (ver 2.02). I figured if I bought a 40 dollar one that was barebones, It would have cost the same if I went and tracked down all of the parts otherwise.

I also own a C 64C edition, as it is one of the newer models. I have a 1541-C drive as well as a 1530 tape drive to go along with it. I would have never though that this computer would have so much support for it, as I can still buy new stuff for it, which makes it easier to get software for.

and what im trying to do and need help with

I have retrofitted my Pentium Celeron 1ghz machine with a 1.2mb FDD, which works perfectly and everything. What I am having problems with is trying to get my IBM XT to recongize the files that I copy to the DS/DD disks using the 1.2mb FDD drive on my XP machine (its a Teac FD-55GFR in case your wondering).

The next big problem I have is trying to figure out what are the correct prameters I need to format a floppy disk in DOS 3.30. It doesn't have the nice feature where all you have to do is /f:360, I wish it had that feature, but it wants you to specify everything down to the track amount etc.

I look forward to running my 8088 with something other than the built in basic games it came with.

[Druid6900]

Welcome to the forum and I think it's the /4 switch to do a 360K in 3.30

[Architecture8088]

Thats what I thought, but my manual says that thats if you formating a 360kb disk in a 1.2mb fdd. I have a full height 360kb floppy drive, so i'll have to try to deciepher what the manual says.

Im a noob when it comes to formatting FD's in DOS.

[JDT]

ok, few things. All of which may be entirely inaccurate, who knows. But If I recall, using a the floppy disks in drives they were not meant to be used in is bad for them (ie using a DD 360k in a 1.2 drive and using a HD 1.2mb disk in a 360k drive) something to do with magnetic strength and quickened disk degredation. Also, as you have probably noticed, XP doesnt nativly support formatting of the older disk types, and I have little faith in using the format command with switches, I'm lucky enough to have a few machine that boot older OS's and can use them to format disks if need be. Just this summer I aquirred like 4 boxes of DD 360k disks and the HD disks I had formatted to to 360k began to fail after a few dozen uses.

[NathanAllan]

Also, as you have probably noticed, XP doesnt nativly support formatting of the older disk types

This occurred to me, too. As a side note, do tel howyou got XP to see those older disks. I haven't exactly kept up with all the patches and things, so I might have missed something.

Nathan

[Erik]

Welcome to the VC Forums!

There is nothing unhealthy about your fascination!

Enjoy!

[Terry Yager]

Writing a DD disk in a HD drive is usually problematic. The disks are often unreadable in a DD drive afterwards. Also, if you're formatting 360K disks in an XT under 3.3, you don't need any switches, it's the default format. Just be sure that the disks are DD, as HD disks don't format down well, if at all (especially if they're pre-formatted at the factory).

--T

[Architecture8088]

These are definitely DD disks, unformatted at that. I have successfully used them with my C64, so the disks are good.

Erik: What makes me say that is im like one of the only people I know that has any interest in these vintage machines. All my friends are like "why did you get this peice of junk?" And there are tech geeks as well.

I like the older stuff more because it is far more reliable than any windows machine. I can't tell you how many times Windows 95 crashed on me. I stopped playing PC games when Windows stopped natively supporting MS DOS.

Now with DOSBox, its a different story.

[MikeS]

If the DD disks are *really* unformatted, i.e. brand new/unformatted or bulk erased, there shouldn't be a problem writing on them with an HD drive and then reading them on either drive. It is a little less reliable, but most of the time problems are due to writing the narrower HD track on top of the wider DD track, which leaves some of the DD data or format unerased. See the thread "Problem with XT formatting floppies."

In XP, Run, Command, Format /? will show you the options; /F does not work any longer except with 3.5" disks, but /T:40 /N:9 does still work AFAIK (don't know about the /4 option & don't have an XP box with a 5.25 drive handy to try it out on.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_format
for a good list of the different /T & /N options.