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INSTALLATION OF TANDY 20 MEG HARD CARD DRIVE (25-1029)
This file is not an authoritative manual on installing and
formatting the Tandy 20meg hardcard. Rather, it is offered because I
was able to get the drive installed and formatted and working where
others have had trouble, and in hopes that the procedure I used may
work for others, or at least help pinpoint where the problem is.
The card was installed on a Tandy 1000SX, with ROM BIOS 1.02,
640K installed on the motherboard.
1. It appears that, at least for the various models of Tandy
1000, the automatic installation program is a bust. So far, everyone
who has tried it has bombed out. This is the auto-install program
contained on the 20 Meg Hard Drive Utilities Disk which comes with the
drive. The so-called Auto-Install Disk does not exist.
2. Since the most common failure I encountered with the
installation program involved the formatting freezing while attempting
cylinder 306 (out of 611) I offer the thought that possibly the
program is really meant only to do a 10-meg drive. At any rate, here
was my procedure.
3. First, I formatted a disk using MS-DOS 3.2, using the /s
switch to transfer the system. Then I added to this disk the
LLFORMAT.EXE program from the Hard Drive Utilities Disk, and FDISK.COM
from the MS-DOS 3.2 Supplement Disk and FORMAT.COM from MS-DOS 3.2.
4. Placing this disk in Drive A, I typed LLFORMAT c:3 The
command does a lowlevel format on Drive C, using an interleave factor
of 3. Three was chosen because that is the value used by the auto-
install program. You will see a message identifying the program as
"EPD Low Level Format Revision 1.0, (C) Western Digital 1985. You will
also see a message claiming that it takes 4 minutes to format a 10 meg
drive and 8 for a 20. Since mine took 4 mins, 13 secs, I assume that
the 7.16 clock speed of the SX affects this, too. Nothing happens
while it is formatting; at the end of the process you will get a
message that the format was completed, and you will be back at the A>
prompt.
5. Next, type FDISK enter>. This is FDISK.COM V1.00.00
Copyright 1985 Tandy. You will have a menu of 6 choices. Take Choice
1--Create DOS Partition. You will be asked if you want to use the
entire drive for DOS. Answer Y, and the system will pause a moment,
and then prompt you to put a DOS disk in Drive A (you already have)
and press any key to reboot.
6. When you have rebooted, you can, if you wish, use FDISK
again. This time, use Choice 4--Display Partition Data. You should
see:
Partition Status Type Start End Size
1 A DOS 0 610 611
Total Hard Disk Space is 611 Cylinders.
7. Now for the last step. You will now need to format the
drive, just the same as for a floppy disk, transferring the system at
the same time. At the A> prompt, just type FORMAT C:/s return> You
will see the screen display counting through the cylinders being
formatted. It will probably pause for a few moments at 306. Don't
panic...this time it will continue, going all the way to the end.
Good luck!.....Paul