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I moved from a Color Computer to an original Tandy 1000, then a 1000 TX
and finally, a 1000 TL. The move from the TX to the TL was a real learning
experience because there were so many changes from the older 1000's. Here's a
few things I learned about installing a hard drive on the TL.
For hard-drives, on the TL and SL, you're better off to use SETUPTL so
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are read from drive A: and DOS from disk. With
this configuration, it'll check drive A: first and then boot from the hard
drive (including CONFIG and AUTOEXEC) IF there's no disk in A. The reason I
strongly suggest this, is that, as I found out the hard way, if it's set to
read those files from the hard drive, it won't even try to boot from drive A.
This is fine as long as everything is going ok but if you like to tinker with
Config.sys as I do, or something happens to the boot files on the hard
drive so the computer hangs up when booting then the only way you're going to
be able to boot from a floppy is to pull the hard-drive out, boot from a
floppy, use SETUPTL to change back to factory settings, reinstall the hard
drive and boot from floppy again. I'm not sure if this situation is caused by
the TL, DOS 3.3 or both but it definitely is better to have the option of
booting from floppy available even if it means slightly slower boot up time.
When installing a hard drive on the TL and I imagine, the SL, be sure
everything is set to use interupt 5, not 2 as with the older 1000's. This
means, with RS hard drives, the jumpers be set the same as for the 3000. And
on the TL motherboard, the jumper at the back for the video interupt must be
set to enable interupt 5. That's the jumper the TL manual tells you to change
if older games don't run. If you find after installing a new, preformatted
hard drive you get the C> prompt but it hangs from there, that's probably what
the problem is.
Another tip when installing hard drives on any computer but especially if
you get a drive already formatted is to check the interleave of the drive
before you start installing programs on it. I got a 40 meg hard card from the
Shack that was pre formatted with an interleave of 4 which was was probably
fine for the 3000 but after some testing with a program called Spintest (from
INTRLV.ARC from one of the IBM SIGS) it turned out not to be optimum for the
TL. I eventually found that an interleave of 6 made a HUGE difference in
read/write time with that combination of computer and hard-drive. There are
some programs that do this for you automatically but they don't work on all
drives. I changed the interleave by redoing all the formatting manually.
Takes longer but it's safer. Just follow the instructions for the hard drive
for manual formatting. You'll be prompted for the interleave along the way.
Be sure you get a disk of hard disk utils to go with the hard drive. You can
do this if you already have programs on the drive but be sure you have it
backed up first, especially if use one of the programs that claim to change
the interleave without reformatting. You can get more information on
interleave from the IBMSIGS.
Also, I'm not at my TL so I can't check this, but I'm pretty sure to get
at the option in SETUPTL to install a second or third floppy, you have to use
/A. IE- SETUPTL/A. This is not mentioned anywhere in the manuals I have.
Without the /A, you only get one page of options. Using the /A gets you
around 10 pages of options. Use PGUP/PGDN to get at the other pages. A word
of caution though, changing some of the settings can have unpredictable
results. For instance, if you reduce the amount of video RAM, you won't be
able to run Deskmate.
Daryl Larsen