Uncreative Labs

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

Hi, i am from Turkey and a few days ago i found an old pc from the basement (neighbour's) it has 8mhz processor and 640kb ram, seagate st-225 21mb harddisk, two 5,25 inch floppy drive. it has a cga graphics card with printer port but i couldn't make it work because i didn't have a monitor. so i searched in forums and someone sent me isa vga card and a few isa ethernet card for free Smile

it is really hard to find this kind of old stuff especially in Turkey Smile

. i plugged the vga graphics card and turned it on.

After vga bios information (sometimes colored sometimes white&black)
it wrote on screen;

System Ready !

then,

interface card list
--------------------
color/graphics
printer #03bc

then it tested ram till 640kb.

then,

BEST PC ve XT BIOS ("ve" means "and" in Turkish)

and "02" under the "BEST PC ve XT BIOS"

then i press enter and i hear continuous beeeep and it says

Error # ady !

rface card listMonochrome0

then

rface card listMonochrome7E

after that it restarts and same thing happens over on over. what should i do?

Computer has a floppy control card and a harddisk control card. it has a logo "BEST" in front of it. nothing more Sad

Thanks for your help.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

You are running an XT type system, so you need to change some switches on the motherboard when changing graphics card. You'll need to set the graphics for either "EGA","VGA" or "NONE" in order to get rid of that error.

Some photos might help.

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

thanks for the tip. i will try to locate for jumper/switch options. by the way processor is Fujitsu MBL8088-2. i saw this while cleaning Smile

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

by the way processor is Fujitsu MBL8088-2. i saw this while cleaning

That's not a big surprise. The 8088 line was licensed to (and copied by) many manufacturers in the day of the XT. First Intel couldn't keep up with the unexpected demand and sub-contracted manufacturing to AMD. This later came back to haunt Intel when AMD gained the rights to it:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/8088/MANUF-AMD.html

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

is appears to be an old XT class comoputer
and the advice , so far seems toi be correct
BUT if the switch settings do not match the video card and monitor type
you will only see a blinging - on the screen..
since it "clocks up" to 640k the memory chips are all seated in the sockets properly
the bios reports something so it is seated properly
( after a long time sometimes these chips loosen up) this seems NO to be happening here.

You will need some kind of " boot floppy disk" are any 5.25" floppies available.? the disk will say DSDD
there will be a re inforcement ring on the large center hile.

NOT DSHD. that is a 1.2m floppy disk and cannot be used.

Windows machines are fussy and picky about formatting other disks. and someone can send you an image of a boot disk. but transferring it to a 5.25 inch 360disl may be tricky.

First see if you can finmd or make a Boot Disk from what you have available
Older dos disks are better.

there are some work-arounds.
using newer hardware temporarily.
a 1.44 floppy drive and a 720k floppy disk can be used for test purposes.

the seagate st-225 drive may be good and even contain files.
but you have to proceed slowly step-by step.
one thing to try NOW is to remove and replace the slide on cables on the back of the hard drive. OR just move them partly off and then on. This was a common problem then.

I am hoping the controller is a western digital or DTC with the connectors on the top and side and horizontal.
either a short card or a 2/3 length card.

the original IMB HD controller a Xebec long card with the connectore vertically at the extreme front. worked but was not a really good card.

let us know.

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

i tried to boot form 3,5 inc 1,44mb floppy but it did't work. once i got "boot disk failure" error. after restarting the pc i never see it again. after powering on the system, it says "system ready" under this "04"

i don't know what 04 means.

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~preid/pcxtsw.htm

i set sw 5 and 6 to ON and ON. i don't get monochrome error but after seeing system ready and 04, i press enter. it says best pc & xt bios.
cursor blinks, floppy runs continuously (there is no disk inserted) and nothing happens.

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

floppy control card's chip is "Zilog z0765a08psc FDC 8644"
hd control card: LCS-6210D (REV.E)

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

1.2mb and 1.44 mb drives won't work correctly in XTs without a special controller. Do you have any 360kb floppies that you can boot from? It sounds like your ST-225 is not working correctly, so the system is not able to boot up without a floppy. On real IBMs when no disk is inserted, it will boot to BASIC, but this feature was rarely available on XT clones.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

a 1.2 floppy drive is not usable
it is often hard to tell if a drive is 1.2 or 360k
the drives installed in the xt class pc will be 360k drives.

a 1.44 drive will not work as a 1.44 drive. EVER unless you have a special type of controller.

HOWEVER a 1.44 drive will work as a 720k drive when a properly formatted 720k floppy disk is used
(it will have one corner hole not 2)
I mention this because you probably will not have any easy way to make a bootable 360k 5.25" floppy disk.

BUT if you have a 720k floppy disk, you can format it and go to www.bootdisk.com and download a bootable disk image.

The 1.44 floppy drive will have pins on the back and the 360k drives will have gold fingers.

there is a cable called a "universal floppy cable" that has 5 connectors.
!- for pins ( on a modern mb)
2) socket for fingers
3) for pins ( b drive on a newer pc)
some sort of cable TWIST near the striped side.
4- another connector for the edge card
5- another connector for pins.

in a newer pc 1 goes to the mb
and 5 goes to the a: floppy.
IGNORE 1
put 2 on the xt floppy controller
put 5 on the 1.44 drive being used as a 720k drive,
you will also need a power cable adapter to go from the wide 2 wire connector to the narrow 4 pin connector on the 1.44 floppy.
This will work.
BUT the xt will format that floppy as a 360k 3.5" disk.
I am not sure you can FAKE it by taping over the second hole in a 1.44 floppy to make the newer pc THINK it is a 720k. It may work.

the hard drive. after you move the cables on the hard drive. back and forth , it may or may not work.

IF you can get to a A: prompt, you may be able to dir c: and see files, but the susyem, files may not be working.
corrupted or have faded over the years.
the DATE of the files will tell you
which version or DOS you have.
if you can get to the c: drive. try typing COMMAND, ut will tell you at least the version and type of command com, then get they version from www.,bootdisk.com

IF HOWEVER it is dos version 3.20. be very careful. you can destroy eveything by trying to restore the system files
dos version 3.1 and 3.30 ( a very good version) does not have this problem.

If the c: drive is stil linaccessible, there is a procedure to renew it.
You english seems very good and gramatical.
but if we use a word that is not familiar to you pleae feel free to ask.

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

i found exactly the same "universal floppy cable". As you described, i found one in an old non-working 80286 pc. it has missing parts so i never make it work. As you told me i connected the 3,5 inch floppy to the control card and supplied power from another working power supply. I closed the gap with a piece of paper. formatted it on windows vista. i run cmd. then typed "format a: /f:720". it formatted but i never write a bootable floppy image because programs wanted to format to 1440 or wanted me to insert a high density(HD) disk. so i couldn't test the configuration. then i put the disk (which i put paper in the gap) in a P2 machine and formatted(slow) it as a 720k. (with win98) I also selected "copy system files". After that i tested it at xt computer and i got that error message:

DISK I/O ERROR
REPLACE THE DISK, AND THEN PRESS ANY KEY

i am not sure if it is an error from win98 disk or bios. the oldest version of dos in bootdisk.com is dos 5.0. it doesn't fit in a 720k formatted disk. I am still trying to create a bootable dos 3.30 disk. thanks for all your help.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Are you using a 720k disk, or are you trying to format a 1.44mb disk as 720k? If so, are you covering the hole with some tape before you format and write?

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

i don't have any 720k disk. i covered 1.44 disk's hole. if i don't cover it, it doesn't format the disk.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Are you able to format the 720k disk as 360k? Some XTs only allow you to boot from 360k disks.

Joined: 26 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

i formatted 1.44 disk to 720k. it booted. console dropped to A> but keyboard was an AT keyboard and which was not compatible with XT machine. but at least it worked. Smile

i am now looking for a xt keyboard. i hope i find one Smile

Thanks for all the help.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

MANY YEARS AGO THERE WAS AN ARTICLE IN PC WORLD.
apparently IBM included the ability to read a 720k disl. But of course it would format the disk as a 360k.
but the OS did not support 3.5" diskls until dos 3.20.

the eary AT's lacked thbis ability the seconms rev
would. I think these systems ( early at's ) did and were set up for 1.2m disks.

Now at that time, it was a very big thing to be IBM
compatible.. I suspect when they cloned or re-write the xt bios to make it fully compatible.
and inadvertantley included this feature.
Possibly the cloners did not even know what they were doing.
Some NEC at's and possibly early 386's had problems dealing with 1.44 floppies.

Every XT clone I tried, would boot from a 720k floppy. without anythings special in the config.sys or as bios on the controller.