3.404 more on 3.5 drives (43)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Mon, 28 Aug 89 19:02:52 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 404. Monday, 28 Aug 1989.
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 89 10:05 CDT
From: "John K. Baima" <D024JKB@UTARLG>
Subject: 3.5" drives one more time
I think that if Mr. Hopkins had bothered to find my original message
or had asked me about it, he would have found that he had not tried my
suggestion about 3.5" drives. Unless his DOS manuals are much
different than mine, they would not have told him that his drive could
be configured as an external drive. The one hint I have that he has
not tried my suggestion is that he refers to his drive as drive B: and
the 3.5" drive will never be drive A: or B: if it is configured as an
external drive. Since he did get the drive to work without upgrading
his BIOS chip (even if he did get stuck with copyprotected software),
why should he think it *necessary* to replace his BIOS chip?
I have an *old* XT clone. The date on my ROM BIOS is 10/16/84--quite a
bit before 3.5" drives. The computer started life with IBM DOS 2.10.
The controller is a total no name job, but the computer is just about
a 100% IBM PC-XT clone. I have only ever found one game that would not
run and that may have been due to my video card. The 3.5" drive works
quite nicely. Sometimes it is drive E:, sometimes H:, depending on my
CONFIG.SYS.
If my suggestion about connecting a 3.5" drive which is inside the
computer and using the internal controller does not work, I would be
interested in knowing what the various models are.
I still think that it is certainly true that a ROM BIOS upgrade is
never necessary for non-bootable devices.
John Baima