Tandy 1000SX booting woes

HxC Floppy Emulator on IBM PC and compatible support
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kraz
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:39 pm

Tandy 1000SX booting woes

Post by kraz »

Howdy everyone I'm new here and I'm hopping someone much more knowledgeable than me can help!

I recently acquired a complete Tandy 1000 SX from a swap meet and the machine is in rather nice condition. It came with the dual 360K 5.25" floppy drive setup but nothing else really. No software or boot disk of any kind. While I do not have any way of making my own 5.25" floppy I did have an old Gotek I had used sporadically with an old Amiga 600. (yes the retro computing bug hit hard, please send help). It had a stock firmware that worked fine with the Amiga but I did learn of the HxC alternative to significantly expand what the stock Gotek could do. So I dutifully went and flashed my Gotek and found the original 360K Tandy 1000SX boot disk images as well as various other Tandy and non-Tandy related 720K DOS images I thought i might try.

Sadly any attempt at booting with the Gotek with any of the multiple DOS boot images I was able to gather results in the Tandy complaining there is no "system disk" and "please retry"...

I should mention that the Gotek flash was successful with the latest firmware, images are detected in indexed mode and the Tandy does "spin" the drive and show activity on the drive at POST at the expected time. (On a physical drive the TAKRRRR-TZZZZZ sound followed by a brief activity LED light up and then long LED activity showing the Tandy attempting to boot). I have also tried plain *.IMG images and *.HFE converted images.

I tried setting up the HxC firmware to Shuggart interface since the Tandy is not a normal "PC" interface but again no dice. The jumpers on the Gotek seems to be set correctly (S0 so the Tandy sees it as drive A:)

I also tried the ff firmware and got only very slightly more successful since one particular DOS 3.3 image seems to be able to boot maybe 1 out of 10 times but then things quickly sour when I try listing the content of the floppy and I generally get a read error of some kind almost immediately.

The plot thickens when I decided to just try an actual drive. I swapped the Amiga 600 3.5" 720K drive into the Tandy and made an actual Tandy DOS 3.3 image on a single 720K floppy and presto! The Tandy booted just fine. Every time.

At this time I do not know what else to try. The Tandy seems fine, the floppy cable seems fine and the images clearly are fine since I can boot them all as long as I do it on a physical drive with actual magnetic media.

Anyhow it's possible the Gotek is bad but wouldn't that be ironic given that it's the newest piece of hardware I'm dealing with and that it's at least 25+ years the junior to the next youngest piece of hardware I'm trying to con into booting the Tandy?

Tell me I'm just missing something stupid or obvious!
Finally, to anyone that can shed some light thank you!

Jeff
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Re: Tandy 1000SX booting woes

Post by Jeff »

Hi,
kraz wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 11:16 pm
Tell me I'm just missing something stupid or obvious!
Yes, you are asking support right after having erased the HxC firmware.

Sound like to be a conflict with the other installed floppy drive.

But you will have to come back to the HxC Firmware before i (can) provide any further support.

Hope you understand.

Once done, try this firmware : https://hxc2001.com/vrac/HS/HxCUSBFE3.UPD and share your file images (HFE + IMG).

kraz
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:39 pm

Re: Tandy 1000SX booting woes

Post by kraz »

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my long winded post but the following is true:

1. The stock Gotek drive with stock firmware is known to work with the Amiga and can boot double density images of games just fine.
2. When wired to the Tandy the Gotek is the *only* disk drive in the system and is detected as drive A: with a straight cable and setup as S0.

I'll try your firmware image and report back.

Thanks!

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