Rumor has it that Cameron Kaiser may have mentioned these words:
>Good news und bat news.
>
>I got a nice Tandy 200 package today, unit, power supplies, manuals and even
>some Club 100 disks in the original hard case. Very nice and the machine,
>after a little of fiddling and a cold start, is running well. That's the good
>news.
Sehr Gute News. ;-)
>The bad news, alas, is the 3.5" RS-232 floppy that came with it. (Yes,
>RS-232 floppy drive; hopefully someone has seen one of these.) It will
>not power up on either the power supply (original power supply, btw, which
>works with the M200 just fine), or new batteries. All it does is flash its
>low battery light briefly, spin for about a second, and shut off. I took
>a look at the board but couldn't see anything physically shot.
How do you know it's turning off? The blinkenlight is to let you know of 1)
low battery, and 2) drive activity. It's normal for the blinkenlight to
turn off after a successful powerup, so it sounds like it's working correctly.
Impotent question #1: Did you receive the special hookemupper cable that
came with the drive? This is *super* important, as a standard RS232 will
not work - the cable has internal electronics (read: transistors & stuff)
to change the voltage levels to/from the drive. <Emphasis> Do not wire up a
straight cable between any computer & the drive - you will fry the
electronics in the drive! </Emphasis>
Impotent question #2: Is it a Portable disk drive (PDD), or a Portable disk
drive 2 (PDD2)? Big difference, in storage space (100K vs. 200K) and
startup procedures.
Impotent question #3: Did you get a boot disk with the drive? If so, IIRC
this is how you get the poor excuse for a DOS into the laptop with a PDD2
(all I've ever owned.):
Hook up the cable between computer & floppy drive.
Insert the boot floppy into the drive, but do not turn it on yet.
Turn on the computer.
Go into basic and issue this command:
RUN "COM:98N1DNN"
^ If the above command doesn't work,
change that D to an E and try again.
Turn on the floppy drive.
That should start the software download from the boot floppy to the
computer. If you don't have a PDD2, read the instructions if you got them,
if not, go to
http://www.the-dock.com/club100.html. There's a *ton* of info
for the Model 100/102/200 series there, and the owner of Club 100, Rick
Hanson, has got to be one of the nicest people on the planet.
<Shameless Plug> There is also a listserver dedicated to the Model
100/102/200 machines, and to subscribe, send a blank email to:
m100-subscribe_at_list.30below.com and you will receive a confirmation
message. Reply to that confirmation message, and you're subscribed!
There's actually been a fair amount of activity on there lately, and with
over 150 subscribers to the list, there's one heckuva lotsa brains there to
pick!
(I administer the list, that's why it's a </Shameless Plug>)
Hope this helps,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Fri Jun 09 2000 - 16:51:26 BST