TRS-80 Model 4 help requested

From: Jeffrey S. Worley <Technoid_at_30below.com>
Date: Wed Feb 26 11:45:00 2003

That 1.2mb drive might actually work. I've used both 1.44 3.5" and
1.2mb 5.25" drives on my (Now Kurt's) ATR8000. Some of these drives can
be jumpered to emulate 77 track 8" floppy drives.

Regards,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:38 PM
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: TRS-80 Model 4 help requested

I recently picked up a TRS-80 model 4, that seems to have problems with
its floppy drives.

The machine is a base Model 4 with 64KB of ram (I think - haven't yet
taken the EMF shield off the mainboard), and no peripherals attached.
When I powered it up the first time, with or without a disk in the
(bottom) drive, it displayed "Cass?" on the screen, and then I could
press
enter to that and the "Memory size?" prompt, and get a basic prompt.

I tried swapping the floppy drives, and that time I got a "Diskette?"
prompt if there was no disk in the drive, and pressing any keys didn't
cause anything to happen. If I put a disk in the drive, the machine
never
displays anything, and then after 10-20 seconds, the drive light goes
out.

I tried connecting only one drive at a time, with the same results. If
I
connected a 1.2MB floppy that I had laying around (a Teac
FD-55GFR-149-U),
it did the same thing as if the drives were swapped. Yes, I realize
that
the drive probaly wasn't going to work, I just wanted to see if it did
anything.

Also, the disk I used was supposed to be a TRS-DOS (bootable) disk, but
it's possible that they've gone bad after so many years. Are the disks
on
the Model 4 recorded so that I can read them on a PC (IE 48/96tpi MFM,
compatible with the NEC D765)? I'd like to know if I can make backup
images and/or see if the disks work on another machine.

Thanks.

Pat
--
Purdue Universtiy ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www-rcd.cc.purdue.edu
Received on Wed Feb 26 2003 - 11:45:00 GMT

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