Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!crackers!m2c!ulowell!dino!reichert
From: reichert@dino.ulowell.edu (Bastard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Help in adding a new drive?
Message-ID: <1688@ulowell.ulowell.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 91 03:49:39 GMT
References: <90365.230354G22QC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <1991Jan2.052119.14061@cs.uoregon.edu>
Sender: news@ulowell.ulowell.edu
Organization: University of Lowell, CPE
Lines: 51

In article <1991Jan2.052119.14061@cs.uoregon.edu> santeew@cs.uoregon.edu (John Wes Santee) writes:
>In article <90365.230354G22QC@CUNYVM.BITNET> G22QC@CUNYVM writes:
>>My friend wanted to use 3.5 disks, so he bought a 3.5" floppy drive
>>His computer is XT.  After everything was set up, he couldn't get
>>his new drive working.  Here is what he has and what he has done:
>>
>>   (many woes about trying an alternate device driver)
>>*********
>
>Concerning your friend who has just purchased the 3.5" drive.
>
>If your friend is running a true XT, then he/she is looking at quite a bit
>more money to get the drive to work.  There are basically two things wrong
>with your current configuration.
>
>    (warnings about hardware/software problems)

I myself have successfully installed a 3.5" on an turbo XT. In your warning
made an invalid assumption: this person may only be interested in using the
low-density (720k) format of the drive.

The only glitch I ran into in dealing with the installation was that I was
some non-IBM clone of MS-DOS 3.xx, and could not get a device set up with the
correct parameters. Once I got my hands on a true-blue IBM version of 3.3, it
worked out quite well - with a kludge:

I wanted the 3.5" drive as drive A. Unfortunately, because of the way MS-DOS
installs its device drivers, I had to set up the driver as an additional drive.
What I ended up with as logical devices:

A: could read the 3.5" as 720K, but could only write as 360k
B: a 360k 5" disk
C: my primary 32M hard drive partition
D: the leftover 18M
E: could read/write the 3.5" disk at 720k.

It looks strange, I admit, but it allowed me to boot off of a 720k floppy.
I could have used subst to rename E: to A:, but I had some uses for the doubly-
named drive:

I could pull off some weird copy schemes by convincing the system that I was
using two separate drives, I eliminated the prompt normally associated with
'copy a:file a:file2' by being able to use a: and e:, which allowed for more
autonomy in a batch file.

driver to 

bastard@dragon.cpe.ulowell.cpu			   Brian (you Bastard) Reichert

USnail: 85 Gershom Ave. #2
	Lowell, MA 01854		"Intel architecture: the left hand path"