Uncreative Labs

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Went to a local computer garagesale sunday because the person having it said he had a nice 486/133 and it might be EISA, plus he had some free AT/ATX cases.

Anyway besides snagging some free cases, one of which was an enlight mini tower AT (nice), I checked out what else he had. The 486/133 was a PCI model in a real crappy case with a Dallas RTC chip so I passed. I ripped the 16 bit diamond tseng et4000AX (1MB) video card out of it (why use that in a PCI 486?). Next he showed me a trashed Unisys P60 that I didn't want. After that he showed me a ugly AMD based 286-8 system I didn't bother with. I did snag a Kaypro MC-10 XT (NEC V20 8Mhz) with dual 360K drives (HH). System says it has 640K RAM, and I see some extra sockets onboard, not sure if you can add more ram or if the old owner used higher density chips to get 640K. Had to find a key to unlock the keyboard port, and I had to snag my Northgate keyboard from up here in my room because it is the only one that can do XT mode (using a Model M up here now).

MY problem with the Kaypro is how do I configure the floppies so that one is A: drive and the other is B: drive. When the system boots it chirps both drives and boots off of the A drive fine. When I try to use the B drive it just redirects to the same A drive again. Both floppies are the same model and have jumpers for 0,1,2,3 to specific which drive it is. I have one as 0 and the other as 1. The floppy cable used is the kind with both edge connector and pin connector for 2 drives (twist between them), I am using the edge connector on both drives with the end being on the A drive.

I have a paradise VGA 8 bit card I tried to use but got a garbled screen (will recheck my switch setting). I got a CGA card (with printer port and a RCA out) that I used with my Tandy CGA monitor and that works fine. I also got a chips 8 bit EGA board, not sure if I can use that with a CGA monitor without blowing something up.

From my pile of cards I pulled out an 8 bit ISA soundblaster card, a 8 bit network card (not installed yet), and a future domain TMC-950 SCSI card (no bios). I found software to use a cdrom with the SCSI card but I need something for SCSI HDs, anybody have the software for that?

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Not sure what you are asking,

Not all systems will allow you to boot off drive B

Also drive A is always after the twist, if you start playing with drive numbers and have a twist you can end up with strange things happening.

Do one or the other not both.

Most every EGA card including the original IBM can be configured for CGA but as I found the only way to determine is sometimes to try every dipp block setting.

Good Luck

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I am not trying to boot off of drive B, just use it. If I switch from drive A to B the OS just targets drive A again.

I think there are terminating resisters on the floppy drives that I have to remove (atleast on one of them) to get things to work.

On AT systems all this was done in the bios, XT is new to me (my Tandy 1000HX had configuration in a bios like setup).

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Ah, now I understand

Drive A and B being targeted to the 1st floppy is how dos coped with copying one floppy to another when you had only one floppy drive.

My guess is that the dipp or jumper blocks on the motherboard are not set for 2 floppy drives (no bios here)

Once the jumper or dipp block is set for 2 floppy drives and you have one before and one after the twist both drives should work, I would set both to drive 0 initially unless something doesn't work

A while ago but a maybe
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-September/133715.html

The one kaypro I had long ago allowed you to install more than 640k base memory and use it. You could also setup a ram drive or ems, can't remember what model I had, at the time I just used it as is and got rid of it once I tired of it.