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Toshiba T3200 with no floppy

RyanFr

New Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2012
Messages
4
Location
Warsaw, Polamd
Hi~

First what i have to say is that my english isn't good, sorry for that :/

I have T3200 with no DOS on HD, and probably broken FDD :( When i turn on computer, and put in disk with dos 3.30 or any other bootable disk, it says something like that "No system on disk, please put system disk". But i don't think that FDD is even reading floppy, because it don't make any sound. I have also T1000, so i replaced FDD from T1000 to T3200, but this don't work... so i cannot install or work on any DOS from FDD. I searched for any solution how to solve this problem, but i didn't find any clue :| T3200 have ISA slots, so maybe i could try with some FDD controller, for normal 1,44 FDD, but i don't know if it works :(
Can anybody help me solve this problem~?
 
Hello, and welcome! Your English is almost perfect, certainly better than my Polish ;-)

I'm surprised that the T1000 drive did not work; I think it is a 720K DD drive whereas the T3200 is a 1.44MB drive, but I think that it can use either type.

Anyway, I would expect that an ISA controller card would conflict with the on-board controller and I don't know how you could avoid that, especially since you can't even boot an OS.

I think your best bet would be to try to make an adapter to use a standard 34-pin floppy drive, either internally or on the external port; there's a lot of information about this on the web but I think there are several different 26-pin interfaces so it might need a little experimentation.

Are you certain that the diskette is OK and bootable? Can you boot a different computer with it?

I assume the disk/prt selector switch is set to PRT or A or you'd probably get a different error message.

Let me know what you find; I also have a T3200 with a bad disk drive but fortunately my HD still works, at least so far ;-)

Good luck!

mike
 
To connect an external drive via the parallel port you have to make the cable yourself and use a spare computer PSU to power the drive.
You flick the switch on the side of the laptop to "A" and it becomes your boot drive.

COMP PIN - Function - FLOPPY PIN

01 Ready 34
02 Index 08
03 Track 0 26
04 Write Protect 28
05 Read Data 30
10 Motor Enable A 10
11 Motor Enable B 16
12 Write Data 22
13 Write Enable 24
15 Select Head 1 32
16 Direction 18
17 Step Pulse 20
23 Ground (must be connected) 23
25 Ground (must be connected) 25


I think the external connector assumes a 360Kb drive - and I can't remember if the BIOS lets you specify, so may need a 5.25" drive and a 360Kb disk.
I haven't actually tried this out myself yet but have the parts to try.

On my T5200 I had the same issue, but I popped the IDE hard disc in to another machine and made it bootable, then used a null modem cable to install.
I think the T3200 has some weird ESDI hard disc (T3200SX and SXC are IDE though).

You can get replacement drives either through a collector or through ebay (at crazy prices). They're a 26pin 5 volt only.

Edit: oh and as above you probably could make an adaptor cable and a custom power cable (factory drive doesn't have a +12V line). but I haven't done that either.
Edit 2: also might be worth cleaning the heads
Edit 3: apologies for digging up a month old thread :(
 
Hi~

First what i have to say is that my english isn't good, sorry for that :/

I have T3200 with no DOS on HD, and probably broken FDD :( When i turn on computer, and put in disk with dos 3.30 or any other bootable disk, it says something like that "No system on disk, please put system disk". But i don't think that FDD is even reading floppy, because it don't make any sound. I have also T1000, so i replaced FDD from T1000 to T3200, but this don't work... so i cannot install or work on any DOS from FDD. I searched for any solution how to solve this problem, but i didn't find any clue :| T3200 have ISA slots, so maybe i could try with some FDD controller, for normal 1,44 FDD, but i don't know if it works :(
Can anybody help me solve this problem~?

I think there is a ROM where you can set the boot order, perhaps it's as easy as re-setting the boot order to start with the 3.5" disk first.
 
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