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