I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?

[Paul Berger]

I just did this for cards based on the Lo-tech CF card adapter in both a 
original XT and also a PC Convertible (5140) .   I found that not all CF 
cards work especially on the version in the Convertible, but can greatly 
increase the likely hood of success buy wiping the  first few 
"cylinders" of the CF card.   Then boot DOS from a diskette , first run 
fdisk make sure the partition you create is marked as active, then 
format with the /S option to transfer the system files over.  I rarely 
had to do the fdisk /mbr.  I was playing with cards from 16MB up to 4GB 
and even a 4GB microdrive.  I settled on a 256MB card which is plenty 
for DOS.  I got some 128MB and 256MB cards on eBay really cheap.

Paul.

On 2017-01-27 9:16 PM, Randy Dawson wrote:
> Yippie!
>
>
> But what a long haul it was.
>
>
> Just getting the data on a disk that I could read was a nightmare.  I bought a USB 3.5 floppy drive (Sabrent SBT-UFDB, $19 at Frys), and it does not write 720K reliably.  Comments on the net say it does not work, under windows 7 lots of errors, but bringing up in Linux (Fedora) it sort of does work. Remember to unmount so that it flushes the data out to the floppy!
>
>
> After several back and forth tries with abort, retry, fail errors, I finally got xtidecfg to run on the target (Compaq model 1, the luggable XT).
>
>
> Next, I could not flash the EEPROM.  Turns out I had one 74F573 in upside down. $100 Digikey overnight later, I got one (several, I spared all the parts and the EEPROM just in case).
>
>
> OK now XTIDE comes up on boot, and responds with the timeout screen and lets me select the floppy for the boot.
>
>
> I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are the next steps?
>
>
> FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR?
>
>
> What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on it?
>
> Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash?
>
>
> Thanks to anyone who has been there and done this...
>
>
> Randy