Unfortunately, I have the older ROM, the HP 98217A. Says 9885 Flexible Disk Drive on it (duh). Only this 9885, single side low density 8" drive, connected with the parallel interface and a special cable is supported. And indeed as Tony says, to start from a blank disk, you need a tape cartridge that has the "disc system" on it and run an initialize program to copy files on the first disc sectors. If you don't have a copy of that cartridge then you are hosed even with that ROM. So I am hosed twice: I don't have a 9885 drive and I don't have the cartridge. And I suspect a cartridge that's readable doesn't exist anymore.
The newer ROM is the HP 98228. Which can ONLY work in a later HP 9825T (not the A nor the B), and can drive the aforementioned 8" 9885 with the parallel interface, and also the 9895 double sided double density double drive via the HP-IB interface. But only with the "revised" HP-IB interface, not the original interface. Very picky that ROM. Bu for the 9885 disc, it does not have the cartridge requirement (yeah!). I have the 9825T, the 9895 drive, the revised interface, but not the right ROM. Hosed again. The details are in the 9825 Disc ROM Manual: http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?hwfile=1864 Marc > > Probably a question for Tony's encyclopedic knowledge. I just scored > > two HP 9825, one a later "T" option and one "B" version with all the > > fixings (i.e ROM packs). They both seem to work save the usual tape > > drive which I have not gotten to yet. Both have the flexible disc ROM. > > What kind of discs can I hook up? > > Which flexible disk ROM? There are 2. The older one, AFAIK supports the > HP9885 8" drive which has a 16 bit parallel interface and needs the right > version of the 98032 to hook it up. The later disk ROM supports the HP9895 > on HPIB. > > The older ROM needs a disk with various programs on it to work, it is > essentially just a bootstrap. Have any such disks survived? > > -tony
