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
