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I have an old Tandy HD1500 Laptop. I am trying to run DOS on it, but I can't seem to get it to boot from the floppy and I'm not sure how to get into the bios on this old machine to change the boot device order. Any help?
Thanks
You access the BIOS CMOS setup on old computers like that using an external software program. I have no idea where you'd find a copy of the orginal software that came with the computer, but you might find DOS based CMOS utilities on old software archieve sites which will allow you to make some changes to the CMOS. There's a DOS shareware utility called Snooper which I've used to modify some of the CMOS settings in similar old computers.
Thing is, it seems the computer would default to boot from the A: drive, all PCs of that time frame did. It's possible you can't get it to boot from the floppy because it will only boot from 720kB formatted floppies and your trying to boot it with a 1.44MB formatted floppy. Just a guess...
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I found here that it does have a 1.44MB floppy.
radioshackI have the boot disk for dos 3.3 (which what was originally shipped with the on the computer)
I do believe that I have to get to the bios with an external program, which brings me back to my original problem of not being able to boot from the floppy.
If you could maybe post a link to that free program I could try that.
Thanks
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No setup prog will help if it won't boot.
Does it try to access the floppy? As defined by: Does the drive go round and round? Does the light light?
If so you probably need to clean the drive and/or get a fresh KNOWN GOOD floppy. May as well make a 720K while you're at it.
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If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.M2
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Yeah, it's probably either a bad disk or bad floppy drive.
I downloaded the manual--15hduser.zip--from here:
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdo...
It looks like the setup program is part of the DeskMate software that came with the laptop. There's also a dos setup program called SETUP_15 that was on the first dos diskette that came with the laptop. Googling
setup_15 tandy or just setup_15 didn't return any downloads that I could see.You say you've got the original disk. If the disk is good then setup_15 is on it. Check it in another working computer and copy it off so you'll have it in case the disk goes bad.
Also it doesn't look like there's a boot order option in setup meaning the floppy is always first.
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I downloaded the dos 3.3boot disk. I have noticed that the system originally came with the deskmate software, but I'm not sure where to find it. The floppy drive does turn and the like does come on. It is possible that floppy drive it self could be a problem.
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So you have a dos 3.3 bootdisk but not the 3.3 disk that originally came with the computer?
Yes, there could be a problem with the floppy drive, but are you sure you created the bootdisk correctly? Normally what you download is a file that, when executed, will create a bootdisk--the downloaded file is not the bootdisk itself.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "I have noticed that the system originally came with the deskmate software, but I'm not sure where to find it." Does that mean the laptop was booting up and you noticed it was on there? If so, does it still boot up?
Or does it mean there was a sticker or something on the laptop that said it had the deskmate software?
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Best as I remember, weren't Tandy machines of those days more likely to have DOS in ROM? I remember my 1000 TL/2 had DOS 3.3 in ROM, and upgrading to DOS 5 was pretty much impossible.
I wouldn't get too excited about Deskmate either, given the fact that it was designed around CGA/Mono adapters. Even the "special" VGA drivers when I upgraded the TL/2 to an old OAK 8-bit (woo-hoo!) VGA card and .51 DP VGA monitor didn't seem to improve things much. Ideally, an older version of Geoworks (such as 2.0 or 2.1) would be best suited (i.e.--most productive) for an old laptop like that. Sad to watch GEOS fall off the map like it did; it had a lot of potential and a decent development base in it's heyday, but was one of the first M$ victims in the early-mid 90's...
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I liked Geoworks. Looked cool and ran on very modest HW.
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If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.M2
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I think the only benefit to having the deskmate software would be its setup program for the laptop hardware, especially if he doesn't have the original dos disk and its setup program.
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Is there anything out there that will live boot from a floppy and work with a computer of those specs?
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It's a Intel 286, just about any DOS will boot that computer. Just go to Bootdisk.com and get a DOS boot disk image. DOS 3.3, DOS 5.0, DOS 6.22, DOS 7.1, PC-DOS, DR DOS, FreeDOS, pretty much any DOS will boot that laptop. Being only a 286 it is limited in some of the later memory management capabilities of the later DOS versions, but they will still work just fine.
If that laptop has the 1MB extension to the RAM that was available from Tandy when it was new(creating total of 1.6MB RAM), and you are able to get it working right, you can actually run Windows 3.1 on that laptop.
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That's got a V20 in it which is the NEC version of the 8088 so I'm not sure about running 3.1. But as mentioned, you can run any dos version on it.
You're getting ahead of yourself though. First you need to figure out why you can't boot from the floppy drive. Are you sure you created the bootdisk correctly? If the drive is bad can you open up the laptop and put in a regular 1.44?
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It is possible that the floppy drive is bad. I am very sure that the boot disk was created properly. I get a "hard disk failure error". I am going to take out the drive and clean the heads and see if that makes a difference.
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No, my mistake, a 8088 clone won't run Win3.1, Win3.0 could use it in "real mode", but it's rather pointless because it's really just an inefficient DOS shell. I got confused because the specs showed it could be expanded to 1.6MB RAM, the 8088 can only address 1MB RAM. Wonder how you were supposed to do anything with the extra 0.6MB of RAM if the processor couldn't address it?
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Yeah, I just assumed it was for EMS memory. Still, that's quite a bit.
The 'hard drive failure error' is, of course about the hard drive and not the floppy so you may have problems with both drives. Hopefully the floppy doesn't have a proprietary fit and can be swapped with a regular 1.44 drive if necessary.
You really need to try to locate the DeskMate software or the dos setup program, setup_15, especially if it turns out you need to replace the hard drive.
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Here it is:
http://www.8bit-micro.com/download.htm
The last download on that page. Running that file extracts setup_15.com and a readme.txt file.
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