INSTALLATION OF TANDY 20 MEG HARD CARD DRIVE (25-1029)

        This file is not an authoritative manual on installing and 
formatting the Tandy 20meg hardcard. Rather, it is offered because I 
was able to get the drive installed and formatted and working where 
others have had trouble, and in hopes that the procedure I used may 
work for others, or at least help pinpoint where the problem is.
        The card was installed on a Tandy 1000SX, with ROM BIOS 1.02, 
640K installed on the motherboard.

       1. It appears that, at least for the various models of Tandy 
1000, the automatic installation program is a bust. So far, everyone 
who has tried it has bombed out. This is the auto-install program 
contained on the 20 Meg Hard Drive Utilities Disk which comes with the 
drive. The so-called Auto-Install Disk does not exist.
        2. Since the most common failure I encountered with the 
installation program involved the formatting freezing while attempting 
cylinder 306 (out of 611) I offer the thought that possibly the 
program is really meant only to do a 10-meg drive. At any rate, here 
was my procedure.
        3. First, I formatted a disk using MS-DOS 3.2, using the /s 
switch to transfer the system. Then I added to this disk the 
LLFORMAT.EXE program from the Hard Drive Utilities Disk, and FDISK.COM 
from the MS-DOS 3.2 Supplement Disk and FORMAT.COM from MS-DOS 3.2.
        4. Placing this disk in Drive A, I typed LLFORMAT c:3  The 
command does a lowlevel format on Drive C, using an interleave factor 
of 3. Three was chosen because that is the value used by the auto-
install program. You will see a message identifying the program as 
"EPD Low Level Format Revision 1.0, (C) Western Digital 1985. You will 
also see a message claiming that it takes 4 minutes to format a 10 meg 
drive and 8 for a 20. Since mine took 4 mins, 13 secs, I assume that 
the 7.16 clock speed of the SX affects this, too. Nothing happens 
while it is formatting; at the end of the process you will get a 
message that the format was completed, and you will be back at the A> 
prompt. 
        5. Next, type FDISK enter>. This is FDISK.COM V1.00.00 
Copyright 1985  Tandy. You will have a menu of 6 choices. Take Choice 
1--Create DOS Partition. You will be asked if you want to use the 
entire drive for DOS. Answer Y, and the system will pause a moment, 
and then prompt you to put a DOS disk in Drive A (you already have) 
and press any key to reboot. 
        6. When you have rebooted, you can, if you wish, use FDISK 
again. This time, use Choice 4--Display Partition Data. You should 
see:

  Partition      Status     Type     Start      End      Size 
      1            A        DOS       0         610      611
  Total Hard Disk Space is 611 Cylinders.

        7. Now for the last step. You will now need to format the 
drive, just the same as for a floppy disk, transferring the system at 
the same time. At the A> prompt, just type FORMAT C:/s return>  You 
will see the screen display counting through the cylinders being 
formatted. It will probably pause for a few moments at 306. Don't 
panic...this time it will continue, going all the way to the end.
        Good luck!.....Paul