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Tandy 1400LT


TheAtarianGuy

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Does anybody have much experience with these? I just got one in a box lot at an auction. It powers up fine with the power supply, and does a memory test. However, when I try to get it to read disks, it says "Diskette removal or drive not ready". I think the floppy drives are the problem, because none of my disks are working. Does anybody know how to replace the drives?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi. First thing you`re going to want to do is check on the right hand side of the Tandy 1400lt, and look for the boot select switch. It should be marked INT and EXT for internal and external boot. Make sure it`s set for the INT position, if it is, the laptop will try to boot from the left hand, 720k 3,5`` floppy drive. If it`s set for EXT, it will try to boot from a probably non-existent 360k 5.25`` floppy drive, via the DB-37 connector on the rear of the machine. If you do want to add a drive, details can be found here: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/documents/ltcabl.txt and here: http://support.radioshack.com/support_computer/doc1/1925.htm

 

Secondly, you`ll want to make certain the boot disk is properly formatted. The 1400lt will not read 1.44mb formatted floppies, only 720k and 360k 3.5`` ones. If you need a boot image certain to work on it, the copy of pc dos here: http://www.retroarchive.org/dos/disks/ is guaranteed to work.

 

Lastly, the drives on this machine can be temperamental, and don`t like to run if the top of the drive case is compressed. This may be the case with your machine, in that event, remove the screws on the bottom of the laptop, (disassembly instructions here: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/documents/14ltserv.zip ) so that the top and bottom portions of the case can be separated. Then, wedge a small piece of styrene plastic or similar between the two rear corners of the laptop case. This will lift the case off the drives lightly, and will give room to allow the drive heads to seek.

Hope this helps!

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  • 3 years later...

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