Does this TeraDrive work never end? Will I never be content?

I picked up some cheap ISA IDE controllers from eBay, but so far I have had no luck getting them to work properly with the TeraDrive.

I was reading that a controller with its own BIOS might be the better approach, so that is the next hardware experiment.

I did get one of the cards to interact with the floppy drive somewhat. The activity light came on, but it would not actually read the inserted disks.

I also found a BIOS configuration disk, which at least gives me access to more of the machine’s setup options.

Back to Windows

Instead of fighting the storage hardware all night, I went back to trying to fit a newer version of Windows onto bootable floppies.

Windows for Workgroups 3.1 will run on a 286, unlike Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which requires at least a 386SX.

But I don’t particularly care about Workgroups networking here.

Enter standalone Windows 3.11.

Standalone Windows 3.11 can still run in Standard Mode on a 286, which makes it much more interesting for the TeraDrive.

I used essentially the same trick as with my Windows 3.00a experiment, but quickly discovered that Windows 3.11 wanted more memory.

I had to shrink the RAM Disk until the machine reported another 64 KB of extended memory available to Windows.

In this stripped-down configuration it booted!

Hurrah!

It is painfully slow though, and I couldn’t fit any useful programs into the RAM Disk itself. Those had to live on a second floppy.

The storage problem eventually had a much better solution. Later that year I got an XTIDE card working in the TeraDrive Model 2 and finally booted the machine from proper storage.

You can find all the files in the file server and photos in the photo gallery.

Sources