From: robbond8@gmail.com   
      
   Hey, guys & ladies,   
      
   I really hope someone can help me with a very strange problem I'm having with   
   my TRS-80 Model 4. I bought it off of ebay. It's the gate array model, has 2   
   single-sided drives, 128K RAM & a Tandy Hi-Res graphics board. I also bought a   
   FreHD which is a    
   hard drive emulator. Here's what's going on with it. It won't reliably boot   
   into DOS. Sometimes it will boot, but a lot of the time it returns a Disk   
   Error. Also, when it does boot, it doesn't always install (is that the right   
   term?), the FreHD. Here's    
   what I've done to try to figure out what's causing it to operate the way it   
   does.   
      
   1. I swapped my Drive 0 with a known-good different one of the same model,   
   taken from a different gate array Mod. 4 (64K only) that the CRT went out on.   
   That didn't seem to make any difference, but it's only been tonight since I   
   did the swap.   
      
   2. I swapped the Floppy Disk Controller IC (U75) with the one from the   
   previously mentioned Mod. 4 with the dead CRT. That also didn't seem to make   
   any difference, but again it's only been tonight since I did the swap.   
      
   3. I swapped out the entire motherboard with the motherboard from the   
   previously mentioned Mod.4 with the dead CRT. (Actually I just put that   
   motherboard behind the motherboard in the 128K Mod. 4 and then disconnected   
   all the connectors from the 128K mb    
   and connected them to the 64K mb. That also didn't seem to make any   
   difference, but again it's only been tonight since I did the swap, so I hooked   
   the 128K mb. back up.   
      
   Two other things I should mention about the 128K Mod. 4 are:   
      
   1. The image on the CRT doesn't seem to be rock-solid steady like the image on   
   an LCD is, that is, sometimes it seems to shrink in a little on the sides, and   
   it's flickery.   
      
   2. Tonight when I was desperately trying to get the computer to boot after   
   spending most of today trying to figure why it won't reliably boot - I even   
   bought some supposedly good boot disks off of ebay, but I have no way of   
   knowing whether they're good    
   or not, I put a Model 3 TRS-DOS diskette in the drive and tried to boot with   
   it. It booted to the point where it asks you to enter the date & the time, but   
   after I entered the time, it wouldn't proceed any further, and just kept   
   rebooting and    
   continuously never proceeding past where you enter the time.   
      
   I was finally able to get LS-DOS to boot, but it didn't install the FreHD,   
   bummer :(, so I don't know what is wrong with the machine, and I don't know   
   anyone else to ask. I do have the Sams Model 4 Gate Array Service manual, but   
   I don't really know that    
   it's going to be of much help to me, as the only test equipment I have is a   
   digital multi-meter and a logic probe, and I don't have experience   
   troubleshooting computer hardware, so any help at all would be greatly   
   appreciated. Right now, the computer is    
   powered on with LS-DOS 6.3.1 booted, but the top is off, the CRT is lying on   
   it's side beside the base, the shield is off, and I'm hoping that the computer   
   isn't going to catch fire and burn my apt. down while I'm asleep. Actually,   
   I'm not really sure if    
   that would be such a bad thing. I apologize for the length of this post, and I   
   would be truly grateful if someone could help me figure this machine out.   
      
   Thanks so much,   
      
   Robert Bond   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)