Mail Archives: opendos/2000/10/31/00:04:37
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben A L Jemmett" <ben DOT jemmett AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2000 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: DRDOS FDISK
> Well, the original poster asks about the OEM signature, so wouldn't it be
> reasonable to assume they meant the OEM label?
Your message did not include that information. You only talked about
signatures. I can't remeber what was said a hundred messages ago, plus this
list is not the only place I read such messages. These threads start out on
one subject then get on something else totaly unrelated and actually starts
a new thread with a different topic with the same subject as what was
originally started.
I originally started this thread and was talking about FDISK. FDISK only
deals with the MBR and has nothing to do with Boot Records. However, since
DRDOS FDISK also will format the drive automatically, it is somewhat
related. But all the problem thus far had been with the format and not with
the MBR.
Since the real problem is with the format of the drive, is this just the
format that FDISK does? Does DRDOS FORMAT.COM have this problem? I usually
(note I said usually) do not let FDISK do the whole check of the drive. all
that format does is setup the system areas of the drive, i.e. boot record,
FAT, and directory. It is basically the same as a quick format. I usually do
an unconditional format after FDISKing to make sure there are no bad
sectors. If I am in a hurry, sometimes I may skip it, but this is gerneral
done for the drive C: and the boot record gets changed anyway when I install
NT or 9x.
What I am trying to find out is why PCTools always finds the FAT to be bad
and claims there are all of these lost clusters when there are not. CHKDSK
and NDD do not report any and all the files are found okay. It's just a
problem I have with DISKFIX.
I booted with an MSDOS 5 boot floppy formatted under MSDOS 5.0 and still
have the same problem. The boot sectors on all the partitions except the
ext2fs are WINNT4.0. diskeditors show the BR information to be correct. I
did not have this problem a couple of years ago, but it did start with my
old 386DX40MB so it is not a BIOS problem.
> The problem with the FDISK release being referred to is that it changes
this
> from IBM 3.3 and then picks incorrect values for cluster sizes etc. It's
> one version of FDISK affected - that in 7.03 as I recall (I use 7.02b2
> myself) - so it's not a problem across the whole DR-DOS version spectrum.
I guess I'll dig out that old 40MB IDE drive and plug it in and see which
version causes the problem you are describing. But I do not think that
problem is what is causing me my problem. I think it started before the 7.02
to 7.03 upgrade came out. If the problem you are refeering to is just with
the FDISk format, then just use FORMAT.COM /X/Q and fix it.
> > Are you saying that DOS 3.0 and later cannot read diskettes formatted
with
> > earlier DOS?
> I'm saying some v2 issues created floppies that cannot be read (or maybe
> just booted from) in v3+.
This makes no sense. When you boot, there is no DOS version until the system
is booted, so if you boot with v3 you will have v3. If you boot with v2 you
will have v2 installed. If you boot with v2 you may not be able to read the
drive made with v3. That is because of many differences between v2 and v3+.
This is normal. there may be some issues with v2, but since I do not have
any floppies that were formatted with v2, I would not run across such a
problem. Of course I do have the v2.xx DOS diskettes for installing DOS as
well as 1.x. I also have the Inside the IBM PC diskettes that came with the
boot by Peter Norton that were formatted with v1. I can read all of these
just fine.
>
> > If so, that is not true. I can still read and have been able to
> > read those 160K single sided 5-1/4" floppies formatted with DOS 1.0 and
> DOS
> > 1.1.
> I'm not sure is DOS 1 kept a BPB in the boot sector at all - but certainly
> DOS 3 was the first version in which any use of the disk-based BPB was
made
> (previously, a default table was used). With DOS 3, OEMs were forced to
lay
> the boot sector out properly - previously, some OEMs didn't bother with a
> BPB.
It doesn't, when you look at it with a diskeditor such as Norton's or
PCTools, it shows garbage or nothing there. I believe that when I checked
it, everything was just blank.
> > I have even seen floppies with that area (BPB) totally corrupted and
> > still read the diskettes.
> Perhaps it's just the boot sector code that makes use of the BPB then.
Was
> the media descriptor correct? ISTR DOS can work out what to do with most
> diskettes just based on the media descriptor, as long as nothing's been
done
> to the format.
I would imagine so and I assume you are talking about the first byte in each
FAT, as DOS reported the correct information.
BTW, the reason why dos probably did not use the BPB information is because
way back when IBM first developed the PC and got DOS they sere going to use
this information to be able to read non-DOS file systems. The idiots that
were writing stupid copy protection schemes (that five years olds could
crack) screamed about it as their copy protection scheme would not work.
They never did work, there were always programs around that would circumvent
their stupid copy protections. One was so stupid that they put a couple of
bytes of information at the end of the second FAT which would not be used in
any case. So if you did a DISKCOPY of the diskette, the byte(s) located
there would not be copied. All any five teard old had to do was edit that
into the copied diskette! really stupid crap. Some stupid game I never likd
anyway let alone pay for it!
Pat
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