Mail Archives: opendos/2001/03/05/18:09:50
Hmmm ... This reminds me of a similar problem with the 4/92 edition
of DR-DOS 6.0 ... I had a HD that had been formatted by M$-DOS
6.22 (I think) and couldn't even boot to floppy using this edition of
DR-DOS 6.0. I eventually sorted this out using a strange combination
of M$-DOS 3.30 and DR-DOS 6.0, and/or possibly temporarily setting
the number of cylinders in the BIOS to under 1024, just to get things
going (unfortunately, I can't recall all the details).
Anyway, I later found out (thanks to Matthias Paul :-) that this stuff
(ie. problem) was _supposed_ to have been sorted out with the special
"PATDR6" patch/work-around, and also the 3/93 edition of DR-DOS
6.0 (and subsequent releases, eg. Novell DOS 7, etc.). Not having
a copy of M$-DOS 6.22, and not wanting to reformat the HD again,
I didn't get to try out this problem, using these editions, etc. of
DR-DOS ... I wonder if there might still be a remnant of this problem
in the current edition of DR-DOS? Incidentally, I should point out two
things - firstly, the MB in question had an old BIOS that did not
translate Int 13 CHS parameters (later, this was rectified using
Disk Manager), and secondly, although I installed the 3/93 edition
of DR-DOS 6.0, I found this was not as compatible as the 4/92
edition (with or without updates), so ultimately, I reverted to the
"trusty" 4/92 kernel, etc.
Idea - What happens if you temporarily set the cylinder count to
less than 1024, then rewrite the MBR (using all DR-DOS stuff),
then set the cylinder count to normal and rewrite the MBR again
(rebooting after any changes, to be sure)?
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Webb [SMTP:tawebb AT earthlink DOT net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 6 March 2001 2:55
> To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> Subject: Re: Hard drive question
>
> I have observed that drdos fdisk doesn't do the mbr quite the same way
> as MicroSoft. On Toshiba lap tops in particular, I have to use an MSDOS
> utility disk with fdisk/mbr first, then install DRDOS and everything
> comes out fine.
>
> Dale Coleman wrote:
> >
> > Hi all, I ran into a problem that might relate to the one in this
> thread.
> >
> > I have a home made computer that had 2 hard drives in it and I wanted to
> > switch to the second HD that was the slave and use it to experiment with
> > DOS and BEOS. It had no valuable info on it so I pulled the plug on the
> > original main HD and switched the slave to master.
> >
> > I could not get DOS to install and work on this drive until I zeroed the
> > first sector of the drive.
> >
> > More info on how to do this using Liniux is available at:
> > http://www.cc.gatech.edu/linux/LDP/LDP/LG/issue36/tag/61.html
> >
> > I don't know how or if this can be done using DOS. But if you have
> access
> > to a bootable CDROM and a bootable CD with Linux on it this might be
> worth
> > trying. It worked for me.
> >
> > I hope this helps,
> >
> > Dale
> >
> > At 01:31 AM 3/5/01, you wrote:
> > >Be more cautious.
> > >
> > >First, check with FDISK to just display partition info for the drive -
> this
> > >will tell you if the drive is accessible, and perhaps give some more
> clues.
> > >
> > >Is the 586 MB old? Does it handle "> 1024 cylinders" OK? Did the
> > >486 have Disk Manager or equivalent, to provide an "Int 13 upgrade"?
> > >(just some ideas ...)
> > >
> > >Joe.
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Mark at Cross+Road's [SMTP:mark1 AT mich DOT com]
> > > > Sent: Monday, 5 March 2001 6:59
> > > > To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> > > > Cc: editor AT juno DOT com
> > > > Subject: Re: Hard drive question
>
> --
> Tom Webb
> Come visit at http://wordwonder.com
- Raw text -