X-Apparently-From: Message-ID: <010a01c042dd$202ba230$3d1e0404@dbcooper> From: "Patrick Moran" To: References: <00b801c02814$cc72b3a0$0400000a AT alain-nb> <01d601c04023$ddf751e0$cb881004 AT dbcooper> <005301c04062$9af82420$11fea8c0 AT dell> <001601c041bf$4c924ff0$6f1e0404 AT dbcooper> <000101c041dc$47239a20$11fea8c0 AT dell> Subject: Re: DRDOS FDISK Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 11:10:48 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.3018.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.3018.1300 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben A L Jemmett" To: 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 _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com