> <"can't read track 0" on both A and B drives. I formatted the disks
> <successfully on a Compaq clone and a Commodore PC10, and now the XT will
> <read them. Any ideas?
Track 0 problems during FORMAT can also be due to a bug that was present
in most versions of FORMAT.
Although "segment:offset" notation can start a segment at any physical
address that is divisible by 16, the DMA used by the IBM style of disk
controller board couldn't handle having the buffer straddle any of the 16
64k boundaries! Since the buffer ended up in different places according
to what TSRs and device drivers were loaded, you could end up with the
buffer straddling the boundary and INT13 operations failing. (INT13 error
code 9) FORMAT misreported the problem by only saying that track 0 was
bad. Competent programming would have both correctly identified the
problem, and would have then switched, whenever an error 9 occurred) to an
alternate location in the segment for the buffer. But this is MICROS~1.
Join the campaign to make billg into a millionaire.
What YOU can try is to change the location in memory where FORMAT lands,
by deleting or ADDING one more TSR.
--
Fred Cisin cisin_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
Received on Sun May 02 1999 - 11:40:37 BST