Re: DOS installation proggy

From: Karl-Heinz Zimmer (khz@stardivision.de)
Date: Thu Jan 21 1999 - 17:24:58 CET


Andrea Manzini wrote:

> > > you'll also need to port to msdos the linux floppy driver source,
> > > to bypass the BIOS limitations of pc that cannot superformat in dos...
> >
> > It this really true, have you exact information concerning this?
> >
> > Is the BIOS truly unable to format 1722K Disks or might it be possible
> > to adjust the drive parameter table and then call the BIOS format
> > interrupt?

> the dos superformatter that were using Michele for the old versions
> wasn't working for the same reason. Since on the same pc, a linux
kernel
> is able to superformat, i guess that the matter is in the BIOS :)

> BTW, the well known utility 2M works by driving directly the hardware,
> thus bypassing BIOS. With this utility, perhaps we can use some
> parameters similar to linux's superformat. With 2M I was able to
format
> bulk diskettes up to 1835 kb, dos filesystem included ;)

I believe, i see a way how we could test this: if that old dos
superformatter which Michele used did *not* work on a certain hardware
environment, we should try to use the 2M tool *under the same
circumstances*. If it works on a system where the old tool did not, we
could assume that will work on most other systems too, ok? ;-)

Hope Michele can help us and remember, when and where the dos
superformatter did not work.

Ciao,
Karl-Heinz



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