Simple way I got several XT-IDE working: - Boot with freedos boot disk - FDISK /MBR - FDISK and create ONE 31MB partition (note it is 31MB and not 32MB) - Reboot - Format C: /s /u (the /u is very important) - REBOOT. There is a bug on freedos that a copy command gives a heap corruption after a format - Do whatever you want, even creating a D: partition of 2GB
This is what I did in many CF cards that didn't worked before. 2017-01-28 0:13 GMT-02:00 Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com>: > On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Randy Dawson wrote: > >> I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering >> iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are >> the next steps? >> FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? >> > > It is not clear what you are attempting to do. > > If you have a drive that looks like an XT drive with controller to the > computer, and it has not been used before, then > MS-DOS would normally want a low-level-format, which presumably does not > need to be done in this case, and for which FORMAT.COM is absolutely no > help, anyway. Low-level-format was done by IBM's "Advanced Diagnostics", > or by third party programs, or by doing a jump to code in the ROM of the > controller. > > > If it doesn't need low-level-format, then the next step is partitioning > (or do you already have a FAT16 partition on it?), for which you use > FDISK. NOT FDISK /MBR. FDISK when it creates the partition, will create > the partition table and Master Boot Record in the first sector. > > MS-DOS from V2.00 to V3.30 is limited to 32MB. > Compaq MS-DOS 3.31, and any MS-DOS 5.00 and above supports up to 2GB > drives. > > FAT16 in NTFS and other systems that support it can go to 4GB. But, > MS-DOS uses a SIGNED long 32 bit int, permitting drive sizes from - > 2147483648 to 2147483647. Yes, there are some parts of MS-DOS that > support negative file sizes and drive sizes > > > If it is already low-level-format'ed and partitioned, then FDISK /MBR > (which was not always documented) will rewrite the partition table and > Master Boot Record. > > THEN you want to FORMAT x: /S where x: is the drive letter. > /S of FORMAT tells it to also put the 3 OS files on it: > IO.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > MSDOS.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > COMMAND.COM reasonably "normal" file that can be copied with a "normal" > file copy. > (Or IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, COMMAND.COM if you were using PC-DOS) > > At that point, it should be fully bootable! > Although some hardware might require specific content in root directory > files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT . > > You should still create a DOS directory, and copy all of the other DOS > files into there, such as FORMAT.COM, FDISK.COM, DEBUG.COM, etc. > Putting all of those in the root directory will work, but is a bad idea. > In early versions of MS-DOS, just about all of the DOS executable programs > were .COM Later, as they started to exceed 54K, they started using .EXE, > but NAMING them .COM "for compatability". Now, they are probably all .EXE > since MICROS~1 can not do a "Hello, World" in less than 64K. > > > What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on >> it? >> > > no idea. I just laid out the MS-DOS steps to prepare a hard disk. > > Run CHKDSK Find your copies of LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE , which you will > need for assembler and compilers. Originally, they came with MS-DOS. Then > for a while MS-DOS said that they came with the compiler, and the compiler > said that they came with MS-DOS. > The MS-DOS executables (including LINK and EXE2BIN) will balk at running > on a version of DOS other than what they came with. For THAT, V5.00 > includes SETVER , which lets MS-DOS lie about its version for such programs. > > > Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? >> > Need to use DOS V3.31 or above to get past 32MB, other than that, it would > be a function of the adapter? and, of course FDISK, . . . Prior to V3.31, > the work around was to break up a drive into multiple 32MB partitions. > > (BTW, MB to FDISK is 2^20 (1048576), NOT the silly numbers used by drive > peddlers, such as 1000 * 1024.) >
