As far as I can remember the old fixed disk controller used to be installed at paragraph C800:0000. To do a low level format we used to use the debug facility in DOS and do g C800:0005. I may be wrong, but this was 1986 on IBM PS/2s using 20MB hard disks, but a lot of legacy stuff seems to have pulled through....
----- Original Message ----- From: Richard E. Hawkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Guilherme Soares Zahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <debian-user@lists.debian.org> Sent: 13 September 1999 14:18 Subject: Re: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive > > Guilherme grunted, > > > > But you shouldn't ever low level format a hard drive. It isn't necessary > > > any more since the 80's. > > > More that that, it's REALLY dangerous to do so in new IDE drives (something to do > > with geometry parameters, if I'm not mistaken)... > > I have an old one I'd like to try it on, but the bios doesn't do it. I > stuck it in another machine briefly, and now it absolutely refuses to > work as a primary (but is just fine as a slave). It's an old caviar > 540 for the kids' machine. Right now they have my machine, because > that machine can't boot from the slave (or even use it without a > primary present), nor can it recognize more than 1024 cylinders (or use > the alternate modes). So it sees my 8g drive as a 540 or so :( I > noticed the box on a new 20G at sam's club yesterday claimed it had > software to get around old bios's, but I'm not willing to pay $250 just > to get an old 486 running (the kids' stuff is almost all windows, so I > have to deal with bios problems :( > > rick > > > > Now, how would I LOW FORMAT a floppy disk??? > > That should happen on a regular formatk, shouldn't it? (the current command is "superformat") > -- > > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null >
