[net.micro.pc] Format is not Position Independent!

GILLMANN%USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP (12/07/83)

From:  Dick Gillmann <GILLMANN@USC-ISIB>

I was having trouble with the FORMAT program and discovered (with help
from Brackenridge & Henderson) that it has a terrible bug in it that
makes it depend on where it loads in memory for proper operation.  In
other words if you have device drivers and programs that remain
resident, they may shift the starting point for the FORMAT program so
that it won't work right.  This has something to do with crossing 64K
boundaries.

I experimented with a varying the load point and doing a FORMAT A:/B/1
and found that at some positions I got a 160K disk, at others a 179K
disk and at still others I got a bad track 0 error -- all with the
same diskette.

Does anyone have a properly written FORMAT program?
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