h7@cbnews.ATT.COM (c.f.hempstead) (04/26/89)
The format command under MS-DOS 3.3 appears to fail when I try to format a high density 3.5" disk in a newly installed drive. If you have suggestions, read on: I recently upgraded an hp Vectra 25 with the latest ROMs, keyboard controller chip, and replaced the DOS 3.1 version with 3.3; the conversion went very smoothly. I installed a 3.5" 1.44M drive in slot B:, keeping a 360K drive in A:. My config.sys file uses DRIVER.SYS twice, to allow "external" drive definitions for copying files between similar size disks; they are properly configured as /F:0 for the 360K, and /F:7 for the 1.44M. Setup was run to ensure that the system knows about all the new stuff. There is a 20 MB hard disk in the system, and DOS 3.3 loaded beautifully on it. Problem: when I try to format a virgin high density 3.5" disk in drive B:, it gets formatted with only 1.2M instead of 1.44, indicating that it is using 15 instead of 18 sectors per track. When I try to use PCFORMAT (from PCTOOLS), it "recognizes" the B: drive as a 1.2M 5.25" drive, and doesn't recognize E: at all. I tried adding DRIVPARM to config.sys, but to no avail; it gives an invalid media or track 0 bad message. The only solution I have found is to boot MS-DOS 3.2 from a floppy; its format command works properly on the 3.5" drive, giving 1.44MB. Any suggestions as to the source of, and especially the cure for, the problem will be greatly appreciated. C. F. Hempstead att!mvups!h7 AT&T Bell Labs, Ward Hill, Mass