kevin@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU (Kevin Tubbs) (05/04/88)
In the past few months I have seen several postings dealing with
3.5" discs and the inability to format them to 1.44 meg. Those postings
caught my attention because I was contemplating adding a 3.5" 1.44 meg
drive to my AT clone (from Computer Products United, Award BIOS, DOS 3.3).
I got the impression that I would have problems, or at least have to
install DRIVER.SYS - at any rate, it didn't sound like a "clean" project.
As it turns out, I simply plugged in the drive ($150 from JDR Microde-
vices), changed the CMOS setup in the AT, typed "format b:" and it worked!
Very clean and easy.
So then, why do others have problems with this? I know that I won't
get all possible reasons, but here is a list of things that come to mind:
- Media is wrong type.
- Drive is wrong type, or isn't jumpered correctly.
- Controller is wrong type.
- BIOS is not compatible.
- DRIVER.SYS may be needed in some cases.
- Various FORMAT options may be needed in some cases.
- Wrong DOS version (3.3 is required, or perhaps a special driver on other
DOS versions).
Idiot-syncracies of various computers vary widely, so there may be more
reasons. But I would guess that any of the newer AT clones should be able
to plug-and-run just like mine.
--
Kevin Tubbs, 5152 Upson, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, 14853 (607) 255-8703
kevin@calvin.ee.cornell.edu {uunet,rochester}!cornell!calvin!kevin