scott@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Scott Linn) (05/02/90)
/ hpcvca:comp.sys.hp / RJGRAHAM@MIAMIU.BITNET / 10:36 am Apr 23, 1990 / >Help!!! > > I just purchased a HP 386 pc and the 3.5 disk drive reports "general >failure" when I try to change directories or format disks. > When I first unpacked the computer and received this message, I >boxed it up and exchanged it for another one which also has this >problem. Is this a common occurance or am I just doing something >wrong? > After trying several disks, I was finally able to format 2 of them >but even fresh disks cannot be formatted. This seems strange. >Any help will be greatly appreciated. Is this drive 1.4Mbytes? If so, I believe that they require the black 3.5" disks. The failure that you're seeing sounds like one I saw the other day: I was trying to used a standard DSDD disk (720K bytes) in one of our newer Vectra drives, and it wouldn't format it. I ended up formatting it on another computer, and then reading/writing it on the 386 machine. Scott Linn
ericr@hpvcper.HP.COM (Eric Ross) (05/03/90)
You can format a 720K disk (gray disk) with the following command on a Vectra running DOS 3.2(maybe 3.3) or later. format b: /n:9 /t:80 n=number of sectors. t=number of tracks. This is documented in the MSDOS documentation under the format command. You can also set up the system to have 720k defaults by adding an indskbio statement to your config.sys(look up config.sys in your documentation). Another method is with the device driver "DRIVER.SYS". Eric Ross ericr@vcd.hp.com
davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed) (05/05/90)
Do you have a DRIVPARM statement in CONFIG.SYS specifying the kind of drive
and how it should be accessed? Something like
DRIVPARM = /D:1 /F:2 /T:80 /S:9 /H:2 /C
for a high density (1.44Mbyte capable) drive as B:.