marty1@hounx.ATT.COM (M.B.BRILLIANT) (04/14/89)
I couldn't get FDFORMAT to do anything useful. For most formats it gave me an error message and stopped before it even started the drive motor. Sometimes it started spinning and gave me a message for the first track. I had better luck with FDREAD. I found I could use it instead of SMAX to read a disk formatted with MAXI-Form at 1.4M. But getting FDREAD up and running was a challenge. The READ.ME file just said to type the command FDREAD, which is not much use when there is no .COM, .EXE, or .BAT file around with that name. Neither of my assemblers would handle FDREAD.ASM; both gave error messages. But I noticed that there was something suspiciously familiar about the content of FDREAD.TXT, so I just typed debug <fdread.txt, and out came a working FDREAD.COM as if by magic. There must be something wrong with my rig. I have an XTurbo clone with DTK boards and a Mitsumi 1.2M floppy drive, along with a Seagate hard drive. I can format either 360K or 1.2M floppies with either the DOS FORMAT command, or CONFMT. MAXI-Form will format 1.4M floppies and with SMAX I can read and write them. But MAXI won't format a 420K floppy at all. I can format 720K or 800K floppies with CONFMT, 800KFMAT, or MAXI, but when I try to read or write a file of any substantial size I get a "sector not found" error. I can't read 720K disks written for Tandy clones either. Does anybody have any idea what I should look for to find out why these famous formatters fail on my facilities? M. B. Brilliant Marty AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201) 949-1858 Holmdel, NJ 07733 att!hounx!marty1 Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer explicitly claims them; then I lose all rights to them.
goldfish@concour.CS.Concordia.CA (Paul Goldsmith) (04/18/89)
In article <1322@hounx.ATT.COM> marty1@hounx.ATT.COM (M.B.BRILLIANT) writes: > But MAXI won't format a 420K floppy at all. I can format 720K or 800K Try setting the turbo switch off. My XT-clone will read with SMAX loaded, but it will format ONLY when at 5 Mhz. (running the formater at 5Mhz is a no-cost option) -Goldfish