drmadill@sunee.waterloo.edu (dr madill) (08/21/90)
Has anyone tried formatting disksusing BIOS interrupt 13h function 05. I have been trying to use it, but so far, I have had no success. The drive spins and acts as though it is formatting but when I try to read or write a sector I get an error 4 returned in AH (which means Bad Sector: Requested sector not on diskette) If anyone could send me some code in C or assembler that works I would really appreciate it. Thanks David
franz@hpugrca.HP.COM (Franz Dreismann) (09/06/90)
I tried this also on an AT with an 1.2MB drive. I specified a format buffer for one trak and called intr 13h with ah=17h before. This interrupt should set the disc type: Set al=3 for 1.2MB disc in 1.2MB drive. On interrupt ah=5 it seems to be neccessary to set al=1 for one trak. It seems to work, but when writing it brings errors ah=4 on sector 17, i also don't understand this. Perhaps we should exchange our routines to see if any of us solves a part of the problem. Please answer on notes. Franz Dreismann email:franz@hpugrca.rtg.hp.com