Steven, John may have something there. My original thought about HDD geometries is clearly off base (i.e. wrong). The disk is (at 80MB) obviously too small for that to be the problem.
However, the MBR can't move around: the BIOS has to be able to find it. May I suggest that you download the Partition Magic DOS software from tmonroe.com's public ftp site (user: public, pass: public), the file is called pm4disk.zip or pm4text.zip or something like that. The zip file contains a binary disk image and the program that will write it to floppy. The program has built-in help. (By the way, the program is worthwhile having in its own right.) The resulting floppy is bootable (uses DR DOS) and will run the text-only version of PM. Anyway, Partition Magic may be able to tell you more. Regards, Garry * [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 07:31:55 -0800 >Reply-To: Older PC and DOS Internet Forum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sender: Older PC and DOS Internet Forum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >From: Dweezil Dwarftosser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: [SURVPC] SURVPC Digest - HD problems >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 15:52:34 +0000 >> From: "Steven C. Darnold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: HD problem >> >> Can any of you guys think of a reason why DOS >> (running on a floppy) is unable to access a HD >> when Linux (booting from floppy to ramdisk) is >> able to. > >Sure. Remember Seagate's "Disk Manager"? Everyone >has used it at one time or another, as HD sizes >grew beyond that which the BIOS/OS could "see". >It created a (low-revision) DOS boot record in an >alternate location on the disk. When you booted >it up, DM's (or other alternative boot manager's) >code referenced that alternative DOS boot record, >then jumped there. More modern alternatives boot >to a brief screen permitting a choice of booting >from a DOS floppy, or continuing its now-"normal" >boot process. > >Your Linux boot record created the partitions, in- >cluding the one where DOS resides. When you boot from >DOS (which version?) on a floppy, it can't interpret >the Linux-installed information on track Zero. >(Most likely, a problem of 32-bit addressing versus >16-bit, though there are other possibilities.) > >I don't have a good strategy to fix it - but installing >Linux first (on a Linux-formatted disk) could make an >older DOS floppy boot non-operative. > >- John T. (more of a lurker these days...) > To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
