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How to format a hard drive from DOS 1.25?

Again, I'm assuming knowledge of DEBUG.

After the "int 3" line, enter an empty return and DEBUG will prompt with a hyphen. Type "g=100" followed by a return. If you get a hyphen back on the next line, the disk BIOS should be initialized. Enter a "q" in response to quit.
 
If that debug trick works and the drive is not dead, I would expect a different response from FDISK, but DOS will still not see a drive letter.

I'll have to try that trick on my Eagle 1600 the next time I dig it out.

It would not make much sense if this drive were installed in a system that did not have BIOS support. But is possible some clever wiseguy used a custom boot floppy to make it work. Nobody else has one of these to test against?

Fire-Flare, would you please dump the BIOS ROM on this machine? (I thought I asked that in a different thread) It sounds like you have the means to do that. Just write the ROM area to a file with DEBUG, and make an image of the disk and upload it.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Again, I'm assuming knowledge of DEBUG.

After the "int 3" line, enter an empty return and DEBUG will prompt with a hyphen. Type "g=100" followed by a return. If you get a hyphen back on the next line, the disk BIOS should be initialized. Enter a "q" in response to quit.
Click to expand...

Well it's been an hour since I typed "G=100", and it's still flashing a cursor at me that doesn't respond to keystrokes.
 
SomeGuy said:
Fire-Flare, would you please dump the BIOS ROM on this machine? (I thought I asked that in a different thread) It sounds like you have the means to do that. Just write the ROM area to a file with DEBUG, and make an image of the disk and upload it.
Click to expand...

I'd be glad to, just tell me the commands. :)
 
For those curious, the WD WX2 HD BIOS starts at offset 0x8000-0x9FFFF, and the Cordata machine BIOS starts at 3C000-0x3FFFF. BIOS date is 02/15/84.
 
FFS. What goddamn rabbit hole are you pulling this poor guy through?

I suspect that the drive truly is dead, or perhaps the motherboard's DIP switches aren't configured correctly. If only I could get a copy of the manual...
Click to expand...
No, no and
NO.

If the machine came with a hard drive, everything is set. You need to touch absolutely NOTHING on the hardware side to make it work again. You have already confirmed that you can make DOS talk to the drive through the controller's onboard LLF routine using DEBUG. Your problem now is either the drive is failing to take a format (nothing you can do there) or fdisk/DOS is refusing to look at the drive even though the controllers ROM is present in a totally bog standard location (I have seen it before but it was special case). Try another copy of MS-DOS. Try another OEM release if you need to. I am still at a loss at why we are now dumping ROM images.

Out of suspicion, what manufacturer is the hard drive? Seagate? Kyocera? Miniscribe?
 
Title!

Title!

NeXT said:
confirmed that you can make DOS talk to the drive through the controller's onboard LLF routine using DEBUG.
Click to expand...
The debug method completely bypasses DOS. Depending on how the controller is implemented, it may even bypass the controller's own BIOS hooks.

Anyway, I was able to boot this BIOS and load DOS using the PCE emulator. BIOS text mode doesn't seem to like IBM CGA hardware (perhaps hard coded for mono?). The important thing was it did find the emulator's hard drive BIOS, boot from the hard drive, and attempted to run an application that produced visible output. There were questions if this machine supported BIOS extension ROMs, and the answer is yes, it does support BIOS extension.

Also, the text "INT 18H - Boot Failure" does appear in the ROM.

The BIOS is interesting because reportedly Corona Data Systems was also involved with the IBM BIOS lawsuit.
 
At an offset of 3C000. Viz,
Code: 
03BFA0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03BFB0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03BFC0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03BFD0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03BFE0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03BFF0  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ****************
03C000  34 2E 32 33 43 47 00 43 6F 70 79 72 69 67 68 74  4.23CG Copyright
03C010  20 28 43 29 20 31 39 38 34 20 43 6F 72 6F 6E 61   (C) 1984 Corona
03C020  20 44 61 74 61 20 53 79 73 74 65 6D 73 20 49 6E   Data Systems In
03C030  63 2E FD D8 25 CB 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C F1  c.²╪%╦        ♀±
03C040  00 00 7B CE 2B C6 1F C6 D2 EF AE C7 D6 C5 7C C9    {╬+╞▼╞╥∩«╟╓┼|╔
03C050  87 C8 D7 C5 8A FE CD D8 D5 C5 D5 C5 A2 CD C7 EF  ç╚╫┼è■═╪╒┼╒┼ó═╟∩
03C060  00 00 7B CE 00 F0 83 00 00 08 00 04 43 00 54 41    {╬ ≡â  ◘ ♦C TA
03C070  00 00 FF FF 01 00 FF 01 00 FF 0B 00 58 08 00 00    **☺ *☺ *♂ X◘
03C080  0A 00 00 0B 00 41 0B 00 42 0B 00 43 FF
 
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