FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error (longish)

FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error (longish)

[Mike McCarty]

I have a floppy which I knew in advance had errors on it, but
just for the sake of trying out all the tools, and also to see
what got put on the disc by FreeDOS, I tried to format it.
The format ran for quite a long time, like tens of minutes, then
there was what appeared to be an internal error of some sort.

It is the fact that an internal error seemed to occur that
concerns me. Also I am somewhat concerned that one more bad
sector was reported in the total than in the detailled list,
though much less so. Mostly, the latter is likely just a
mis-count, but it might be related to the failure.

Here is the information I collected. Is there more information
I should collect, and where should I send it (if not here)?

I was running xdosemu under Fedora Core 2, the floppy
was *not* mounted under Linux. This is a 2.7 GHz Celeron
single processor Compaq Presario machine with 256MB RAM.

$ uname -a
Linux Presario-1 2.6.10-1.771_FC2 #1 Mon Mar 28 00:50:14 EST 2005 i686 
i686 i386 GNU/Linux

In the emulator...

C:\JMCCARTY>format/u a:
(many errors reported here)
...
Sector 2880 CHS=[79:1:18] bad
100 percent completed.
Found 88 bad sectors during formatting.
  Preparing FAT area...
100 percent completed.
Drive_IO( command=WRITE sector=24 count=1 ) [FAT12/16] [drive A:]
 

  Critical error encountered while using DOS disk driver
  DOS driver error (hex): 03
    Description: unknown command given to driver
  Program terminated.
 

C:\JMCCARTY>ver /r
 

FreeCom version 0.82 pl 3 XMS_Swap [Mar 06 2004 10:49:37]
DOS version 7.10
FreeDOS kernel version 1.1.35
 

C:\JMCCARTY>format/?
FreeDOS Format Version 0.91p
Written by Brian E. Reifsnyder (and several contributors).
Copyright 1999 - 2004 under the terms of the GNU GPL, Version 2.
...
C:\JMCCARTY>_

Here is the complete list of sectors reported...

[ 2:0: 1] through [ 2:0: 8] inclusive
[ 8:0: 1] through [ 8:0: 8] inclusive
[78:0: 1] through [78:0:17] inclusive
[78:1: 1] through [78:1:18] inclusive
[79:0: 1] through [79:0:18] inclusive
[79:1: 1] through [79:1:18] inclusive

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!

Re: FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error

[Mike McCarty]

Alain M. wrote:
> Make the test with the latest version. Eric made a lot of Fixes while I 
> was making tests. It is much better now, specialy in error conditions.
> 
> But... I made oll tests in real dos...
> 
> http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/
> 
> Alain

Thanks. I downloaded the latest and tried again. It is very
much faster. It also only found 8 bad sectors (hmm...). But
the very same IO error occurred.

So, where do I need to report the problem?

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!

Re: FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error

[Bart Oldeman]

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Mike McCarty wrote:

> Alain M. wrote:
>> Make the test with the latest version. Eric made a lot of Fixes while I was 
>> making tests. It is much better now, specialy in error conditions.
>> 
>> But... I made oll tests in real dos...
>> 
>> http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/
>> 
>> Alain
>
> Thanks. I downloaded the latest and tried again. It is very
> much faster. It also only found 8 bad sectors (hmm...). But
> the very same IO error occurred.
>
> So, where do I need to report the problem?

DOSEMU. It cannot and has never been able to format floppies, to be 
precise, BIOS int13/ah=5 is not implemented.

Try a Linux tool, e.g. superformat.

Bart

Re: FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Bart Oldeman wrote:

> DOSEMU [..] cannot and has never been able to format floppies,
> to be precise, BIOS int13/ah=5 is not implemented.
> 
> Try a Linux tool, e.g. superformat.

This clears up a lot.

I suppose a user could replace format.com by format.bat,
containing "unix superformat /dev/fd0 hd" ?

Regards, Jan

Re: FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error

[Mike McCarty]

Bart Oldeman wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
>> Alain M. wrote:
>>
>>> Make the test with the latest version. Eric made a lot of Fixes while 
>>> I was making tests. It is much better now, specialy in error conditions.
>>>
>>> But... I made oll tests in real dos...
>>>
>>> http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/
>>>
>>> Alain
>>
>>
>> Thanks. I downloaded the latest and tried again. It is very
>> much faster. It also only found 8 bad sectors (hmm...). But
>> the very same IO error occurred.
>>
>> So, where do I need to report the problem?
> 
> 
> DOSEMU. It cannot and has never been able to format floppies, to be 
> precise, BIOS int13/ah=5 is not implemented.

I don't believe so, for a number of reasons.

First, the disc *was* written, and the % completion went up to
100 percent.

Second, the FAT writing was stated to work.

Third, the reported error was a WRITE, not a FORMAT TRACK.

Fourth, I ran the same program on a pure MSDOS 6.0 machine,
under the control of an interrupt capture and analysis
program I wrote several years ago, and verified that
the FORMAT TRACK calls were made during the time that was
reporting % complete. The call which appeared to fail
was indeed a BIOS WRITE.

Fifth, with a disc which was verified to format properly
under MSDOS with the FORMAT.EXE program (latest version)
and with MSDOS FORMAT, the program was capable of formatting
the disc under DOSEMU.

Unfortunately, I was unable to use my interrupt capture
program under DOSEMU, as it always reported not enough
memory to load the program. Apparently, the BORLANDC
link library code for loading/executing a program doesn't
work with DOSEMU for some reason.

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!

Re: FORMAT floppy: Drive_IO error

[Mike McCarty]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> Bart Oldeman wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Mike McCarty wrote:
>>
>>> Alain M. wrote:
>>>
>>>> Make the test with the latest version. Eric made a lot of Fixes 
>>>> while I was making tests. It is much better now, specialy in error 
>>>> conditions.
>>>>
>>>> But... I made oll tests in real dos...
>>>>
>>>> http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/
>>>>
>>>> Alain
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. I downloaded the latest and tried again. It is very
>>> much faster. It also only found 8 bad sectors (hmm...). But
>>> the very same IO error occurred.
>>>
>>> So, where do I need to report the problem?
>>
>>
>>
>> DOSEMU. It cannot and has never been able to format floppies, to be 
>> precise, BIOS int13/ah=5 is not implemented.
> 
> 
> I don't believe so, for a number of reasons.

[snip reasons]

OTOH, I degaussed a known-good disc, and FORMAT.EXE was unable
to format it under FreeDOS, whereas it was able to under MSDOS
6.0. It failed right away, reporting the FORMAT TRACK call failed.

Nonetheless, it was not the BIOS FORMAT TRACK which failed
in the earlier attempt.

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!