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From: det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: screwy format message
Keywords: software, 386/3.0e
Message-ID: <1003@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>
Date: 26 Jun 89 05:40:26 GMT
Organization: One of the Eternal Champions - Richfield, MN, 554232523, USA
Lines: 23

Whenever i try to format my (new) 3.5" floppy (1.44M) with a 720K diskette in
it i get the following message:

$ format /dev/rdsk/f13dt	#lo density device name;  f13ht = hi density
formatting.
Formatted 0 tracks: 0 thru 4294967295, interleave 1.

It prints this immediately and i don't think it even accesses the drive.

What does this mean?  Is my format broken and is there a newer one out there
that i can get that will work better?

derek

Ps. it also seems that once i get an error on either of the drives, particuarly
when attempting to do a dosdir and i get the "media descriptor bad" or some
such nonsense, it makes the driver unusable until i reboot.   This seems
somewhat unreasonable.
-- 
Derek Terveer 	    det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG || ..!uunet!rosevax!elric!hawkmoon!det
		    w(612)681-6986   h(612)688-0667

"A proper king is crowned" -- Thomas B. Costain