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From: buddington-paul@cs.yale.edu (Paul Buddington)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Which DOS should I get? (again)
Keywords: DOS
Message-ID: <29808@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 91 18:08:42 GMT
References: <1991Mar29.164431.18022@novell.com> <1991Mar31.195238.24513@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <6798@clear19.UUCP>
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daver@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Ruby) writes:


>While we're on the subject of dosses (dosum, dosi?), 
>I have ms dos 3.2, which has served me fine, but now that
>I've upgraded from a 720k drive to a 1.4m drive on my 286, I can only format
>1.4m disks.  format /4 gives me "bad track 0" errors.  I'm 
>figuring that I need to upgrade to dos 3.3 at least.  Does this make
>sense?

According to the DOS manuals I've seen:
   DOS 3.1 does not support any 3.5-inch drive types
   DOS 3.2 added support for 720k but NOT 1.44m drives
   DOS 3.3 added support for 1.44m drives

I don't know how you managed to format 1.44m disks on your system with
DOS 3.2, but I've seen stranger things happen (like IBM allowing you to
format 720k disks at 1.44m with no complaints!)

I'd say you should switch to DOS 3.3 (at least).  That's what I'm using, 
and I have no desire to switch to 4.01.  But DOS 5 looks like it might
have a few worthwhile features - I guess we'll have to wait and see.

- Paul
-- 
========================================================================
Paul Buddington                                          Yale University
Buddington-Paul@CS.Yale.Edu or YaleCS.bitnet 
QuickMail: Paul_Buddington.CIS@YCCATSMTP.YCC.Yale.Edu