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From: james@sunne.uucp (James Triplett)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Hard disk problems
Message-ID: <127@sunne.uucp>
Date: Mon, 13-Oct-86 21:54:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunne.127
Posted: Mon Oct 13 21:54:58 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Oct-86 07:43:25 EDT
References: <239@rayssd.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, New England
Lines: 26
Xref: watmath net.micro:15760 net.micro.pc:10432

The question was how to get a good compatible BIOS ROM.

I recently received one from JDR Microdevices.  They advertise
in various mags, including Byte.  It is called 'PRO-BIOS' and
costs 19.95.  I bought it mostly for curiosity, since my clone
already has a working BIOS chip.  I popped out the old and
put in the new, and everything seems to work fine.

It is amazing to me that the clone industry has become so
compatible that I can move a ROM for some arbitrary clone
to some other clone and all works fine.  So far as I know,
the xt motherboard that JDR sells is not the same as the
one I got (from Challenger Computers of Bedford, Mass-
another story with a happy ending so far).

Whenever I get funny hard disk problems, the following incantation
will generally banish any gremlins:
	1- low level format ("hdformat" or some such, not a standard system
						  utility)
	2- DOS FDISK
	3- DOS FORMAT

The "divide overflow" usually means some process is finding some
bad info in the boot record, partition info, or FAT.

James Triplett,  Sun Microsystems Boston Office