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From: alexande@drivax.UUCP (Mark Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Low level format
Message-ID: <2455@drivax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 14:12:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: drivax.2455
Posted: Mon Sep 28 14:12:44 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 07:28:59 EDT
References: <299@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Reply-To: alexande@drivax.UUCP (Mark Alexander)
Distribution: world
Organization: Bob-ist Temple of Monterey
Lines: 53
Keywords: Bad sectors
Summary: Here's a program to do it

Several people have asked for something like this, so here's
a program to do a low-level format for the hard disk on a PC/XT.
It tells you what the drive parameters appear to be, then asks
you a couple of times if you're really sure you want to destroy
the disk, so it's safe to use.

The program definitely works on PC/XTs with the Xebec/IBM controller.
It was also tested four years ago with some WD and Adaptec controllers,
but may not work with current models.  It doesn't work on ATs
because they took out the Format Drive command from the BIOS,
for some reason.

Please ignore the copyright notice.  I wrote this years ago for
a company that no longer exists.  Sorry, I've lost the source,
but it's a MASM program that's easy to disassemble.  The core
of the program could be restated by the following four lines of code:
	mov	dx,80h		; drive c, use 81 for drive d
	mov	cx,1		; start track 0, sector 1
	mov	ax,706h		; format drive (AH), interleave 6 (AL)
	int	13h		; call the Fixed Disk BIOS
In fact, you could just use DEBUG and enter this program without
all the frills.
------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------
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`
end
-- 
Mark Alexander	...{hplabs,seismo,sun,ihnp4}!amdahl!drivax!alexande
"Bob-ism: the Faith that changes to meet YOUR needs." -- Bob