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From: ralf@b.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Ralf Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Formatting 3.5" Diskette
Message-ID: <7509@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 90 01:59:20 GMT
References: <20972@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 18

In article <20972@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> LEE@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
}I recenlty bought 3.5" DS/DD Dysan diskettes. The problem is FORMAT command
}in dos would not format the diskettes. It says, "Track 0 is bad, Diskette
}unusable." All 50 diskettes are same. But if I format the diskettes using
}PCTOOLS, I can format them and use them without any problem. Dos doesn't
}still format them after I format them with PCTOOLS.

I believe that you have encountered a bug in all known versions of DOS
FORMAT.  It doesn't check whether its buffers cross over a DMA boundary, and
blindly uses them; this results in an error which makes FORMAT claim the
disk is unusable.  The solution is to add or remove a TSR to shift the
location in memory where FORMAT gets loaded.

-- 
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