On Wednesday 29 September 2004 08:43 pm, R.Spinks top-posted:

> Where's the fun in that!? Why such hostility?!
>

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

"My Computer's broke, and I tried to format the drive, and broke it worse.
Tell me how to make it go!"

It's a Slack thing, maybe.

Cheers!
Rich

Rich Grise <null@example.net> wrote:
>On Wednesday 29 September 2004 10:44 pm, micke did deign to grace us with
>the following:
>
>> DB wrote:
>>> SNIPP
>>> I've seen that in quite alot... fairly common in my experience
>>>
>>> DB
>> It is or rather was common until the Pentium II processor came. Some
>> motherboard specially those with Phoenix BIOS had it a long time, but
>> haven't seen it for a few years now. The main reson to have it was that
>> the old ATA (IDE) drives sometimes needed to be reformatted since the
>> factory pre-formatting didn't always work during the early years of IDE.
>>
>
>I guess I've been living in a different dimension or something. You used
>to have to low-level format MFM drives, and even some Winchester drives,
>but the first thing I remember about them newfangled IDE thingies, with
>the little tiny interface with about 3 chips on it, is "You can't low-
>level format them."

I agree. It didn't have anything at all to do with Pentium II
processors, or a Phoenix BIOS for that matter.

It was the way tracking the heads is done by the disk
controller. I don't remember the details, but it amounts to
older disks basically had a stepper mechanism that mechanically
positioned the head at a particular cylinder by stepping out x
number of steps. It was only as accurate as the stepper
mechanism could be made. The track the head laid down had to be
large enough that mechanical variations do to heat or wear on
the parts wouldn't make the data unreadable. But even then,
disks evetually had to be reformatted because the heads and the
tracks were not aligned well enough.

That was replaced with a system where one head reads an
alignment track to sense very precisely where the head mechanism
is relative to the track, and a feedback loop electronically
positions the head rather than using mechanical precision.

There is basically never any need to reformat, because the
track's position relative to the mechanical location of the head
is constantly corrected regardless of wear on the drive system.

The initial advantage to the new system was that the heads could
write a significantly narrower track, which could therefore be
much closer to the adjacent track, meaning a larger number
tracks on the same platter. That's why disk drives suddenly
went from 1-300Mb to 1-4Gb some years back, and of course is it
has now been refined to the point where 40Gb drives are "small"
and sell for peanuts.

As far as I know it is impossible to do a low level format on a
modern disk. Is that not true? It requires that the disk drive
control have a track format command, and I really doubt that any
of them do.

--
FloydL. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com

Rich Grise wrote:

>SNIP
> I guess I've been living in a different dimension or something. You used
> to have to low-level format MFM drives, and even some Winchester drives,
> but the first thing I remember about them newfangled IDE thingies, with
> the little tiny interface with about 3 chips on it, is "You can't low-
> level format them."
>
> Thanks,
> Rich

Absolutly correct it was made for MFM and RLL disks BUT thos ones had a
separate controllercard wher you called for the the lowlevel formatting
using debug g someaddress:startaddress, but this was not in BIOS the BIOS
thingie came with the first IDE drives since they where built accordingly
to MFM standard layout. This made it possible but not always necessary to
low-level format them.

Micke
--
# The truth lies in there, #
# somewhere in the manual. #

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
>SNIP
> I agree. It didn't have anything at all to do with Pentium II
> processors, or a Phoenix BIOS for that matter.
>
> As far as I know it is impossible to do a low level format on a
> modern disk. Is that not true? It requires that the disk drive
> control have a track format command, and I really doubt that any
> of them do.
>
I didn't mean that it had something to do with P2 CPU but only as a
timelime, and Phoenix BIOS was just another example I'm sorry if someone
missunderstod me.
As far as I know it's only possible nowerdays to lowlevel format SCSI
drives. And it ruins ATA drives if you try.

Micke
--
# The truth lies in there, #
# somewhere in the manual. #

R. Spinks wrote :

> Any way to fix my Low Level Format fau paux or is the drive toast?

Go to the manufacturers web-site and check if they has a tool to rebuild
the drives structure. Back in time you could find these tools but I
don't know if they still are available.
--
Thomas O.

This area is designed to become quite warm during normal operation.

> What the hell is a "BIOS low level format"? I haven't heard of a low
level
> format in over 15 years, and I've _never_ seen anything like that in
any
> BIOS, and I've seen a few BIOSes. Well, at least their setup
screens.

Funny... The 486 I'm using at this very moment allows me to low level
format from the BIOS.

You could also be abit nicer about it, eh?

Message posted via:
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Expanding the world of Slackware
=====================

Rich Grise wrote:

> I haven't done the actual experiment, but whenever I've written a
> partition table without a DOS partition marked "active", it tells me
> that MS-DOS won't be able to boot the disk. So what? LILO doesn't seem
> to mind. ;-)

This assumes LILO is on the MBR. If it is elsewhere, then the BIOS won't be
able to find it without some further direction, as provided by marking a
partition active.

Jeffrey

On 09-29-2004, in alt.os.linux.slackware,
Rich Grise <null@example.net> wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 September 2004 06:40 pm, R.Spinks did deign to grace
> us with the following:
>
>> Ok - I tried installing slackware in 'newbie' mode and it
>> crashed. It said something about an error and then it just hung.
>> So... I rebooted. Unfortunately after that it wouldn't boot to
>> the CD and it just wouldn't do much of anything. So I went to the
>> BIOS and tried to change boot order to A and reformat my hard
>> drive. That didn't work and so I tried a BIOS low level format
>> and now all I get is a "primary master h/d fail". Anyone know
>> what I can do to try again...
>
> What the hell is a "BIOS low level format"? I haven't heard of a
> low level format in over 15 years, and I've _never_ seen anything
> like that in any BIOS, and I've seen a few BIOSes. Well, at least
> their setup screens.

Maybe you didn't see enough of them. My Award BIOS (1998) on this
old PII just happens to have such an option in the setup screen. I
could be wrong here (failing memory), but back in my 486 days I seem
to recall some Award based BIOSs supporting that option as well.

> You just piled one fuckup on top of another, didn't you?

LOL!. Did you or anyone else actually see what the OP is implying?
It seems to me that somehow installing Slackware in 'newbie' mode
not only failed, but managed to trash the systems BIOS right along
with it? That statement mentioning the OP has BIOS control over
boot order backs this up I think. How is it that initailly booting
from the Slack install CD and watching it fail, somehow destroys the
machine to the point it won't boot from the CD anymore? Even if the
HDs were trashed during the install, the BIOS would still provide
access to the CDROM at next boot-up right?

Me thinks this kind shit the OP claims just don't happen folks. All
hail the evil Slackware.

Max

--
For every evil under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try and find it,
If there be none, never mind it.

On 09-30-2004, in alt.os.linux.slackware,
Social Burn <socialburn@gmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> wrote:

>> What the hell is a "BIOS low level format"? I haven't heard of a
>> low level format in over 15 years, and I've _never_ seen anything
>> like that in any BIOS, and I've seen a few BIOSes. Well, at least
>> their setup screens.

> Funny... The 486 I'm using at this very moment allows me to low
> level format from the BIOS.
>
> You could also be abit nicer about it, eh?

Why?. Do you think social niceties are going to solve the fuckups
the OP claims? Do you think these niceties are also going to solve
the fuckups along the way the OP didn't mention?.

By the way, were you talking about the 'Abit' motherboard or being
"a bit" nicer?

I'm thinking RG, as well as others, could have been *MUCH* more
cruel in their replies...

Max

--
For every evil under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try and find it,
If there be none, never mind it.

Max wrote:

> Why?. Do you think social niceties are going to solve the fuckups
> the OP claims? Do you think these niceties are also going to solve
> the fuckups along the way the OP didn't mention?.

How about because being nice makes the world a much better place to live in,
regardless of whether or not the OP's computer gets fucked up.

Jeffrey