Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004, Rob Heard wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > Syschk finds the drive but says it is not formatted.
> > Fdisk says there are no partitions.  We partition with PQMagic before
> > that.  Repartitioned with fdisk. (Tried MS-DOS 6.22, DR-DOS, Win95 and
> > Win98 DOS).  Seems to work at first but then displays file names wrong.
> > Command.com becomes commaod!.! or the like (consistently).  Can't find
> > directories or renames them oddly.
> >
> 
> I once had a machine that did the same sort of thing.  The nice tech
> person at work said the hard disk controller was defective.

Thanks, that makes sense.  Works fine from floppy disk.  I have downloaded 
smart bootmanager and will install it to DOS boot floppy disk.  The 
documentation was a .tgz file which needed to be unpacked with linux and 
the file names renamed or they would all have come out the same in DOS 
(user-guide-1.html through 9.html).  I am hoping the hard drive controller 
(IDE controller) is not also controlling the CD-ROM drive.  Are laptop 
CD-ROM drives which are not PCMCIA generally on the same IDE controller as 
the hard drive?    In desktop computers sometimes just one of 2 
controllers goes bad.

What does a hard disk controller look like?  Perhaps we can plug and 
unplug it, which sometimes removes corrosion.  

> 
> Cheers,  Rob

Sindi