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Message from David
==================
below is my first attempt to reply to a message in the correct way, so i
hope i havent deleted bits i shouldnt have or messed things up too much..

> ok, so i checked several floppy disks and theyre
> ok and i checked by reformatting disks on a win3.1 system, a win95 system
> and a win98 system.

That doesn't mean that the floppy is perfect. All 3 of those operating
systems will tolerate a few errors (by reducing the amount of space
available on the floppy). However, your floppy disk needs to be
perfect, that is, all 1474560 bytes of the floppy must work correctly.

ive formatted and checked several 1.44mb floppies and the dos format report
in every case states 0 bytes in bad sectors. and dos or windows scandisk
shows no bad blocks. to get half a dozen floppies with exactly the same
missing space on them is not gonna be explained by excluded bad sectors..
and what about the info google turned up? doesnt that explain where the
missing space is? did you miss that bit? here it is again, pasted in
verbatim from the web page ~>
512 bytes/sector x 18 sectors/track x 80 tracks/side x 2 sides = 1,474,560
bytes or 2,880 sectors. But your computer always says it has "1,457,664
bytes total disk space." Well, that's because you can't use the Boot sector,
the two 12-bit FATs (File Allocation Tables; of 9 sectors each) or the
fixed-size Root Directory (of 14 sectors) for storing data! So you're left
with 2,880 - 1 - 18 - 14 = 2,847 sectors or 1,457,664 bytes for your files.
              <~ are you not accepting that is the explanation as to why no
matter which do$windoze system i try the available space on any empty
formatted 1.44mb floppy is always gonna be 1,457,664 bytes?

The BasicLinux 3 disk1 is not too big. But you cannot simply copy it
to a formatted disk. Did you follow the directions in the readme.txt
file which was provided with the BasicLinux package?

i did what the readme said and used Fdimage.exe in a windows dos session and
i tried it in a fresh booted dos session as well, so, no, im not dumb enough
to try to copy Disk1.img rather than write it raw.. i copied to the 2nd
floppy of course, as per instructions, without problem, but then that file
is only 1,441,792 bytes which of course fits in a space of 1,457,664 bytes
with room to spare.

So, what does fdimage say after you execute it?

i will run it again to get the exact words if you really need to know but
basically it failed to execute because the file was too big for the
available space (1,457,664 bytes)..

Can you try a different floppy if it fails?

have tried several and its the same exactly with every one..

If it still doesn't work, I suggest that you try the DOS version

no i dont want the loop one if thats what you mean

or QEMU version of BasicLinux.

wat dat?

relly would like to hear what you find when you format a 1.44mb floppy on a
do$windoze system and then check by whatever means you like to find out how
many bytes free space you get -->-> 1,457,664 bytes id say it will be :D

dont worry, i wont give up easily, staying heavily involved with big bills
half-baked creations since 1998 proves i must be fairly resilient, lol..

peter (unixish)
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